Search - 2013

 
 
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2013

Britain's 'YBA' have moved on, but they still inspire

In Ben Wheatley's recent film "A Field in England," a group of deserting soldiers fleeing the 17th-century English Civil War escape through a field of mushrooms, only to be captured by an alchemist and descend into a nightmare of both body and mind — all against the backdrop of the English countryside....
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Aug 21, 2013

Patience runs out for struggling ace Wakui

Thirty-eight pitches. That's the number Hideaki Wakui of the Seibu Lions tossed in Tuesday night's game against the Chiba Lotte Marines.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 2013

It's now decision time for the global economy

Think of the U.S. economy as an eight-cylinder engine running on five amid fiscal consolidation, public-sector investment shortfalls and the normalization of part-time work.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2013

'Shinjuku Creators Festa 2013'

Tokyo celebrates all things creative at the "Shinjuku Creators Festa," a 17-day art event being held around the city's Shinjuku Station. World-famous names, such as Yayoi Kusama and CG-artist Yoichiro Kawaguchi will be displaying works, while student submissions, including film projects and installations,...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 21, 2013

Allies wage behind-the-scenes effort in Fed job push

Lawrence Summers, one of the top candidates to lead the U.S. Federal Reserve, was being beaten up, and his friends from his White House years wanted to help him.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 21, 2013

Humans '95% likely' behind warming

It is all but certain that human activity has caused a steady increase in global temperatures over the past 60 years, leading to warmer oceans and an acceleration in rising sea levels, according to the most recent climate change report by an international U.N. panel of scientists.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2013

Exercising society's right to ignore the ignorant

Regardless of their reasoning, people have a right to choose ignorance. But letting that choice drive public policy constitutes a serious threat to scientific and economic development.
EDITORIALS
Aug 20, 2013

Care for A-bomb disease sufferers

The government should widen the scope of medical assistance to atomic bomb survivors and hasten efforts to ease the criteria for recognizing such survivors.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 19, 2013

Larry Summers and a tale of two Harvard professors

It is hard to imagine any private bankers being so callous and socially unconscionable as Larry Summers, a leading candidate to be the next chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / ON: TECH
Aug 19, 2013

Affordable storage, Sony's laptop-tablet hybrid, tracking lost goods and more

Storage space that won't break the bank
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Aug 18, 2013

Sony to release flagship Xperia smartphone in September: sources

Sony Corp. will launch a flagship smartphone for its Xperia brand next month that features imaging technology developed for its cameras and ultrahigh definition TVs, according to two people familiar with the matter.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 18, 2013

Interest in climate change ebbs

It's puzzling why so few arguments have been made in Japan this summer to link the heat waves and local cloudbursts to global warming and climate change.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2013

Newspaper rescue defines today's good citizen

It would appear that Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos wants less to own The Washington Post than to set its values free financially, for at least a generation or two.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 17, 2013

American fiction's drunken masters

Rivers run through Olivia Laing's writing — sometimes the real thing, either narrow and innocuous like a backwoods creek or mile-wide like the Mississippi; occasionally streams of memory that flow backwards, and sometimes gushers of tears; always a steady current of liquidly eloquent words.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 17, 2013

Revisiting the works of director Takashi Miike

Takashi Miike is one of the few Japanese filmmakers now working, Takeshi Kitano and Hayao Miyazaki being two others, who enjoy a measure of recognition outside Japan's insular film world. Though hardly a household name in Kansas, Miike has long been a favorite with the international Asian Extreme Cinema...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 17, 2013

Burying the truth to survive in postwar, modern Japan

It is hardly necessary to note that comics and manga are capable of conveying just about anything. Philosophy? See Ryan Dunlavey and Fred Van Lente's Action Philosophers series. Travel? Try Guy Delisle's accounts of his sojourns in tourist hot spots such as Pyongyang and Shenzhen. Memoir? Yoshihiro Tatsumi's...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 17, 2013

Unmissable response to George Orwell's 1946 essay 'Why I Write'

A slender, beautifully bound blue hardback showed up on my desk. Its pages were creamy, its typeface clear in a formal, old-fashioned way. Each page number was picked out in scarlet. It was a book to put Kindle out of business, so covetable that, I almost thought, it scarcely mattered what it contained....
EDITORIALS
Aug 17, 2013

Spare the rod at school

Every school day, an average of 68 students are punched, slapped, kicked or otherwise physically punished by their teachers, although physical punishment is prohibited by law. A new report by the education ministry confirmed that 6,721 teachers were reported to have used corporal punishment on 14,208...
BASKETBALL
Aug 17, 2013

Knicks sign ex-Tokyo Apache big man Tyler

Jeremy Tyler made a positive impression during the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas last month, playing for the New York Knicks. That prompted Knicks general manager Glen Grunwald to offer Tyler, a former Tokyo Apache forward/center, a contract for the 2013-14 season.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 16, 2013

The shadow from Yasukuni

Just as Japanese conservatives are taken to task for refusing to acknowledge their country's colonial horrors, so China would do well to expand discussion of its own history.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 16, 2013

NSA broke privacy rules repeatedly, audit finds

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Aug 15, 2013

Status of posting system may put Tanaka in limbo

Masahiro Tanaka figures to be one of the most intriguing NPB exports if the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles decide to post the star right-hander after the season.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 14, 2013

Namie Amuro "Feel"

The age of the J-pop diva has long passed, those halcyon days of Whitney Houston-inspired vocals and million-unit-moving singles. The female entertainers from this period have recently coped by embracing American trends. Kumi Koda struck Oricon Single Chart gold last year with "Go To the Top," which...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 14, 2013

Smany "komoriuta"

Netlabel culture in Japan — referring to Web-only music labels that distribute tunes online, usually for free — has been around long enough to develop its own set of minor celebrities and "star" imprints. Bunkai-Kei has become one of the most popular of these Internet institutions, and its latest...
EDITORIALS
Aug 14, 2013

Conduct in territorial disputes

Although waves are forecast for talks between China and ASEAN on a code of conduct covering the South China Sea, both sides must persevere to reduce tension.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 14, 2013

Defusing Syria's ticking time bomb

he most appropriate response by the U.S. and its allies in the Syrian conflict would be to make a bigger investment in the secular opposition and to articulate clear goals.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2013

'Aichi Triennale 2013'

The theme of this second Aichi Triennale is "Awakening — Where Are We Standing?" and it aims to make us rethink the role of art as Japan continues to recover from the Great East Japan Earthquake and following disasters.
MULTIMEDIA
Aug 14, 2013

[VIDEO] The 2013 Great Dinosaur Expo in Marunouchi

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji