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CULTURE / Books
Feb 7, 2010

Different folks, different strokes

Can Japan's corporate system withstand globalization? Once considered the source of the nation's competitive strength, traditional practices such as lifetime employment and seniority-based pay have in recent years been increasingly attacked as contributors to poor performance. The postbubble slump eroded...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jan 25, 2010

What if Clarke had embarked on an economic odyssey?

The movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," Arthur C. Clarke's epoch-making science fiction masterpiece, was first published in 1968. Its sequel "2010: Odyssey Two" came out in 1982. To put "2010" more precisely in its place, it was actually the first sequel among three. The ultimate resolution, if such it may...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jan 24, 2010

Saving the planet through its trees

Negotiators at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen didn't see eye to eye on much last month, but almost everyone agreed on one thing: To protect the planet we need to save its forests.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 17, 2010

Mystery made of a rationalist's nightmares

A blood-soaked woman, clutching a child, stands on a barren moor. This is the image of the ubume of the title. This creature, or figment, who may or may not exist, but who haunts the narrative of this novel, is defined as the visible form of the regrets experienced by a woman who has died during childbirth....
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jan 17, 2010

Some detect a racist theme in 'Avatar'

PHILADELPHIA — Near the end of the hit film "Avatar," the villain snarls at the hero, "How does it feel to betray your own race?" Both men are white — although the hero is inhabiting a blue-skinned, 2.75-meter-tall, long-tailed alien.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 16, 2010

Calm reflections on a turbulent life

In a diminutive wooden house tucked behind the tile-topped white walls surrounding Tenryuji Temple, a World Heritage site in Kyoto's Arashiyama district, lives Henry "Seisen" Mittwer, 91, a Japanese-American Buddhist priest, author, ikebana and ceramic artist.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 15, 2010

Days of being wild

HOLLYWOOD — 'I think 'Where the Wild Things Are' is a fantastic book," says writer-director Spike Jonze.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2010

How do writers come up with this stuff?

Reading Mieko Kanai's stories is an unsettling experience, like swimming underwater, existing in a new and shimmering medium, and coming up for air between stories just to make sure everything is still real — or as real as you remember it. Concurrently, it feels as if one were skating on a slippery...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 8, 2010

' Where the Wild Things Are'

My parents bought me plenty of books as a child, and thinking back on it now, a lot of them — "Gerald McBoing Boing," "Harold and the Purple Crayon" or "A Wrinkle In Time" — were pretty strange. (That might explain a few things.) But one book I never got was Maurice Sendak's "Where The Wild Things...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 3, 2010

Tale of toxic morality

Minamata disease was named after a fishing port on the island of Kyushu where it was discovered in 1956. Chisso Corp. had been dumping methyl mercury directly into the bay since before World War II, but sharp increases in production in the early 1950s increased the flow of contaminating effluent. People...
LIFE / Digital / Japan Pulse
Dec 24, 2009

Trends in Japan 2009: virtual love

In 2009, a lot of hype surrounded human's attachment to virtual and 2-D characters. Was it just hot air, or a sign of things to come?
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 20, 2009

Stunning book speaks volumes about the ravages visited on Tibet

Ten years ago, near the end of 1999, the Chinese author Wang Lixiong received a package from a young woman of Tibetan origin named Tsering Woeser. It contained several hundred black-and-white negatives.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 20, 2009

David Burleigh: Best books of 2009

"The road of excess," said the English poet William Blake, "leads to the palace of wisdom," which might serve as an epigraph for this skillfully assembled, sharp and witty book about the drug-fueled quest of certain American poets for enlightenment in India in the 1960s. The sweetness of the whole experience...
Reader Mail
Nov 29, 2009

Don't pin the fall on globalization

Regarding Ramzy Baroud's Nov. 21 article, "Globalization: a culture killer": I completely disagree with the premise. In my opinion, globalization is the best thing that has happened in global politics and economics for a long time. The development of communications, transportation and information technology...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 25, 2009

Railways weighing merit of installing surveillance cameras

Tokyo-area railways recently started considering the installation of surveillance cameras inside trains to deter groping and other offenses that can occur in crowded situations.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 18, 2009

Let's kensaku — searching the Web in Japanese

Has this ever happened to you? A friend in another country e-mails a plea for help in finding information in Japanese due to their encountering any one of several obstacles. For instance, the operating system or software on the computer they are using might not be able to input Japanese or read it. Or...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 15, 2009

No defense for policy born of prejudice

THE TRAGEDY OF DEMOCRACY: Japanese Confinement in North America, by Greg Robinson. Columbia University Press, 2009, 408 pp., $29.95 (hardcover) This is a superb history about one of the more shameful chapters in U.S. history. Given all the books and articles about the internment of over 120,000 Japanese...
LIFE / Language
Oct 11, 2009

What's in a (Japanese) name?

"How do you do, my name is Saito Ichiro Sama-no-kami Minamoto-no-Ason Tadayoshi."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 11, 2009

Lessons of total devotion and high cruelty

LONG ROAD HOME: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor, by Kim Yong (with Kim Suk Young). Columbia University Press, 2009, 168 pp., $24.50 (hardcover) The author of this excruciating memoir led an unquestioning life in North Korea until one of the routine checks experienced by the citizens of that...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 11, 2009

Musical hails a messenger killed for exposing Japan's dread trinity

When the Special Higher Police, the dreaded Tokko, returned his body to his mother and brother, it was hard to believe their official report that he had died of "a heart attack."
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Sep 29, 2009

Murakami: Titan of postwar literature

Haruki Murakami is probably the most internationally acclaimed and influential contemporary Japanese author alive today. Over a career spanning 30 years, he has illustrated the apathy and ennui enveloping postwar Japan through sometimes wildly fantastic storytelling with surreal twists and turns, sprinkled...
Reader Mail
Sep 24, 2009

Main cause of Japan's stagnation

There are many things wrong with Guy Sorman's Sept. 18 article, "Japan's harmonious drift." Let me pick some of them apart. First is the notion that "working less" is the main cause of Japan's economic stagnation. If that were the cause, I'd presume the French economy should have deteriorated even further...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Sep 20, 2009

U.K. birders' fair shows we can all help save even LBJs

"Life works by making lots and lots of different kinds of living things, and every one we lose impoverishes us and the world. Every single species, obscure or common, funny or dull, gorgeous or LBJ [the bird-watchers' abbreviation for "Little Brown Job"], is a strand in the web of life: every time we...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Sep 20, 2009

U.K. birders' fair shows we can all help save even LBJs

"Life works by making lots and lots of different kinds of living things, and every one we lose impoverishes us and the world. Every single species, obscure or common, funny or dull, gorgeous or LBJ [the bird-watchers' abbreviation for "Little Brown Job"], is a strand in the web of life: every time we...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 6, 2009

Money: the root of all optimism

A New Development Model for Japan: Selected Essays 2000-2008 by Akira Kojima. The Japan Journal, 2009, 362 pp., ¥2,625 (cloth) "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," wrote Charles Dickens in the opening passage of his famous novel "A Tale of Two Cities." Although written 150 years ago,...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 23, 2009

Rich material found in penury

It is 1995, that defining year of the Kobe earthquake, the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, the year a man in Osaka confesses to dismembering the bodies of three women at his home in Osaka; the year a Buddhist priest is arrested for raping over 100 women. The times are out of joint, and the author...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 18, 2009

Classics' artsy paperback jacket makeovers a hit

A young "idol" with paperback in hand standing in a high school classroom isn't what one would expect to see on the cover of Natsume Soseki's literary classic "Botchan."
CULTURE / Books
Jul 26, 2009

A peaceful challenge against globalization

London's famous Ritz Hotel boarded its windows, construction sites were cleared of rubble and bankers were warned to stay home. The event was the April 2009 meeting of the Group of 20, and no effort was spared to protect the visiting dignitaries — and financial district — from demonstrations by anti-...

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