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Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jan 25, 2013

Mafia on Sicily sees gold in going green

Inside a midnight-blue BMW, a Sicilian entrepreneur delivered his pitch to the accused Mafia boss. A new business was blowing into Italy that could spin wind and sunlight into gold, ensuring the future of the Earth as well as the Cosa Nostra: renewable energy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 23, 2013

Miho Hazama starts a journey

It's believed that time spent living abroad can be a journey of self-discovery, and for Miho Hazama that has certainly been the case. Moving to New York to study for a master's degree in jazz composition at the Manhattan School of Music (MSM) was an experience that led to the recording of her debut,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 23, 2013

Kim's second test is Xi's first

North Korea's new supreme leader Kim Jong Un conducted two missile tests last year. The first, in April, failed. The second, in December, was by all accounts a huge success. But it was not just a test of North Korea's ability to put an object into space. Kim's second test was also the first test of the...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 23, 2013

DoCoMo pins hopes on a glitzy spring lineup

NTT DoCoMo Inc. on Tuesday unveiled its new products for the spring, vowing to catch up with rival carriers by releasing high-spec gadgets and promoting its shopping and content-related services.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 22, 2013

'Abenomics' out of the gate

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would do well to consult professor Noriko Hama of Doshisha University. Asked by The Japan Times what the country needs, she replied in feisty fashion: "The three things Japan should do in 2013 are raise wages, raise interest rates — and cut the crap."
Japan Times
WORLD
Jan 21, 2013

U.S. set to close another source of cash for Iran

Ever since European seaports closed their gates to Iranian oil tankers last summer, Iran has looked to the East to keep its economy afloat. Countries such as China, India and South Korea — some of them critics of Western sanctions — have offered Iran a lifeline of reliable markets and much-needed...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 21, 2013

Panama Canal expansion spurs race to fit supersized ships

This is a story about big, and how one of the biggest construction projects in the world, the remaking of the Panama Canal, will let bigger boats sail into deeper harbors, where authorities are spending billions dredging channels, blasting tunnels and buying cranes from China the size of 14-story buildings...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jan 19, 2013

Zen and the cross-cultural art of tree-climbing

In the upstairs meeting room of a camping lodge in Komagane, Nagano Prefecture, two women and about 20 men walked slowly and intently in circles one rainy day last November. At the front of the room, a weathered and wiry Englishman intoned the sort of instructions a yoga aficionado would find familiar....
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 17, 2013

Moscow's not-so-friendly environmental quirks

Moscow, they say, "wasn't built at one go" — in contrast to St. Petersburg, which emerged laid out, as if by magic, in strict conformity to Peter the Great's plan — and it has been growing chaotically for more than 800 years on seven gently sloping hills surrounding the river of the same name.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 17, 2013

Patti Smith hopes 2013 is about rebuilding

By the time you read this, Patti Smith will have been in Japan for nearly a week. The iconic poet, author, painter and "Godmother of Punk" hasn't yet played a gig with her band; that will come later. First, Smith is reconnecting with a country with which her affinity runs deep.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 14, 2013

Sign of the Financial Times: Will it sell independence?

Too many years ago, this young reporter was about to move from one of Britain's biggest newspaper groups to a paper with a daily sale of fewer than 200,000 copies. A hard-bitten veteran, who had spent years reporting for the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph pleaded with me over farewell drinks not...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 14, 2013

Abe's opportunity to remake Indo-Japanese ties

With the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) winning a landslide in Japanese parliamentary elections and Shinzo Abe assuming the office of prime minister in Japan for the second time, India-Japan ties have entered a new phase.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jan 11, 2013

Overseas restaurants set up shop in Japan

Call it the Pancake Revolution.
CULTURE / Music / JAZZ NOTES
Jan 10, 2013

Building off that four-letter word — 'jazz'

Something I've noticed recently when browsing the jazz sections of record shops is the proliferation of sub-genres among the Japanese artists. Just hearing the names is enough to get a fan excited about the apparent explosion of creativity.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 9, 2013

India's rapid rise puts women at risk

For two decades, the West has been cheering India's rise. But the nation's economic and political changes have caused new cultural conflicts, a dynamic that has become all too obvious after the brutal, and eventually fatal, rape of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi last month.
EDITORIALS
Jan 6, 2013

Happiest people in the world

Japan may have a relatively high standard of living and the longest life expectancy in the world, but it does not have the happiest people. According to a new Gallup poll of 148 countries, Japan ranks somewhere in the middle of world happiness levels. The recent poll showed just how little economic levels...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 6, 2013

Abe returns to 'retrieve' Japan from its history — or will he just repeat it?

Way back in the heady 1960s, Japan was one big Cathedral of Optimism, and I found myself among a people who believed their country was finally on that road laid out before them in the post-feudal Meiji Era (1868-1912) to "catch up with and overtake" the West. And indeed, by the end of the decade Japan's...
BUSINESS
Jan 3, 2013

Abe hoopla aside, key economic challenges loom

Stocks are up, the yen is easing and there is a new prime minister pledging to splash trillions of yen to breathe life into the country's moribund economy: Last year ended on a high note for Japan Inc., and 2013 looks even more promising for some.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 3, 2013

Kitaro taps into Native American culture

"Kitaro and I were destined to meet each other," Dennis Banks tells The Japan Times. "Our beliefs are similar: Mother Earth, who we are ... we are all the children of this Earth."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics / CABINET INTERVIEW
Jan 1, 2013

NRA has final reactor say-so: Motegi

No matter what, no reactor will be restarted unless the Nuclear Regulation Authority has confirmed its safety, according to new trade and industry minster Toshimitsu Motegi.
JAPAN
Dec 29, 2012

Ozawa, Diet cohorts keep party, subsidy, leave Shiga Gov. Kada with Nippon Mirai name only

The shotgun political marriage between Shiga Gov. Yukiko Kada and Diet veteran Ichiro Ozawa was formally annulled Friday night, with both sides promising to respect and work with each other where possible, and with Kada's future in doubt.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Dec 26, 2012

2012 in tech — and what it means for the year ahead

In the world of technology, the past year has seen a changing of the guard in almost every sector. Personal computers, mobile devices, gaming and Internet services have all seen incredible developments, with new challengers taking the place of old incumbents. As we move into the new year, we'll meet...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 24, 2012

Hard questions about the U.S. nuclear arsenal

We are rightly mourning the horrific killings in Newtown, Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School and discussing the threats posed by semiautomatic rifles.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 22, 2012

'Abenomics' — a dangerous policy of print and spend

The "landslide" victory of Shinzo Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party was much less than it seemed. The party won only 43 percent of the popular vote in the constituencies and a mere 28 percent in the proportional representational seats.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Dec 22, 2012

Forty years on, why we're still living in the moon's shadow

On Dec. 19,1972, a final sonic boom above the South Pacific signaled the end of the Apollo program, as a tiny space capsule burst back through the blue sky. On board were the last three astronauts to visit the moon on Apollo 17. Riding home with them was the precious negative of a photograph that would...

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo