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EDITORIALS
Sep 19, 2011

Advancing to preschool care

As part of its policy to support children and child-rearing families, the Democratic Party of Japan government is pushing the idea of integrating yochi-en (kindergartens), which are for the education of preschoolers, and hoiku-jo (day-care facilities for children).
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Sep 16, 2011

Expect tons of surprises at Tokyo Game Show

For gamers, this weekend will feel like Christmas. Tokyo Game Show (TGS), Japan's biggest gaming event, began Thursday at Chiba's Makuhari Messe convention center and will continue through Sept. 18 (on Saturday and Sunday it will be open to the public). More than 140 exhibitors are on hand, off-site...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 8, 2011

America's post-industrial society going bust

Of all the lies that the American people have been told the past four decades, the biggest one may be this: We'll all come out ahead in the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial society.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 8, 2011

Japan and America share their acting skills

Next year will mark the New York premiere performances of a new collaborative project whose organizers hope will spur a revolution in the film and theater industries of Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 4, 2011

Alfons Deeken: Priest-philosopher makes death his life's work

On Friday, July 22, as the stifling heat and humidity of summer relented for just a fleeting few days, hundreds of people filled a hall at Enkakuji Temple in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, to listen to a lecture by philosophy scholar Alfons Deeken.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 1, 2011

Libya's next fight: the West

At a press conference in Tripoli on Aug. 26, a statement read aloud by top Libyan rebel commander Abdel Hakim Belhadj was reassuring. Just a few months ago, disorganized and leaderless rebel fighters seemed to have little chance at ousting Libyan dictator Moammar Ghadhafi and his unruly sons.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 1, 2011

Kusama: Quite dotty, but very avant-garde

Yayoi Kusama's art fully emerged in a big way when she moved from Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, to New York in 1959. Despite the obstacles — she suffered from mental problems and was an unknown Japanese female artist in a milieu dominated by white male artists and critics — by the second half of...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 30, 2011

'Protection racket' for Net domain names

The Internet's domain-name system (DNS) was formalized in the late 1990s by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). I was ICANN's founding chairman, and we more or less followed the rules of trademarks, with an overlay of "first come, first served."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 26, 2011

Tokyo Jazz Festival plays to a plethora of tastes

Jazz is always progressing. When the first jazz cafes began appearing in Yokohama around 100 years ago, nobody could have imagined the world they'd be a part of. Bebop and blues, tap dancers and turntables — the essential ingredients of the genre have evolved, and that is the main focus of the Tokyo...
JAPAN / History
Aug 14, 2011

Film mines rich seams of history

Hiroko Kumagai will never forget the day in 1998 when she first stepped inside the red-brick building at the entrance to the closed and shuttered Miyahara shaft in the Miike coal mine in Omuta, Fukuoka Prefecture.
LIFE
Jul 31, 2011

Most unlikely bedfellows

"How wonderful! How marvelous! From here to the southeast is what the Westerners call the Pacific Ocean and the American states! They must be very close!" — Watanabe Kazan, artist and samurai, in a diary recording a sojourn in Enoshima, an island off Kamakura in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 28, 2011

Winning the transition to democracy

Is the Arab Spring turning into a gloomy autumn? With brutal crackdowns in Syria, a bloody civil war in Libya, and Yemen teetering on the brink of chaos, the number of skeptics is growing. Although Egypt and Tunisia's prodemocracy movements achieved rapid regime change, uncertainties remain in those...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 25, 2011

Challenge to India's nuclear trade persists as suppliers group adds tighter guidelines

At the end of the second annual Indo-U.S. Strategic Dialogue held in New Delhi, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it clear that there were "issues" that had to be resolved by India and the United States in the civil nuclear field. She did not go into specifics.
COMMENTARY
Jul 23, 2011

Why Mumbai was attacked

It is not a mere coincidence that Mumbai's commercial hub has repeatedly been struck by terrorists since 1993. Mumbai has become the favored target because the terrorist aim is to undermine India's booming economy and its status as a rising power by rattling foreign investors and driving away tourists....
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jul 12, 2011

Bye-bye to the gaijin card, welcome to the Juki Net in '12

Reader JG is concerned about the changes to the Immigration Law that were passed in 2009 and are scheduled for implementation in July 2012.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Jul 8, 2011

Live from Tokyo, it's Saturday Night!

Ladies and gentlemen, it's Saturday Night Live Japan!
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BY THE GLASS
Jul 8, 2011

Kusuda makes NZ wine his own way

Pinot Noir is one of the world's most challenging grapes: Sensitive to frost and rot, this thin-skinned varietal really tests the limits of a winemaker's skill. But tenacious winemaker Hiroyuki Kusuda wouldn't have it any other way. This Japanese national has fought against the odds to set up his own...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 3, 2011

Kotaro Horiuchi: A life spent in uncharted waters of boat design

Considering the current state of Japan's economy, it's remarkable to recall that 60 years ago there were hundreds of companies both old and new jockeying restlessly to fill the vacuum left after almost all the nation's cities were heavily bombed in World War II — jockeying, that is, with the kind of...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 26, 2011

Hearn the Westerm misfit finally found himself at home in Meiji Japan

What does it mean to be an expatriate, particularly when you feel more at home and assimilated in an adopted country than in your own?
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 23, 2011

DPJ tacks on 70 days to avert Diet recess

The Diet session was extended by 70 days Wednesday, giving Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his Democratic Party of Japan some breathing room as they try to enact several key bills by the end of August.
JAPAN
Jun 21, 2011

Reconstruction agency bill passed

A basic law for reconstructing the Tohoku region, including plans to form a new agency dedicated to this task, cleared the Diet Monday, more than three months after the megaquake and tsunami calamity.
EDITORIALS
Jun 21, 2011

Mr. Gates' farewell

It is an open question whether United States Secretary of Defense Robert Gates would have been as blunt in his criticism of NATO's European members in a speech on June 10 if he was not stepping down. He warned that U.S. patience and its bankroll are running thin. Mr. Gates' words need to be heard by...
JAPAN
Jun 17, 2011

Don't count Ozawa out until he is

Over the decades he's been dubbed the "shadow shogun," "the destroyer" and "the backroom fixer" for his powerful influence in the political arena and penchant for shaking up governments with his "strong hand."
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Jun 13, 2011

More shopping refugees: Residents of planned community at the mercy of bureaucratic prerogatives

Elderly residents of a corner of Chiba New Town have been left without a supermarket to shop in.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jun 7, 2011

'Flyjin,' 'sheeple,' angry people: readers' views

Debito Arudou's May 3 Just Be Cause column, headlined " Better to be branded a 'flyjin' than a man of the 'sheeple,'" provoked an online skirmish between contributors to the columnist's blog, Debito.org, and its self-proclaimed "debunker" site. Here are just some of the mails received at The Japan Times...

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