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Reader Mail
May 31, 2009

Adult manga has 50-year history

The May 26 article " 'Manga': heart of pop culture" has to be one of the most poorly researched articles I've ever had the misfortune to read in The Japan Times. The Japanese comic magazine industry's targeting of the adult audience has nearly 50 years of history. Titles targeting salarymen are published...
CULTURE / Books
May 31, 2009

The violence specialists of Japanese politics

Japanese voters are frustrated because even if they throw the bums out of office, they know the opposition is much the same. These days money is the root of political scandals and influence buying, but here we examine how violence became institutionalized in Japan's politics from the first parliamentary...
COMMUNITY
May 30, 2009

Writer answers ceaseless call for stimulation

Mark Schreiber was the first foreign writer in Japan to cover the wildly popular phenomenon of capsule hotels.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 29, 2009

Classical music lovers get set for Matsumoto

"Sending out high-quality Western classical music from Japan" was the goal for renowned cellist and conductor Hideo Saito (1902-74), who studied in Germany. In 1955, he cofounded the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo, where he devoted the latter half of his life to music education and taught many...
LIFE
May 24, 2009

City's new gateway to worlds apart

When I was walking to Osanbashi Pier, I noticed that the asphalt road changed to a wooden deck leading me up a slope to a grassy hilltop.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
May 24, 2009

Students share hopes for nation's future environment

Each year on May 5, Japan celebrates Children's Day with waves of young families flooding local parks, playgrounds and amusement centers.
Japan Times
LIFE
May 24, 2009

The beat goes on in Japan's jazz hub

As one of Japan's longest-standing maritime gateways to the world, Yokohama has absorbed many cultures from the West over the last 150 years — not least its abiding love of jazz.
LIFE
May 24, 2009

Traders' plans pay off in Motomachi

What was supposed to be a day spent savoring the delights of Motomachi Shopping Street for our Timeout Yokohama feature soon took on the nature of a quest.
JAPAN
May 23, 2009

Internet eyed as path to clean politics

The Nishimatsu Construction Co. fundraising scandal is shaking up the political landscape, with some lawmakers calling for removing businesses from the fundraising picture in favor of individual donations.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 22, 2009

Nesting instinct takes hold in recession

Already a devoted online shopper, 34-year-old office worker Yumiko Tamagawa is finding even more reasons to shop from home thanks to the recession.
JAPAN
May 21, 2009

Signs in North point to Kim's third son being heir

Students in North Korea are singing songs in praise of Kim Jong Il's third son and potential successor, Kim Jong Un, a recently obtained report said, indicating that a full-scale power shift may be on as news of the North Korean leader's ailing health fuels speculation over who will lead the reclusive...
COMMENTARY / World
May 21, 2009

Can India's Congress deliver?

LONDON — Yet again, India's voters confounded the pundits and comfortably returned the Congress party alliance to power. Now the question is whether leader Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and their colleagues can return the compliment and get to grips with the immense problems and the enormous...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 19, 2009

IC you: bugging the alien

When the Japanese government first issued alien registration cards (aka gaijin cards) in 1952, it had one basic aim in mind: to track "foreigners" (at that time, mostly Korean and Taiwanese stripped of Japanese colonial citizenship) who decided to stay in postwar Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
May 19, 2009

Crony capitalism has taken root in America

BUENOS AIRES — For 20 years, Americans have denounced the "crony capitalism" of Third World countries, especially in Asia. But, just as those regions have been improving their public and corporate governance — Hong Kong just witnessed a breakthrough court decision against a telecom tycoon who is...
CULTURE / Books
May 17, 2009

Casting from which 'Audition'?

Ten years after the release of Takashi Miike's film of the novel, Ryu Murakami's "Audition (Odishon)" has finally been translated into English. Aoyama, a fortysomething documentary maker, decides it is about time he remarried. His beautiful, talented and understanding wife Ryoko has been dead for seven...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 16, 2009

Bridge to nowhere

I admit I like taking a boat to work. I used to sail to the mainland when I was working at the university but nowadays I'm too busy for the two-hour sail to the mainland. These days when I go off the island, I take the 40-minute ferry.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
May 15, 2009

Culinary exchanges a la Ducasse, Pan Pacific packages and wine party at Roti

Food-culture collaboration
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
May 15, 2009

Japan embraces the big cheese

Ask the experts what makes a good cheese, and at some point the conversation is going to get down to grass. After all, cheese comes from milk, and the best milk comes from animals raised on grass.
Reader Mail
May 14, 2009

Gratitude for a sense of obligation

Though tongue in cheek, Amy Chavez's May 2 article, " A nation of outstanding debts," shows one of the more delightful characteristics of Japanese culture — and thank the Lord for it. Isn't it wonderful to feel sincere gratitude for even the smallest gesture of sympathy proffered by someone else?
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
May 12, 2009

The Calderon saga: reader responses

Readers' responses to David McNeill's April 14 Zeit Gist article, "A battle for Japan's future," on the Calderon case:
COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2009

Petty torture rules played on sense of duty

PARIS — The top-secret memorandums released by the Obama administration concerning torture practices in CIA prisons shed new light on a fundamental question: How is it that people acting in the name of the United States government could so easily accept the idea of torturing detainees in their charge?...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 9, 2009

It's the season of karaoke sailing

Spring on Shiraishi Island means yachts. All kinds of yachts stop by our island — from 6.5-meter day sailers to 15-meter cruisers that can sleep eight people.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
May 8, 2009

Dance for the green at heart

The leading Portuguese dance troop Kamusuna Ballet Company, led by artistic director/ choreographer Cesar Augusto Moniz, are about to bring their vibrant exploration of contemporary themes through dance to Tokyo audiences.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 6, 2009

NPO marks 30 years of refugee aid

In May 2005, Jane Best, president of Refugees International Japan, visited a refugee camp in Tanzania and met people who had fled conflicts in neighboring countries such as Rwanda, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 3, 2009

It's tough times for type — but too soon to write off newspapers yet

Back in the early 1990s, my wife, children and I were visiting my in-laws when one of my daughters, then aged 6, pointed to something on the table and exclaimed, "Daddy, what's that?"
CULTURE / Books
May 3, 2009

Beijing: history of a forbidding city

Reviewed by Stephen Mansfield Ancient Chinese history is as inseparable from myth as today's official retelling of the past is indivisible from propaganda. In "Beijing: The Biography of a City," Jonathan Clements makes an admirable job of disentangling truth from elaboration, finding historical foundations...

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan