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Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 4, 2014

Chef lures new crowdfunding chief

Osamu Ito, a former Morgan Stanley MUFG Securities Co. banker, is setting up a crowdfunding company that will raise money online to invest in startups, including a Michelin-starred chef's "bento" business.
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 4, 2014

Panasonic profit beats analyst estimates

Panasonic Corp. posted third-quarter profit that beat analysts' estimates as the television maker stops making plasma sets to speed up reforms and recover from back-to-back annual losses.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 3, 2014

Uphold basic living standards

To attain a national minimum for social welfare, some urge introducing a basic income — provision of a fixed sum of money to each citizen — to replace social security, which covers only needy people.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 3, 2014

Torture happens when people are your export

It's simply easier for leaders of some countries to export their own people abroad and count the money than to take on vested interests and generate opportunities at home.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy
Feb 3, 2014

Workers stumble while 'Abenomics' soars

Japanese stocks and profits are soaring under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's push to revive the economy. Even shop prices are up, a key step after years of deflation kept pocketbooks shut tight. None of that matters to Shuzo Matsui.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Feb 3, 2014

Power companies offsetting reactor closures by hiking electricity rates

Power utilities, including Tokyo Electric Power Co., leaned on customer rate hikes to boost their financial performances in the first nine months of the business year as idled nuclear plants kept fuel costs high.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2014

Ministry official knocks down barriers to overseas study

The success of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's effort to internationalize Japan might depend on a young entrepreneur who runs his own educational business.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 2, 2014

Should we be scared by the rise of Zuck?

On Tuesday, Facebook will turn 10 years old. It has 1.23 billion users. Ponder those two facts for a moment. A company that did not exist 10 years ago now has as many users as India has people.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Jan 31, 2014

Three decades on, Tokyo bluesman is still rambling

'You can't go home again,' but you can take a little bit of home with you wherever you roam. 'Rambling' Steve Gardner does; a Mississippi roots and bluesman based in Tokyo, Gardner travels the world making music and giving seminars about musical history.
EDITORIALS
Jan 30, 2014

Calling Abe to account

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito should refrain from ramrodding their proposals through the Diet as they did with the state state secrets bill during the recent extradordinary Diet session.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 30, 2014

Troubled Thailand is only the tip of Asia's iceberg

Thailand may offer the clearest example of how the U.S. Federal Reserve's ultralow interest rates have helped cover up deep-seated structural problems in emerging markets.Officials throughout Asia will regret ignoring the near suicidal course they're on.
BUSINESS / Economy
Jan 30, 2014

Japan Inc. profit boom masks fading export gains from yen

Soaring profits among Japanese manufacturers are masking weakness in exports as the yen's slide against the dollar fails to deliver the boost seen after previous bouts of currency depreciation.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jan 28, 2014

New dawn breaking over Japan

Writing from Davos, Switzerland, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says it is not twilight, but a new dawn, that is breaking over Japan, thanks to his administration's overcoming the notion that certain reforms could never be carried out.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 28, 2014

Benjamin Bernanke's triumph — and defeat

In the initial days of the 2008-09 financial crisis, Ben Bernanke, the outgoing U.S. Federal Reserce chairm, mobilized the Fed as the lender of last resort and, arguably, averted a second Great Depression. His efforts to kick-start the economy by keeping short-term interest rates low and by massive bond-buying were less successful.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jan 27, 2014

A death in detention in Tokyo and a bitter belated farewell

What was the back story to this Ghanaian's death from pneumonia? A pre-existing condition? Or something the immigration authorities wanted hidden? Without an autopsy, there would be no answers to these gnawing questions. We already knew all we would ever know.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jan 27, 2014

Lawson, Suntory execs to join casino push

Business leaders, including top executives at Lawson Inc. and Suntory Holdings Ltd., are joining forces to back the legalization of casinos in Japan, a proposal that could open up what is estimated to be the world's second- largest gaming market.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jan 26, 2014

'Masters' and 'dilettantes': The murky world of hit men in Britain

They are classified as novices, journeymen, dilettantes or masters. They are Britain's hit men — killers who ply their deadly trade in return for cash, and who for the first time have become the subject of a major academic study.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 25, 2014

Silence Once Begun

If you've ever thought book reviewing was a questionable business — so opinionated! so subjective! — this may be the review to prove you right.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jan 24, 2014

Sony expected to lower profit outlook again

Nintendo Co. shocked investors last week by lowering its profit forecast for the year. Analysts are concerned Sony Corp. could be next.
LIFE / Digital
Jan 23, 2014

Kid-friendly app cat gets its claws into your iWallet

It's 4.30 on a gloomy winter's afternoon. I'm sitting with my grandson having one of those conversations in which grandsons explain complicated stuff to their grandads. He is 4 years old, omniscient in the way that 4-year-olds are, and tolerant of my ignorance of important matters.
Japan Times
JAPAN / DAVOS SPECIAL 2014
Jan 23, 2014

Reshaping Japan's next decade

(Publicity)
EDITORIALS
Jan 20, 2014

Cheaper yen demands caution

The yen's decline under the watch of the Abe administration has contributed to the popularity of his economic policy, but a furthering weakening would have disadvantages.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 20, 2014

Fragmented Asian loyalties

Across Asia, the authority of older political, economic and military elites is being challenged and often overthrown. Fresh social networks and NGO-style activism are defining an alternative way of doing politics.

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic