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BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Dec 22, 2013

Rental video stores ponder their reason for existing

DVDs still may be the cheapest, and easiest, way to watch videos at home.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 20, 2013

Japan Inc. builds mountain of cash

Japanese companies' cash holdings rose to a record last quarter, highlighting Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's struggle to spur the investment and wage increases needed to end a 15-year deflationary malaise.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Dec 18, 2013

AIJ's Asakawa gets 15 years for huge pension fund fraud

Kau00adzuu00adhiu00adko Asau00adkau00adwa, former president of AIJ Investment Advisors Co., is sentenced 15 years in prison for orchestrating a high-profile fraud case that cost his pension fund clients some u00a524.8 billion.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 17, 2013

Pyongyang could be in store for destabilization

The defenestration of Jang Song Thaek shows that no longer can even Pyongyang's putative second in command expect to be pensioned off to some posh inconsequential place once his services are no longer needed.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 16, 2013

Abe shows totalitarian bent

The president of a Japanese university classifies the Abe administration as neither conservative nor liberal. Instead, he calls it 'totalitarian' and suggests that Japan is drifting away from European ideals based on democracy and individualism.
LIFE / Language / COMMUNICATION CUES
Dec 15, 2013

Unordered merchandise scam

The joint investigation headquarters of four prefectures, including Saitama, arrested 11 people on the 30th, including former employees of Kenbi Food, a health supplement company, for their involvement in a false-order swindle.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 13, 2013

Honda says profit will determine pay

Honda Motor Co. Executive Vice President Tetsuo Iwamura said the automaker will set pay based on reaching profitability targets rather than government directives on how fast to increase compensation.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LABOR PAINS
Dec 11, 2013

The year in labor: the Top 5 pains of 2013

For Japan's workers, the last 12 months have been a mixed bag. The Top 5 Labor Pains of 2013 will focus on what really shook things up in terms of labor relations and employment law.
EDITORIALS
Dec 11, 2013

Japan's future path with India

The Abe administration appears inclined to use Japan's relationship with India for expediency — as a means of checking China — when it should be cultivating longer-range cooperative ties.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 9, 2013

The revival of a Great Depression-era retread

Paul Krugman and other economists now advocate the kinds of things Keynesians typically promote to stabilize the economy during a recession to become a permanent part of the U.S. fiscal architecture.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy
Dec 9, 2013

Abe gets Toyota, Hitachi help in push for wage gains

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged companies to increase wages faster than gains in the cost of living to break the legacy of 15 years of deflation, and praised Toyota Motor Corp. and Hitachi Ltd. for pledging to help.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 6, 2013

Six reasons to worry about the Iran nuclear deal

The interim nuclear agreement between the Great Powers and Iran is creating a lot of anxiety for people who support the deal, because not much proof has been offered to suggest that it will actually work.
Japan Times
WORLD
Dec 5, 2013

NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide, Snowden documents show

The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their relationships —...
Japan Times
JAPAN / GENERATIONAL CHANGE
Dec 1, 2013

Crusader for social activism brings Change.org to Japan

The woman who brought Change.org to Japan says the online petition platform is just the ticket to get the normally reticent Japanese to become more active in achieving social change.
EDITORIALS
Nov 30, 2013

Employees temper claims to holidays

The government's plan to make sure full-time regular employees take their paid holidays has apparently failed. A survey shows that workers claimed even fewer holidays in 2012 than they did in 2011.
Events / KANSAI: WHO & WHAT
Nov 29, 2013

Free consultations for foreigners in Wakayama

Non-Japanese people in Wakayama can receive information and advice for free from specialists covering a variety of problems and other needs.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / TRAVEL INSIDER
Nov 26, 2013

Air France's new chef; SAS Narita lounges a plus; AirAsia to fly to Nagoya

Air France's new chef
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 25, 2013

U.S. pushing new trade treaties at expense of national sovereignty

New trade treaties being pushed by the United States undermine national sovereignty.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 23, 2013

Rookie trio make for a leadership deficit in East Asia

With three new leaders taking power over the past year — in Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing (and a fourth in Pyongyang two years ago) — 2013 was never likely to be a banner year for regional diplomacy. But I didn't expect it to get quite this bad.
WORLD
Nov 23, 2013

Japan's yakuza woes return to the silver screen

Hollywood has long fetishized Japanese gangsters, with their full-body tattoos, missing pinkies and harems of buxom groupies. Ever since Sydney Pollack's "The Yakuza" in 1974, the colorful mafiosi have provided regular fodder for directors including Ridley Scott and Quentin Tarantino.
Japan Times
WORLD
Nov 23, 2013

ACLU seeks termination of NSA's call-records program

Civil liberties advocates on Friday asked a federal court in New York to end the National Security Agency counterterrorism program that collects data on billions of phone calls by Americans, arguing that it violates the Constitution and was not authorized by Congress.

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