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Reader Mail
Feb 2, 2012

Ability to deal with uncertainty

Sawa Takamitsu, in his Jan. 24 article "More crucial than English," makes a number of interesting points that have to do with research budgets and even the involvement of business people in deciding the course of studies at Japanese universities. While I agree with everything the author says regarding...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 1, 2012

Hamilton: U.K. has lost sight of the public benefits of higher education

Professor Andrew Hamilton became the first vice chancellor of Oxford never to have been educated at the university when he took the job in 2009. He is English, educated at Exeter University and Cambridge, but for the previous 28 years had lived in America, the last 13 of them at Yale University, as professor...
Reader Mail
Jan 29, 2012

Fall enrollment will make waves

Regarding the Jan. 19 Kyodo article "Todai panel recommends fall enrollment (within five years)": I think this reform will have good effects on Japan. The movement toward fall enrollment by one of Japan's most prestigious universities will influence other institutions and motivate them to offer classes...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 28, 2012

Kyoto-based Italian physicist blazes trail for foreign academics

Professor Giuseppe Pezzotti, 51, a materials scientist at Kyoto Institute of Technology, effortlessly switches from a newspaper interview in English to discuss research collaboration with a colleague in fluent Japanese. Even sartorially, he straddles East and West: While his torso is clad in button-down...
Reader Mail
Jan 22, 2012

Interesting take on enrollment

Since Dipak Basu is an economics professor, I believe that he owes us a more detailed explanation of his assertion, in his Jan. 19 letter, "Unfair criticisms of education," that the "number of students in the universities have not declined" as predicted by those who are influenced by demographic factors...
Reader Mail
Jan 15, 2012

Lack of motivation for studying

Shiga University President Takamitsu Sawa's Dec. 19 article, "Motivation for college study," leads me to believe that he missed the point of his own article. Japanese students, generally speaking, are not motivated to attend college abroad mainly because they are not motivated to study or encouraged...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 10, 2012

International education a triple-A investment in your child's — and Japan's — future

Bicultural families are on the rise in Japan. In 1970, less than 6,000 "international marriages" — where one partner is non-Japanese — were registered, or 0.5 percent of the total. In 2000, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare reported that one in 22, or 4.5 percent, of all marriages that year...
Japan Times
JAPAN / NUCLEAR AWAKENING
Jan 6, 2012

Domestic robots failed to ride to rescue after No. 1 plant blew

After the March 11 tsunami slammed into the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant and wrecked three reactors, many people expected the nation's cutting-edge robotic technologies to come to the rescue.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Nov 27, 2011

Demand change: an open letter to Japan's rising generations

If you're like my 17-year-old, then you probably already know just about everything there is to know, and reading this column you'll likely just say: "Yeah, right, whatever," or "So?"
Reader Mail
Nov 20, 2011

For whom the student toils

This is an open letter to education minister Masaharu Nakagawa:
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 13, 2011

Will trickle-down class discrimination rob Britain of what's so great?

Britain may be broken, but London is hot. A recent trip to the city exhilarated me.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 20, 2011

Japanese arts course opens door to English speakers

There is a small slither of land in Tokyo's Kita-Aoyama district that is wedged between the rolling grounds of the grand, neo-Baroque-style Akasaka Palace state guesthouse and the equally expansive, tree-lined grounds of the granite-constructed Meiji Memorial Picture Gallery. Given the nature of the...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CABINET INTERVIEW
Sep 24, 2011

Society must value overseas study: Nakagawa

Young Japanese shouldn't be blamed for not studying abroad, but society needs to change so they can attend universities overseas without having to worry about their careers after they return, education minister Masaharu Nakagawa said.
COMMENTARY
Aug 16, 2011

Too much local sovereignty?

Since the Democratic Party of Japan came to power in September 2009, the word "chiho bunken" (devolution) has been replaced by the new expression "chiiki shuken" (local sovereignty).
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2011

Are sanctions helping to build Iran's bomb?

For years it was assumed that economic sanctions and diplomacy would produce a pliable negotiating partner in Iran. But Iran's truculence has effectively undermined the once-popular notion, while a degree of confusion and consternation has gripped the international community. The often-unstated hope...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 14, 2011

Europe wields influence in the Arab Spring

Until now, and with few exceptions, the West has nurtured two distinct communities of foreign-policy specialists: the development community and the democratic community.
JAPAN
May 28, 2011

Experts: Leave radiation checks to us

Measuring radiation levels accurately is difficult for laypersons and they shouldn't panic if their devices show much higher levels than the figures announced by the government, radiation experts say.
EDITORIALS
May 16, 2011

Volunteer force declines

During the Golden Week holidays from April 28 to May 8, a total of some 78,000 volunteers worked in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, which were devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, according to "disaster volunteer centers" set up by local governments in the prefectures.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
May 3, 2011

Better to be branded a 'flyjin' than a man of the 'sheeple'

The past two months have been uncomfortable for Japan, and for the country's foreign residents. Non-Japanese (NJ) have been bashed in the media, unreservedly and undeservedly, as deserters in the face of disaster.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 9, 2011

Entrepreneur: Turbulent times breed innovation

Growing up in California in the 1970s as the child of issei, William H. Saito recalls how his father imported math textbooks from Japan and insisted he study them extra hard to gain an edge over others.
BASKETBALL
Mar 6, 2011

Sojourner says JBL superiority just a myth

The ongoing debate about how to improve Japan's basketball, from the elementary school level to the professional ranks, has produced a number of different viewpoints. The one thing that most people agree on is that the current approach isn't working to create a powerful national team and a number of...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Mar 6, 2011

Tadao Sato: 'Japan's single finest film critic'

Tadao Sato laughed an embarrassed laugh as he recalled that three years ago, in London, he had been referred to as a "legend." Though adding to his discomfort, I had to admit that in my university days I had thought of him in the same way. And I still do.
EDITORIALS
Mar 2, 2011

New way of cheating

Somebody posted questions in Kyoto University's Feb. 25 and 26 entrance exams on an Internet site and third persons gave answers while the exam was going on. A similar thing also happened during the entrance exams of Doshisha, Rikkyo and Waseda universities. Cheating is suspected. What has happened undermines...
EDITORIALS
Feb 20, 2011

Adaptation to globalization

Recently there has been much debate in Japan over whether the "Galapagos syndrome" — development in splendid isolation from the rest of the world — fits Japan. Galapago-ists argue that Japan should embrace its falling position in the world, adjust to diminished expectations, and find contentment...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 19, 2011

Monk brings global view to Buddhism

At some point or another, a child nibbles at the world of questions: "Why are we here, where did we come from, how did the world start?"

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past