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Japan Times
BUSINESS / CABINET INTERVIEW
Sep 13, 2011

Kawabata says too early to sell Japan Post shares

Internal Affairs and Communications Minister Tatsuo Kawabata said Monday it is too early for the government to consider selling its shares in Japan Post Holdings Co. as a source of financing reconstruction in the disaster-hit areas.
COMMENTARY
Sep 13, 2011

Thanks to 'twinning,' the functional integration of economies has become a universal trend

There is plenty of recent evidence regarding the tight interaction and functional cohesion between the two economies of the United States and China.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Sep 13, 2011

3/11: no excuse for skipping your re-entry visa

Shortly after the March 11 disasters, Hans left Japan without a re-entry permit. He came back on a tourist visa and is wondering if he can easily regain his previous visa status:
Reader Mail
Sep 11, 2011

Tourists ignoring dolphin culls

Regarding Susanna Duft's Sept. 8 letter, "Boon for a new tourism drive": Duft seems to believe in the misguided logic that ending the annual dolphin slaughter in Japan will encourage much-needed tourism, which has been decimated by the March 11 Tohoku-Pacific earthquake and tsunami.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 11, 2011

Implacable merger of aesthetic and political

"Trespasses" may be a puzzling term (if you grew up with the Lord's Prayer), but in a foreword to this selection of writings by Masao Miyoshi (1928-2009), Frederic Jameson speaks of the "Victorianist who turns into a Japanologist" and of the "implacable unification of the aesthetic and the political"...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Sep 11, 2011

Insurance investigator crime drama; ping-pong prodigy; CM of the week: Yamasa

Insurance policies are classic plot devices in crime stories and at the center of the new seven-part drama series, "Last Money" (NHK-G, Tues., 10 p.m.). Hideaki Ito plays a corporate insurance investigator named Mukojima, whose job is to check life-insurance claims and ensure they're legitimate.
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2011

'Terrorists' got redefined after 9/11

Ten years after al-Qaida attacked the United States on Sept. 11, Japan has strengthened efforts to combat domestic and international terrorism through new legislation, policy directives and tougher immigration procedures.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 10, 2011

The power of spiders in rural Japan

Although I have lived in Japan's countryside for well over a decade, I have only recently come to understand the power of spiders.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Sep 10, 2011

A guide to fortunetellers

Japan is a fortunetelling nation and so, to start, here is Truman Capote's famous line about fortunetellers . . .
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 9, 2011

Festival/Tokyo rewrites its script after quake

Chiaki Soma, the program director at Festival/Tokyo (F/T), needed to figure out how to proceed with the country's biggest theater festival following the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11. She closed her office for 10 days and asked the staff to carefully consider the meaning of the festival in...
Reader Mail
Sep 8, 2011

What is Tepco talking about?

Regarding the Sept. 1 Kyodo article "Tepco plans to flood reactors, extract fuel": I find it simply amazing that the press continues to report the absurd pronouncements of Tokyo Electric Power Co. officials with a straight face. They have lied repeatedly about what they knew had happened. These lies...
EDITORIALS
Sep 8, 2011

Acquittal of bank executives

The Tokyo High Court in a retrial on Aug. 30 acquitted three former executives of the defunct Nippon Credit Bank of undervaluing bad loans and submitting false financial statements for fiscal 1997. The ruling followed a similar ruling in July by the Supreme Court, which acquitted three former executive...
EDITORIALS
Sep 8, 2011

Local resident autonomy

The Local Government System Research Council, an advisory body for the prime minister, on Aug. 24 started discussions for the first time in two years. In the past, the council devoted its energy to increasing the power of local governments, and generally attention was focused on administrative actions...
LIFE / Lifestyle / Japan Pulse
Sep 8, 2011

Weekend volunteering just got easier

Been up north to lend a hand? There's still plenty left to do in Tohoku.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 7, 2011

Refusal to talk threatens Suzuki-VW tieup

A tiff that started over Volkswagen AG's description of Suzuki Motor Corp. in its annual report has escalated into a spat threatening to unravel the two automakers' planned alliance before the partnership ever gets going.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 6, 2011

Kang family takes fight for justice to Tokyo

Sung Won, the father of Hoon "Scott" Kang, the Korean-American tourist who died in mysterious circumstances in Shinjuku last year, arrived in Tokyo this week to continue his fight to seek justice for his son.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2011

Japan in a European club?

Hitherto unknown and self-styled "loach" Yoshihiko Noda must learn to swim in an ocean of problems as Japan's new prime minister of the year. He has more than a plateful of domestic issues, but he should also realize, as his predecessors forgot, that Japan needs to re-engage the world if it is to find...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2011

'Top Gun' blazed a trail for war propaganda

Americans are souring on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The military budget is under siege as Congress looks for spending to cut. And the army is reporting record suicide rates among soldiers.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Sep 5, 2011

University of Hawaii hopes to form bond with Japan

Hosting a regular-season college football game abroad would certainly have an impact, but the University of Hawaii is seeking more than just that.
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.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 4, 2011

Actress's inheritance saga plays out like melodrama

Sometimes the components of a news story fit together so perfectly that you can't help but wonder how much of it was engineered by the press. Actress Hisako Manda, a former beauty queen who found success in recent years as a cover girl for magazines catering to women in their 50s, is currently at the...
Reader Mail
Sep 1, 2011

Tea party endorses democracy

Professor Yoshi Tsurumi's Aug. 26 article, "The DPJ face of Obama perplexes Japanese voters," contains several assertions that are not factually correct. First of all, the American tea party is not "anti-government and anti-democratic." The tea party consists of Democrats, Independents and Republicans...
JAPAN
Aug 31, 2011

Panel confirms fix was in at nuclear public meetings

An independent investigation panel has confirmed that the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency asked utilities in at least three cases to mobilize their employees for government-sponsored symposiums on nuclear power and express supportive or neutral opinions.
JAPAN
Aug 30, 2011

Noda pro-U.S. but past remarks may haunt Asia ties

While Japan-U.S. relations will remain the cornerstone of the nation's diplomacy under the leadership of Yoshihiko Noda, the Democratic Party of Japan's newly elected president and the nation's next prime minister, his past comments on war criminals could strain ties in Asia, analysts said Monday.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Aug 28, 2011

Is youth's 'creeping passivity' happening by design?

Last February, I wrote an Our Planet Earth column titled "Don't give up on Japan's kids," noting there that despite all the hand-wringing that goes on about this nation's young people, my own experience with university students gives me cause for considerable optimism.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?