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Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 23, 2011

Civics built great but seen slipping on design front

Honda Motor Co.'s reputation for world-class manufacturing may belie a slipping emphasis on design just as the automaker's North American factories are preparing to return to full production.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Aug 22, 2011

Bureaucrats blame Kan for sapping their initiative

For the past several months since the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan, an increasing number of bureaucrats have grown "negligent in their duties" because of what they view as the incompetence of Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2011

Apple core of capitalism

For a few hours this month Apple, once regarded as a maverick upstart company, became the world's biggest company by stock market capitalization, until Exxon Mobil again seized the title.
JAPAN
Aug 21, 2011

Pentagon denies burying Agent Orange in Okinawa

The Pentagon has once again denied allegations that the U.S. military buried the highly toxic defoliant Agent Orange in Okinawa, the Foreign Ministry said.
EDITORIALS
Aug 21, 2011

More money for women athletes

The women's soccer team has won more than a first place victory in the Women's World Cup. They have also won increased financial support for women athletes in Japan. The Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry (MEXT) announced recently it would be increasing financial support for...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 21, 2011

Should wartime and peace allow such different attitudes to murder?

It is now nearly a month since the July 22 attacks on innocent Norwegians by the rightwing anti-Muslim terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, and aftershocks from those mass murders are still reverberating around the world. Yet massacres of innocents are everyday occurrences in wartime.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Aug 21, 2011

Veteran umpire Hirako remembered fondly after passing

Japanese sports papers and various Web sites on Aug. 17 reported the death of former Central League umpire Kiyoshi Hirako.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2011

Gendercide: India's ticking demographic bomb

Ernest Hemingway's collection of stories, "Men without Women," examines tense gender relationships. In a particularly poignant story, a young man convinces his partner to have an abortion, viewing their unborn child as a hindrance to the status quo. Frustrated, the woman gives in.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 20, 2011

World's best shoppers at my beach shop

Having run a beach shop for eight years now, I've been able to observe the shopping practices of the Japanese firsthand.
COMMENTARY
Aug 19, 2011

Lighter shade of NATO fading still

During the Second World War, a future prime minister, Harold Macmillan, said America is "the new Roman empire and we Britons, like the Greeks of old, must teach them how to make it go."
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2011

Obama risks 'junk status'

Standard & Poor's controversial decision to downgrade the credit rating of the United States from AAA to AA-plus brought an instant angry riposte from President Barack Obama that "We've always been and always will be a Triple-A country."
COMMENTARY
Aug 17, 2011

ASEAN faces a Chinese dilemma

As the United States and Europe struggle with heavy debts and weak growth, China increasingly powers the expansion of nearly every economy in the Asia Pacific region. It raises a critical question, particularly for Southeast Asia and Australia: Which are the ties that bind — those of commerce and rising...
COMMENTARY
Aug 16, 2011

The Song of Chu and Japanese politics today

"Song of Chu all around" (si-mian-Chu-ge) is an old Chinese saying that means "being besieged or deserted on all sides."
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 16, 2011

What is not blamed for the riots in Britain

To a watching world, the sight of Britain on fire last week has surely been shocking. The looting and torching has revealed an inner-city London, Birmingham and Manchester seldom glimpsed in the England usually offered for export via soft-focus period dramas, Hugh Grant movies or stories on Will and...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / ANALYSIS
Aug 16, 2011

With debt climbing, Japan debates tax hike

Japan has within its sights the obvious but precarious solution for its fiscal mess: a tax hike.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Aug 14, 2011

Japan's unsung role in India's struggle for independence

Nestled in the upmarket Wada district of Tokyo's Suginami Ward, Renkoji Temple is a model of gentility. On weekday mornings, pensioners sit and sketch its prayer hall while housewives chat quietly in the shade of its well-tended trees. Given this setting, it would be easy to mistake the bust of a bespectacled...
BUSINESS
Aug 13, 2011

Yen drives short sales, Deutsche says

Hedge funds investing in Japan increased their short-selling of companies sensitive to the yen's fluctuations as the currency surged amid the U.S. credit downgrade and concerns that Europe can't contain its debt crisis, Deutsche Bank AG said.
EDITORIALS
Aug 12, 2011

Airport reform in Japan

A study panel of the infrastructure and transport ministry has released a report on the privatization of 27 airports managed by the central government. At present, the central government usually manages aviation-related facilities, such as runways, at these airports, while companies set up jointly by...
BUSINESS
Aug 11, 2011

Honda may cut full-year profit forecast

Honda Motor Co., Japan's third-largest carmaker, said it may revise its full-year profit forecast when it announces first-half earnings in October, depending on how long the current market turmoil lasts.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Aug 9, 2011

Scant legal justification for unpaid overtime

John has a question about unpaid overtime:
EDITORIALS
Aug 8, 2011

Taming the yen

The government on Thursday intervened in the foreign exchange market to weaken the yen, which had hovered at near record-high levels against the U.S. dollar. In collaboration with the government, the Bank of Japan promptly took steps to ease the money supply to help the economy overcome the effects of...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 8, 2011

Debt deal reveals empty toolbox

When President Barack Obama signed into law the bill increasing the debt ceiling to $16.7 trillion, Americans might have breathed a sigh of relief that the danger of default is over — for now (and probably until spring 2013).
EDITORIALS
Aug 6, 2011

Old and new nuclear perils

Aug. 6 and 9 are the days on which Japanese pray for the souls of those who died due to the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and renew our resolve to seek a world without nuclear weapons.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Aug 5, 2011

Ichikanjin: Sun, sea, sand and slurping soup noodles

There's nothing like a sea breeze and a day spent lounging by the ocean to generate a healthy appetite. And nothing hits the spot better or faster than ramen. If the beach in question happens to be in Kamakura, then we know exactly where to go to refill and recharge on the way back from the waterfront...
COMMENTARY
Aug 3, 2011

U.S. reputation suffers in Asia

U.S. prominence in Asia since World War II has rested on a widespread belief among friends, foes and nonaligned nations alike that Washington would use its economic and military power to prevent what it saw as dangerous challenges to the region's peace, stability and growth.

Longform

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