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COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Mar 4, 2012

Taro Yamamoto: Actor in the spotlight of Japan's antinuke movement

On a rainy midwinter day, Taro Yamamoto stood with a small group of people in front of Shimokitazawa Station in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward and addressed passers-by in that artsy youth-culture hub.
COMMENTARY
Feb 20, 2012

How the Arab Spring was hijacked

A year after the Arab Spring came to symbolize the ascent of people's power, hope has given way to a bleak sequel.
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2012

Fukushima puts East Asia nuclear policies on notice

The Fukushima No. 1 power plant crisis has turned the nation's long-term energy policy on its head and probably signals the start of a drastic reduction in the use of atomic power.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 15, 2011

Time for IMF to save Europe

European leaders met last week for yet another "historic" summit at which the fate of Europe is said to hang in the balance. Yet it is clear that this will not be the last one convened to deal with the financial crisis.
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 13, 2011

In the wake of the Vikings

At both its western and eastern extremes some 10,700 km apart in France and the Russian Far East respectively, the great, fused supercontinent of Eurasia breaks into fragments, into not quite matching fringes of islands.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 8, 2011

'My children are my everything — the reason I'm alive'

On Bruce Gherbetti's right forearm, the names of his three lost children are permanently inscribed in a swirling script of dark blue tattoo ink.
COMMENTARY
Sep 26, 2011

Divining the will of a Russian puppet master

"He took off the Kremlin dog collar," said a friend of Mikhail Prokhorov, Russia's third-richest man, as the political party Prokhorov had founded to run against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the December elections blew up in his face this month.
EDITORIALS
Aug 30, 2011

Mr. Biden goes to Asia

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden concluded a brief three-country tour of Asia that took him to China, Mongolia and Japan. While there is always some trepidation when Mr. Biden travels — while he is a genuine foreign policy expert, he has a tendency to make off-the-cuff remarks that get him in trouble...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 25, 2011

No more ping-pong diplomacy

Thirty years ago, when China was still closed off to most of the world, Chairman Mao Zedong invited a group of American table-tennis players to participate in a week of friendly exhibition matches around the country. Insular and impoverished, China was just emerging from the most chaotic years of the...
COMMENTARY
Aug 23, 2011

India scores a wrong-sided goal — again

Presented with a golden opportunity to rise and shine, India has an unmatched capacity to look prosperity firmly in the face, turn around, and walk off resolutely in the opposite direction.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 2, 2011

Disaster brings out best in people, communities

"The Towering Inferno." "Deep Impact." "The Road." Hollywood's notion of how communities react to a disaster is unequivocal: People panic, societies collapse and enemies take advantage of the chaos to settle old scores.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 9, 2011

On tour: Okamoto's rock out at Vietnam fest

The sun had just set when Okamoto's took the stage at the CAMA Festival in Hanoi. We opened with "The 'M' Song" and about halfway through, I could see the crowd getting into it. By the end of the set, I had them speaking Japanese.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 26, 2011

Canadian writer draws on creators' support for Tohoku

News stories around the world reveal a deluge of incomprehensible sameness, the debris of aggregate destruction overshadowing an area known for its rugged beauty and strong individuals.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Feb 13, 2011

Japan's first pop culture

Pop culture. Japan's today is thriving, vibrant, spreading, turning people the world over into manga/anime freaks and costume players.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 23, 2011

Is 'Galapagos-thinking' Japan back at its evolutionary dead end?

There are expressions that buzz like busy little bees and ones that don't buzz anymore. One of the dead-bee buzzwords in Japan is shimaguni konjo, meaning "island mentality." As for a buzzword for 2011, you'd be hard put to find one more busily doing the rounds than garapagosu, which references the Galapagos...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jan 6, 2011

Massage away the blues with sensory therapy

A pot of tea brews next to a bowl of fruit on the kitchen table. Three flying porcelain ducks hang on the wall. A pile of books sits on the shelf. And somewhere in the distance, the sound of bird song mingles with the chime of church bells.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 19, 2010

Pernicious 'rogue' offers of aid

HONG KONG — China found itself in the unwelcome WikiLeaks spotlight the week before last with sweeping claims against its "aggressive" policies in giving aid to Africa. Johnnie Carson, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, called China "a pernicious economic competitor with no morals" about...
COMMENTARY
Nov 18, 2010

A new great game in Asia

U.S. President Barack Obama's 10-day Asian tour and the consecutive summit meetings of the East Asian Summit (EAS), the Group of 20 and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) helped put the spotlight on Asia's security challenges at a time when tensions between an increasingly ambitious China and...
JAPAN
Sep 2, 2010

Kids find confidence in speech contest

The Children's International Speech Contest, held Saturday in Tokyo, was unique in that its participants also experienced beforehand various programs promoting cross-cultural understanding.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2010

Hostility against Jews increasing in Sweden

VIENNA — Last month, firecrackers were thrown at the only synagogue in the Swedish city of Malmo, breaking three windows. The day before, a bomb threat had been left at the building, warning of what was about to happen. Two weeks earlier, another attack was launched against the same synagogue.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 8, 2010

A warm embrace for ruff justice

Some years ago, a Belgian woman named An van Dienderen wondered why so many Japanese tourists visited her hometown of Antwerp, and particularly its cathedral. She learned that they wanted to see the place where the boy Nello and his faithful dog Patrasche died in the story "A Dog of Flanders." This thin...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 27, 2010

Indomitable Karen of Burma

This is an impassioned book, the story of an insurgency in Burma drawn from interviews with those who experienced it. The narrative tells how the writer, Mac McClelland, traveled to Thailand to work as a volunteer with a group called Burma Action, and stayed for several weeks, teaching English.
COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2010

Path of engagement with Burma

NEW YORK — The Obama administration's decision to seek a new way forward in U.S.-Burma relations recognizes that decades of trying to isolate Burma (aka Myanmar) in order to change the behavior of its government have achieved little. As Burma's ruling generals prepare to hold elections later this year...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 21, 2010

Will Syria come in from the cold?

ISTANBUL — Will the recent rapprochement between the United States and Syria mark a new era in Syria's international standing?
COMMENTARY
Mar 17, 2010

China's diplomacy suffering an identity crisis

Chinese diplomacy generally comes in all sizes and shapes, but until relatively recently the size was small and the shape a question mark.
EDITORIALS
Feb 15, 2010

Golden 20 for McDonald's Russia

Twenty years ago, McDonald's opened its first store in Russia. The appearance of the Golden Arches in Moscow's Pushkin Square predated the collapse of the Soviet Union, but it should have been seen as a harbinger of the end of the autarkic Soviet economic model. The company marked the landmark event...
Japan Times
LIFE
Feb 14, 2010

Tiger of the snows

White flakes slip delicately down. Dusting the glow of graceful moss-clad forest relics rotting back into the ground, they illuminate the few giants still standing — majestic Japanese yew and lofty Korean pine. The ancient trees are silent; the only sound is from the hustle of our camouflaged legs...

Longform

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