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BUSINESS
Jul 7, 2014

GPIF posts first quarterly loss since 2012 on sagging stock market

Japan's stock rout in the quarter through March spurred the first loss for the world's biggest pension fund in almost two years, just as it moves toward buying more equities.
JAPAN / Politics
Jul 6, 2014

Abe may use Australia speech to push expanded defense vision

Prime minister expected to use Canberra address to outline, guage reaction to plans for a more robust military role in self-defense missions.
JAPAN / History
Jul 5, 2014

Battle of Saipan: a brutal invasion that claimed 55,000 lives

'It's hard to dig a hole when you're lying on your stomach digging with your chin'
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 5, 2014

Fiery Shinjuku protest goes global without NHK

Until the Great East Japan Earthquake, social media didn't have much purchase on Japanese social life. But disasters are transformative, and in a country where the mass media is cautious about its role vis-a-vis the authorities, social media came into its own after the tsunami and meltdown.
Reader Mail
Jul 5, 2014

Flag the opinion of a nonresident

It's very useful to hear about perceptions of Japan from people living outside the country.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 4, 2014

JAL prepares for credit rating to enable bond sales

Japan Airlines Co. is preparing to seek a credit rating that will enable it to sell corporate bonds for the first time since the nation's second-largest carrier relisted, widening its financing options.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 4, 2014

Farmers fattening pigs with recycled food

Japan burns or buries 3.3 million tons of commercial food waste every year. Then it imports 10 million tons of corn to feed animals, more than any other country.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 3, 2014

Canned cocktails blitz beer

Japanese brewers will release a record lineup of canned cocktails this summer as fizzy concoctions come to the fore in efforts to offset a decade of declining beer sales.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Markets
Jul 2, 2014

Mizuho beats Nomura in bond sales as spreads sink

Mizuho Financial Group Inc. overtook Nomura Holdings Inc. as the No. 1 underwriter of corporate bonds in the first six months as yield premiums on corporate debt fell to their lowest level in eight years.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Jul 1, 2014

Thousands get behind Article 9 in last-ditch rally at prime minister's office

On the eve of a historic decision, thousands of people turned up at the prime minister's office on Monday evening to shout their opposition to his plan to reinterpret Article 9 of the Constitution to permit collective self-defense, which could pave the way for Japan to wage war.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 1, 2014

Shokuhin Matsuri aka Foodman cooks up footwork on 'oiss'

"I used to be a video-game nerd," says Takahide Higuchi, the experimental footwork producer also known as Shokuhin Matsuri in Japanese and Foodman in English. "I thought that guys who were popular with girls made music, but I was sort of stubborn and didn't try. Then, in my last year of high school I...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 30, 2014

Rakuten exec takes action to help moms

Mie Kurosaka, Rakuten Inc.'s first female executive, returned to work at Japan's biggest online mall operator only three weeks after giving birth in 2002.
JAPAN
Jun 30, 2014

Most Japanese voters oppose security shift

Half of Japanese voters oppose dropping a ban that has kept the military from fighting abroad since World War II, a survey showed on Monday, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe readied a landmark shift in security policy that would ease the constraints of the pacifist constitution on the armed forces. A third...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jun 29, 2014

British School runners hit historic Nakasendo trade trail

A team of students, staff and parents sets out to run the Nakasendo, the ancient route linking Kyoto and Tokyo, to raise money to build a school in Cambodia.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 28, 2014

A life of lettuce has its benefits

Lettuce. Let us raise a glass to lettuce.
COMMENTARY / Japan / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 28, 2014

Abe's nuclear renaissance ignores stiff opposition

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's nuclear renaissance involves downplaying risks, restarting reactors, building new ones, and exporting reactor technology and equipment. A number of hurdles remain before he can rev up the reactors, but the summer of 2014 will probably be Japan's last nuclear-free one for decades...
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jun 28, 2014

When a physical wasteland bred a moral wasteland

He lived by fire and he died by fire. He was vile — coldblooded, amoral, ruthless. He was the man his time called for, and the man his time called forth — a vile time, by most standards. Its name is Sengoku Jidai, a period of prolonged civil war. Oda Nobunaga (1534-82) is its most representative...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jun 27, 2014

BBC news to turn Japanese with translated website

A recent job posting for a digital editor for BBC World Japan sparked interest online, with local Web-watchers noting that the job description called for a Tokyo-based editor with fluent Japanese to head up a team that will publish content from the main BBC News website on "a new, Japanese-language...
JAPAN / Politics
Jun 26, 2014

Broader foreign aid urged

Japan should expand its use of overseas development assistance by targeting new regions and projects and consider funding noncombat operations led by foreign military forces, a panel said Thursday in a report to Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 26, 2014

Beer garden season begins with a hearty 'kanpai'

When the first Biergarten (beer gardens) started popping up in Germany's Bavarian region in the late 19th century, who would've thought that they would one day come to represent summer in Japan. Well, I guess it's not that unbelievable.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 26, 2014

Drink responsibly when you're out with friends this summer

Now that we're well out of cherry-blossom season, the next round of outdoor drinking parties will take us out into the beer garden.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / BLACK EYE
Jun 25, 2014

The naked American at Narita airport

Leaving Narita, stripped of your African accoutrement and any other identifiers that speak to your nationality and sensibilities, you advance through an array of unfamiliar sights and sounds, just as brown and naked as the day you were born.
Reader Mail
Jun 25, 2014

Duty-free reform off the mark

Regarding the June 18 Kyodo article "Duty-free reform to boost tourism": I feel that this initiative will have little effect on tourist numbers. To Western visitors, Japan is very "foreign"; prospective tourists are nervous at the prospect of a visit. This duty-free initiative is wide of the mark.
JAPAN
Jun 24, 2014

Cabinet adopts economic plans

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet has adopted a set of reform strategies to boost growth, including attracting more foreign investors to prop up stock prices.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan