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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 23, 2010

'Seraphine'

When a woman values her art over personal happiness, the result can yield sheer, mesmerizing beauty. Tolstoy wrote that women prevail because of their "ingrained talent" to achieve happiness, but at the same time this talent becomes their downfall in achieving true greatness. Indeed, had Frida Kahlo,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 23, 2010

Events spur on a new generation of sake drinkers

At 5:30 p.m. on a recent Saturday evening, the line of people at the entrance to the Smile Nihonshu sake event was six deep. Inside the bar, groups of young people in their 20s and 30s clinked glasses and nodded along to a bouncy rendition of Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier" under a green-lit disco ball....
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2010

Immelt's China meltdown

HONG KONG — General Electric Co. Chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt has certainly stirred up a hornet's nest in China with his words of wisdom about doing business there. In the most publicized supposedly private speech of the year, Immelt grumbled that it was getting very difficult for big companies...
COMMENTARY
Jul 21, 2010

Rwanda: Kagame's dilemma

Did Paul Kagame really stop the genocide in Rwanda 16 years ago, or did he just interrupt it for a while? That question frightens him so much that he will not risk everything on the outcome of a democratic election.
COMMENTARY
Jul 21, 2010

Don't underestimate ASEM

One of the less-noticed initiatives in the world is the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), designed to foster closer cooperation between the old economic giants of Europe and the new economic powers of Asia — the two diverse but culturally rich continents that together represent half of the world's GDP and...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 20, 2010

Immigration procedures face huge shakeup

As of July 1, there are big changes afoot for the laws governing foreign residency in Japan. Not since 1990, when the categories of residence increased from 18 to 27, has the Ministry of Justice's Immigration Bureau undergone such a wholesale reordering of its operations.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jul 19, 2010

DPJ, finances victims of own conspiracy, cock-up, complacency?

Conspiracy or cock-up? That is the question that invariably comes to mind when something goes very badly wrong in business or politics. As it has done in both of these two worlds in Japan lately.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / Japan Pulse
Jul 16, 2010

Big (only) in Japan? Free fans

When the dog days are upon Japan, there's always a good chance that somebody, somewhere will be passing out free fans.
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2010

Rakuten's all-English edict a bold move, but risky too

Internet shopping mall operator Rakuten Inc. surprised the public by announcing early this year it will make English its official language by 2012.
JAPAN
Jul 15, 2010

Progressive agenda stuck in the mud

Happily for Yoko Sakamoto, she didn't have to argue with her husband — also a Sakamoto — about whose last name they'd use when they married.
JAPAN
Jul 13, 2010

Okinawa's sole LDP lawmaker, now a Futenma foe, is returned

OSAKA — Okinawa voters returned the prefecture's only Liberal Democratic Party Diet member, Aiko Shimajiri, to the Upper House in a contest closely watched by Tokyo and Washington for its connection with U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma.
JAPAN
Jul 13, 2010

Your Party no party to ruling bloc

Your Party leader Yoshimi Watanabe said Monday that his group, which scored great gains in Sunday's Upper House election, has no intention of joining the ruling coalition and urged Prime Minister Naoto Kan to dissolve the Lower House.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 11, 2010

Japan's great gamble

Sheldon Adelson, crusading chairman of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, was in Singapore last month to launch his company's latest casino-anchored mega-resort, the $5.5 billion Marina Bay Sands Singapore.
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jul 10, 2010

Beatles' 'Sgt. Pepper' album cover mystery a piece of Japanese history

Who owns the Sony TV that appears on the cover of the Beatles' famous "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album?
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Jul 10, 2010

Winning, confidence return to Fighters

The Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters are showing people that once their cogwheels are engaged, they can once again be as good as any other team.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 10, 2010

Crisis a chance for consolidation

The European debt problem triggered by the Greek crisis this year provides a good opportunity for both Japan and Germany to start fiscal consolidation efforts in the face of mounting public-sector debts, experts from the two countries told a recent symposium in Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 9, 2010

Kreva keeps Japan's hip-hop heart beating

The last thing anyone expects one of the country's leading hip-hop artists to say about the scene he's part of is that it's uninspired. But for Japanese hip-hop veteran Kreva, that's the unfortunate truth. "There's not really anyone I'm excited to listen to right now," explained the artist offhandedly...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 6, 2010

Down — but not out — in Kotobukicho

Yokohama's Ishikawacho Station straddles the border between two worlds. Take a right turn from its south exit and you find yourself among the designer boutiques and Belgian chocolate shops of tourist Motomachi. Head left from the same station, however, walk three minutes and you discover a neighborhood...
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Jul 5, 2010

Japan by the numbers (07.05.10)

Surveys say ... mabo-dofu and Softbank are in; unshaven legs are out.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 4, 2010

Playing spot the political difference

The central dynamic in politics is the tug-of-war between conservatism and liberalism, and while it's always been that way, the conflict is particularly contentious these days owing to a global media culture that sees nothing wrong with taking sides. Differences are starker and less rational. In America,...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jul 3, 2010

Meet the party gods on our small island

I've always gotten along well with my neighbors on the island. This is especially important because my neighbors are all gods: the Mountain God, Kompira-san, Juichimen Kannon, Senju Kannon and Myoken-sama. I have to put up with a few loud parties every now and then, but overall, we get along extremely...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2010

Why is it OK to cheat in professional soccer?

MELBOURNE — Shortly before half-time in the World Cup elimination match between England and Germany on Sunday, English midfielder Frank Lampard had a shot at goal that struck the crossbar and bounced down onto the ground, clearly over the goal line. German goalkeeper Manuel Neuer grabbed the ball and...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2010

The G20's expensive party

HONG KONG — Leaders of the world's most powerful nations and a few less powerful hangers-on, like Canada and Italy, have just spent a few more billions of their taxpayers' money as they failed to devise a rescue plan for a world economy that is still perilously close to the cliff edge of disaster....
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 30, 2010

Canberra's bloodless coup

SYDNEY — Women rule. Or so it seems in Australia where the first female prime minister has ousted a male colleague, where a woman is the governor general, still another runs the main state, New South Wales, and another presides over that state's capital city, Sydney. Topping all, an Australian woman...

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight