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COMMENTARY / Japan / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Feb 25, 2013

Endless effects of 'pacification' wars

Unnecessary U.S. wars in the Middle East have unintended consequences at home just as Japan's war against China still casts its shadows to this day.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 8, 2013

The Hitler home movies: how Eva Braun documented the Nazi dictator's private life

Lutz Becker was born in Berlin, he says, "during the anno diabolo, 1941. Mine was the generation that was sent into a dark pit." Meeting this survivor of the Third Reich, now in his 70s and living in Bayswater, London, it's hard to suppress the thought that Becker, a distinguished artist and film historian,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 31, 2013

How will Australia rebalance its trade, security relations?

How does Australia reconcile the pull of its European heritage, the security imperatives of the U.S. alliance and its trading ties with East Asia?
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / WEEK 3
Jan 19, 2013

Nanjing remembers; disputes fester

Young Chinese marking the 75th anniversary of the Nanjing Massacre are baptized in battles over war memory that shape bilateral relations.
Reader Mail
Dec 2, 2012

Gaining respect, not losing face

The Japan Times is to be commended for the courage to publish the Nov. 27 article from former South Korean Prime Minister Han Seung Soo, titled "Heed history in East Asian territorial disputes."
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2012

Overseas Japanese museums' representatives share ideas in Yokohama

Museums dedicated to the history of Japanese emigrants are increasingly becoming important for their descendants to understand the history of their ancestors as they become integrated in the societies they live in, according to participants of a recent symposium in Yokohama.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Oct 6, 2012

Newton confident Ryukyu will contend for another title

The Japan Times features periodic interviews with players in the bj-league. Jeff Newton of the Ryukyu Golden Kings is the subject of this week's profile.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 12, 2012

For the sake of survival: concealing the cross

In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians: A Story of Suppression, Secrecy and Survival, by John Dougill. Tuttle Publishing, 2012, 272 pp., $22.95 (hardcover) When you travel with a mission, a theme in mind, encounters unfold, stories are forthcoming, history uncoils. John Dougill begins his own journey...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 1, 2012

Author Lesley Downer's romance with Japan is no fleeting affair

British writer, historian and journalist Lesley Downer has been visiting Japan and writing about it for nearly 35 years — beginning in 1978, when she was part of the first-ever intake of the English Teaching Recruitment Program, which evolved into the famous JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching Program)...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL
Apr 11, 2012

Evessa claim star Washington has decided to 'retire'

Osaka Evessa power forward Lynn Washington has been the most recognizable player in bj-league history.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Apr 1, 2012

Naohiko Jinno: Master of public finance brings life to numbers

Born the grandson of a once-prosperous textile manufacturer in Urawa, Saitama Prefecture, Naohiko Jinno says that when he was growing up he was told by his mother, over and over again, that money was not important.
LIFE
Dec 25, 2011

The holy trinity of religions

Michael Hoffman's latest book is "Little Pieces: This Side of Japan" (VBW, 2010)."In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." — Genesis 1:1
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 3, 2011

A graceful hand to help elderly Japanese in Holland

In 1941, in the then Dutch East Indies, thousands of people were forced into internment camps by the invading Japanese army. It is a slice of history almost forgotten today, along with so many other wartime atrocities. It is something Chieko van Santen remembers every day, as the Japanese widow of a...
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
CULTURE / Books
Aug 21, 2011

Modernity on the move

Movement is central to modernity. Baudelaire's flaneur, a walker drifting through city streets, "a perfect idler, ... a passionate observer," who is a part of the urban throng even as he remains apart from it, is paradigmatic.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 19, 2011

Japan's Nigerians pay price for prosperity

The Nigerian Union in Japan is the central civic organization for immigrants from Africa's most populous nation. It has foundered twice in 21 years and its current incarnation is less than a year old. Its mixed history is a reflection of the social and economic turmoil Japan's Nigerian community has...
COMMENTARY
Apr 15, 2011

U.S. Civil War: What if?

LONDON — It's not much as anniversaries go, but most of us won't be around in 50 years, so we'll have to settle for the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. The groups who re-enact Civil War battles were therefore out in force on Tuesday, but does it matter to anybody else?
CULTURE / Books
Dec 12, 2010

Wartime Japan celebrates

In 1940, amid war in China and growing tensions with the United States, Japan celebrated the 26th centennial of the founding of the Empire of Japan and the "unbroken" imperial line.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / ART BRIEF
Oct 8, 2010

'Here Comes the Tengu'

Kanagawa Prefectural Museum of Cultural History
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 29, 2010

Seven more years of hard economic times?

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Much of the talk emerging from the August 2010 Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, attended by many of the world's central bankers and economists, has been about a paper presented there that gave a dire long-run assessment of the future of the world's economies.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Sep 14, 2010

Is racism coloring debate on Japanese whaling?

Following is a selection of readers' responses to the Aug. 17 Zeit Gist columns headlined "Racist undercurrents taint whaling rhetoric" by Dougal McNeill and "Appeals to culture, tradition ignore the historical facts" by Chris Burgess:
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Aug 15, 2010

Pavlicevic sets sail in Shimane

The Japan Times will be featuring periodic interviews with personalities in the bj-league, which begins its sixth season in October. Coach Zeljko Pavlicevic of the expansion Shimane Susanoo Magic is the subject of this week's profile.
COMMENTARY
Apr 13, 2010

Could environmentalism really be communism in disguise?

KYOTO — Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, has published a book bitterly critical of environmentalists that has been translated into several languages. The original title of the book in Czech is "Modra, Nikoli Zelena Planeta," which literally translates as "blue planet, not green." Its...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Feb 7, 2010

Taeko Tomiyama: Brushing with authority

I will never forget the day I went to a show titled "Embracing Asia: Taeko Tomiyama Retrospective 1950-2009," which was one of 370 art exhibits by creators from 40 countries comprising the fourth Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial staged over 50 days last autumn at locations across a huge area of rural Niigata...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Nov 1, 2009

Susan Schmidt: Honored U.S. beacon for Japan

Susan Schmidt is a former editor at the University of Tokyo Press who spent 20 years living and raising a family in Japan up until the mid-1990s. She is now executive director of the U.S.-based, 1,500-member Alliance of Associations of Teachers of Japanese — a role in which she has not only helped...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 27, 2009

Painful past must be put to rest for good

PARIS — A nation's relationship with its past is crucial to its present and its future, to its ability to "move on" with its life, or to learn from its past errors so as not to repeat them. This includes the past that isn't dead and buried — "in fact, it is not even past," as William Faulkner famously...
CULTURE / Art
Sep 25, 2009

Observing the pieces of a fragmented self

From an overwhelming slew of art, literature, music, cinema and theater references, there seems to emerge a provisional feel for order in William Kentridge's filmic worlds: worlds created between the artist and spectators' activity in constructing narratives from discrete fragments. How this materializes...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 20, 2009

Putin's preferred memory of World War II

CAMBRIDGE, England — Soviet ideology was always about the future. By contrast, today's official Russian ideology seems to be focused squarely on the past.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Aug 19, 2009

Offhand but on record

Facebook recently made changes to its service agreement in order to make members' data more accessible to other computer users. Amuse, Inc. announced last week that hackers stole credit-card information from about 150,000 clients. Hackers broke into the social network Twitter's system and stole documents....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 15, 2009

Welsh writer finds inspiration in Japan

Fade in. Swansea, Wales. The scene opens on a hushed front room. A 6-year-old boy taps away on an old-fashioned typewriter, the keys punctuating his thoughts in the gathering shadows. It is past his bedtime, but he fights drowsy temptations, determined to write a novel while his parents sleep. Four hours,...

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic