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JAPAN
Dec 8, 2007

Three hanged and named in ministry first

The Justice Ministry executed three death-row inmates Friday and, in a break with its secrecy policy, released their names and details directly to the public.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 5, 2007

Hepatitis disaster another warning ignored

Ikuko Kuno gave birth to her first son at a maternity hospital in Ise, Mie Prefecture, in May 1988. The only thing different from when she gave birth to her daughter in 1986 was that the obstetrician gave her a blood-clotting agent to stop her hemorrhaging.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Dec 5, 2007

Oh honored by FSAJ for lifetime achievement

After the most distinguished career in Japanese baseball history, Sadaharu Oh has gotten a lot of practice in accepting awards.
Reader Mail
Dec 4, 2007

Fingerprinting issue trivialized

The Nov. 27 article by Mark Schreiber, "Prints rejected, scribe accepted," described Schreiber's re-entry to Japan after a trip to Saipan that appears to have been made purely for the opportunity to write the piece. The tone and conclusion made light of what many view as a serious issue, and were touted...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Dec 4, 2007

Skin-deep success

It started with an e-mail from my editor: "Get yr (sic) camera ready. Online Dating Minus Ugly People is coming to Japan. Thinking Lifestyle page trend piece. Ready for the money shot?"
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 4, 2007

Rudd and Asia's security

SYDNEY — Kevin Rudd has been swept into power after 6 percent of the voters swung to the Australian Labor Party. With domestic issues dominating the contest, the Howard government's unpopular industrial relations policies became the focus of discontent and a central argument for political change.
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Dec 2, 2007

Niigata's Webb enjoys beef bowls, team camaraderie on, off court

The Japan Times will be featuring periodic interviews with players in the bj-league — Japan's first professional basketball circuit — which recently began its third season. Rodney Webb of the Niigata Albirex BB is the subject of this week's profile.
Reader Mail
Dec 2, 2007

Homegrown emissions say a lot

Regarding the Nov. 22 article "Fukuda, Singh eye FTA deal by mid-'08": I believe that global warming and recent natural calamities worldwide have sensitized people to natural-gas emissions and pollution. Japan has been preaching to the rest of the world about natural-gas emissions, but it forgets itself:...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 2, 2007

Japanese intellectual crosscurrents

The Scars of War: Tokyo during World War II: Writings of Takeyama Michio, edited and translated by Richard H. Minear. Lanham, M.D.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 207 pp., 2007, $24.95. (cloth) Michio Takeyama (1903-1984) was one of many 20th-century intellectuals who in the course of their life...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 1, 2007

Company has visions of a brighter future

Have you heard of a sustainable plant that produces fuel as well as homeopathic medicines? Or a revolutionary process that turns garbage or plants into fuel?
JAPAN
Dec 1, 2007

Workers at U.S. bases strike again

More than 16,000 Japanese workers at U.S. military bases in Japan staged a strike Friday, the second in two weeks, after negotiations failed over the government's plan to cut their benefits.
BUSINESS
Dec 1, 2007

Gasoline pushes CPI up 0.1%

Japan's economy showed its first signs of inflation this year after gasoline prices surged.
COMMENTARY
Nov 30, 2007

Culture as a common asset

Politics (political phenomena) has become disconnected from culture (cultural phenomena) in East Asia.
MORE SPORTS
Nov 29, 2007

Ando looks to earn place in Grand Prix Final after recovering from injury

SENDAI — World champion Miki Ando will continue her bid to secure a spot at next month's Grand Prix Final in Turin, Italy, when she takes to the ice here on Friday night in the NHK Trophy, the last of this season's six Grand Prix events.
JAPAN
Nov 29, 2007

China warship on historic visit

A warship from China docked Wednesday at Tokyo's Harumi Pier, making the first port call in Japan by a Chinese naval vessel from the communist country — a highly symbolic display of improving ties between the two Asian giants.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 29, 2007

Flipping screens

If you've never heard of the form of Japanese puppet theater called dogugaeshi, you are in good company: The ancient tradition remains an obscurity even to puppet enthusiasts in the know. But American puppeteer Basil Twist is about to change all that with "Dogugaeshi," his production currently on tour...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 29, 2007

Translator of the universal and the local

In his 1987 book "Ireland Kiko (Travels in Ireland)," the renowned historical novelist and essayist Ryotaro Shiba (1923-96) observed that "the typical Irish character could easily be dramatized," and that "Ireland is one of the richest countries for the literary arts, with people whose daily lives are...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 29, 2007

A passion for the classics

Mention "Die Soldaten," B.A. Zimmermann's dark, uncompromising and harrowing work of 1960s modernism, and Hiroshi Wakasugi visibly brightens. It's the first season for this highly respected conductor as artistic director of Tokyo's New National Theater, and he's clearly very, very pleased that he has...
JAPAN
Nov 28, 2007

Panel passes bill to end Iraq mission

In another symbolic move reflecting the divided Diet, a House of Councilors panel on foreign affairs passed a bill Tuesday to end the Air Self-Defense Force's airlift mission supporting the reconstruction of Iraq.
EDITORIALS
Nov 28, 2007

Australia with a new face

Until around a year ago, Australian Prime Minister John Howard looked unbeatable with his administration's strong economic management. But in Sunday's elections, the youthful-looking Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd dealt a crushing defeat to the conservative coalition led by the 68-year-old Mr. Howard....
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Nov 27, 2007

Re-entry for PRs; rent-a-gran

New 'Yokoso' measures Robert inquires about the changes that started Nov. 20.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Nov 27, 2007

Politicians who took a stand

We often hear nowadays that politicians in Japan are "smaller" than they used to be. The reference, of course, is not to physique but rather to the capacity of today's politicians to demonstrate broad-mindedness and magnanimity as their predecessors did.
Reader Mail
Nov 25, 2007

U.S. treatment can be worse

As for Michael Hassett's Nov. 20 Zeit Gist article: While I agree that Japan has a long way to go before it will be a friendly environment for foreign residents, I am frustrated at this additional, one-sided, "Japan as abuser, foreigner as victim" diatribe.
Reader Mail
Nov 25, 2007

Spoof not far from the truth

Graeme Jarvie's Nov. 20 spoof of Japan's new photo and fingerprinting immigration laws, entitled "Regarding the 'gaijin' formally known as prints," was brilliant. An anonymous high-ranking official of the "Ministry of Injustice" was quoted as arguing that the new immigration laws, by keeping foreigners...

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