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Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Oct 28, 2012

'Fresh Currents' charts the way to, and from, Fukushima

This month's column is about a book that is very much more than just a book: It is a work of art, a labor of love and a realizable dream of a better future for Japan. But I'm getting ahead of myself ...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Oct 7, 2012

Shigesato Itoi shares lots of 'delicious life'

Shigesato Itoi is an established name in the Japanese cultural scene, but what he is known for may differ depending on who you ask.
SOCCER / J. League / J. LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Aug 23, 2012

Slow and steady rise gives Sanfrecce upper hand in title race

There will be many more twists and turns before this season's J. League title is won, but after opening up a four-point gap at the top of the table, the balance of power is steadily shifting Sanfrecce Hiroshima's way.
EDITORIALS
Aug 22, 2012

Mr. Putin's butterflies

Alexander Pope's question — "Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?" — is as compelling as ever in the wake of the two-year sentences handed down Friday by a Russian court to three young women convicted of hooliganism.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 19, 2012

The air around us is teeming with life — it's just too tiny to see

As I approached the top of Mount Tarumae's western peak, located in Hokkaido's Shikotsu-Toya National Park, for a brief moment I thought an early reward was awaiting me in the form of clusters of ripe blueberries in the bush tops. At first glance it appeared that the bushes were in fruit, and it was...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 13, 2012

'The Lady' / 'Betty Blue'

In cinema, as in music, micro-trends come and go: Will anyone remember "mumblecore" a decade from now? Yet the '80s French movement known as le cinema du look, based on three brash young French directors, has aged remarkably well. Jean-Jacques Beineix ("Diva"), Luc Besson ("Subway"), and Leos Carax ("Mauvais...
EDITORIALS
Jul 4, 2012

Mr. Ozawa needs more than slogan

Former Democratic Party of Japan chief Ichiro Ozawa and 49 other DPJ lawmakers on Monday bolted from the DPJ, which Mr. Ozawa had helped come to power by leading it to a victory in August 2009 Lower House election.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 21, 2012

Discerning purpose beyond power

The rerun of the Greek parliamentary election on June 17 was only the latest symptom of the most serious crisis to plague Western democracies and open societies since the 1960s. Liberal democracies in the West today are struggling to avoid — and in doing so are exacerbating — a crisis of identity,...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 10, 2012

The self-styled 'Land of the Free' nurtures yet another facet of hypocrisy

Last month, two members of the U.S. Senate vilified Eduardo Saverin, the cofounder of Facebook Inc., for doing something that Americans are apparently coming to consider a punishable sin.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 3, 2012

Koki Mitani: Japan's Mr. Comedy

Koki Mitani is far and away the nation's best-known dramatist. Although theater is quite a niche medium here, most people in Japan — whether male or female, young or not so young, Japanese or not — recognize his face, even if they couldn't name many of his works. Recently, indeed, I was amazed when...
Reader Mail
Apr 15, 2012

Cultural choice of punishment

Regarding Cesar Chelala's April 11 article, "Why Japan and U.S. should ban the death penalty": I applaud the Japanese government for literally executing the will of the people instead of bowing to nongovernmental organizations, such as Amnesty International, that lack any democratic legitimacy. It's...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 15, 2012

Wild Watch turns 30 this month

As April 2nd's 30th anniversary of my first Wild Watch column in The Japan Times neared, I was in India — teeming Delhi to be precise, with its cacophony of people, honking traffic and barking dogs, though a tailorbird would stop and call outside my window, where a palm squirrel never tired of chattering....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 29, 2012

The precious qualities of today's art jewelry

"The difference between art jewelry and a painting or a sculpture is that jewelry is closer to the heart — literally. Because you can wear it, it's actually even more intimate and personal than other artwork."
CULTURE / Art
Mar 29, 2012

The precious qualities of today's art jewelry

"The difference between art jewelry and a painting or a sculpture is that jewelry is closer to the heart — literally. Because you can wear it, it's actually even more intimate and personal than other artwork."
CULTURE / Books
Mar 25, 2012

Plight of women and the young in modern Japan

Demographic Change and Inequality in Japan, edited by Sawako Shirahase. Trans Pacific Press, 2011, 239 pp., $34.95 (hardcover) This stimulating collection of nine essays examines the implications of demographic trends for inequality in Japan. The contributors are sociologists who elucidate how changes...
COMMENTARY
Mar 15, 2012

Ocean acidification: another problem with CO₂ emissions

We tend to measure time by the span of a human life, making a century seem like an era and a millennium a mega-stretch of time. In this perspective, a million years is an eternity. So it can be revealing to consider our place in geologic history measured in hundreds of millions of years.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 13, 2012

New Zealander loses legal fight over crippling med addiction

When Wayne Douglas arrived home in New Zealand from Japan in early 2001, his own mother didn't recognize him at the airport.
CULTURE / Art
Mar 1, 2012

The varied colors of artistic process

There is a misconception about the avant-garde artist. It is routinely assumed by the general public that they are fountains of creativity, bristling with ideas and inspiration. A couple of major retrospectives at Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art, however, challenge this view.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 1, 2012

The varied colors of artistic process

There is a misconception about the avant-garde artist. It is routinely assumed by the general public that they are fountains of creativity, bristling with ideas and inspiration. A couple of major retrospectives at Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary Art, however, challenge this view.
COMMENTARY
Feb 27, 2012

Tradeoff in nuclear power

Trade and industry minister Yukio Edano was quoted by a major vernacular paper earlier this year as saying that the government is contemplating changing the policy of promoting nuclear power generation as a national project in which operations are entrusted to private sector electric power companies....
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 27, 2012

The first rule of writing ate-ji: There are no rules

As a general rule, kanji (Sino-Japanese ideographs) are classified in dictionaries according to two readings: kun-yomi (native Japanese) and on-yomi (approximation of the original Chinese pronunciation). For example, 東, the tō in 東京 (Tokyo), meaning "east," is an on-yomi that came from the Chinese...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 12, 2012

Depression is a national ailment that demands open recognition in Japan

The greatest public health issue facing the people of Japan today is not cancer. It is not vascular diseases than can cause heart attacks and strokes. It is not the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease in the ever-rising number of the elderly.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Feb 5, 2012

Our woods may be home to a 'new ' spider species

An apparently new species of spider has been found in our woods, even though the creature has probably been around since long before humans came to Japan.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 5, 2012

Stressful times lead to rise in child-abuse cases

Who can contemplate a newborn infant unmoved by its helplessness? Few living things are as vulnerable; none for anywhere near as long. Far beyond infancy, into childhood and adolescence, human beings are, if not utterly at the mercy of circumstances beyond their control, at least impressionable to a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 20, 2012

Condors fly in the face of contemporary dance scene

The Japanese are often described as being inward-looking and stoic, with a sense of humor that often fails to connect with people from overseas. However, there are still rare birds among that bunch.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Jan 10, 2012

Paper artist Gannon cut his own niche

Patrick Gannon admits he loves puzzles. As a literature major and aspiring writer in university, he delighted in deconstructing ideas and consciously pulling together disparate pieces to make a whole. Twenty years later, as a "cut paper" artist in Japan, Gannon, 40, employs the same intellectual techniques,...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Dec 20, 2011

Four years after 'Nova shock,' eikaiwa is down but not out

Ask any ordinary person what significance Oct. 26 holds and you might find them struggling for an answer, but for many involved in Japan's beleaguered English teaching industry, it was the day the nation's premier operator fell into administration and took much of the rest of the industry with it.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Dec 14, 2011

Mao was blessed with a mother who gave it her all

The past few days have been very difficult. I'm fairly confident a lot of other folks share my sentiments.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Nov 20, 2011

Sarobetsu's a stopover to count on for wonders

Gray predawn light suffuses the eastern horizon before crawling slowly across the landscape — but not before a rich clamoring reaches my ears.
BUSINESS
Nov 1, 2011

Japan needs a 'fresh start' to resolve lingering issues

Post-March 11 Japan faces the challenge of not just rebuilding from the damage of the massive earthquake and tsunami, but also tackling the nation's structural economic and political problems that have largely been left unresolved over the past two decades.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami