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EDITORIALS
Jan 16, 2009

Battle over work begins

The season of annual wage negotiations has started just as a large number of workers, especially irregular employees, have lost or are set to lose their jobs. Both labor and management should set their respective resolve on finding ways to protect employment.
Reader Mail
Jan 15, 2009

Tilting the scales of justice

In drawing attention to the introduction of the new criminal court system in May, the Jan. 10 editorial "Crime victims get their say" rightly concludes that judges must conduct trials "in a fair and coolheaded manner" and that the "principle of presumption of innocence until proven guilty" must be upheld....
COMMENTARY
Jan 15, 2009

China steps up global diplomacy

Almost two decades ago, China's paramount leader Deng Xiaoping issued a series of instructions regarding the orientation of Chinese foreign policy in which he emphasized the need for Beijing to keep a low profile and never take the lead. Up until a few years ago, China has for the most part maintained...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 13, 2009

Bloated bureaucracy exposed

A common joke among some foreigners here is that everything makes sense once you realize Japan is a communist country. However, the role of privileged ruling Communist Party (or, if you have a literary bent, the pigs in George Orwell's socialist parable "Animal Farm") is played not by the perpetual opposition...
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Jan 11, 2009

Mao's poise under pressure proved decisive in 2008

Mao Asada capped off an incredible year by rallying for her third straight national title in Nagano on Dec. 27.
Reader Mail
Jan 11, 2009

Malapropos promotion of English

Regarding Amy Chavez's Jan. 3 column, "The English language is going to the dogs": I live in London and if anyone says to me "Everyone speaks English," my answer is "Listen and look around you." If people in London do not speak English, then the whole question of a global language is completely open....
Reader Mail
Jan 11, 2009

Education methods don't work

Regarding the Jan. 7 editorial "New high school guidelines": While it is refreshing to see the education ministry finally emphasize English education in a way that promotes actual communication in the language, it is incredibly frustrating as a teacher "in the trenches" to know that the application of...
JAPAN
Jan 10, 2009

Rebuffed, Watanabe set to quit LDP

With all his policy proposals effectively snubbed by Prime Minister Taro Aso, Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Yoshimi Watanabe's exit from the ruling party became almost certain Friday.
JAPAN
Jan 9, 2009

Aso partially bans 'watari' perk for ex-bureaucrats

Under pressure from the opposition camp, Prime Minister Taro Aso said Thursday that he will immediately ban the little-known custom of "watari," in which ministries can arrange new jobs multiple times at related corporations for retiring bureaucrats.
Japan Times
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Jan 8, 2009

Pay attention to these story lines in 2009

Since the calendar has flipped to 2009, it's time to look ahead to the year to come in sports.
EDITORIALS
Jan 7, 2009

New high school guidelines

The education ministry has released the draft of revised curriculum guidelines for high school, which will go into full force in fiscal 2013, replacing the current guidelines that went into effect in fiscal 2003. The new guidelines have two goals: coping with the diversification of high schools and improving...
JAPAN
Jan 7, 2009

Teachers beset by unruly parents

When the 27-year-old rookie elementary school teacher in Kanagawa Prefecture began receiving phone calls from the mother of one of his students demanding an apology from the parents of their child's alleged "bullies," he thought it was just a misunderstanding by an overprotective parent.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 6, 2009

Otaru ruling beats 'mob rule'

Paul de Vries' treatise on group accountability in Japanese society ("Back to the baths: Otaru revisited," Zeit Gist, Dec. 2) offered a new take on the now familiar story of the court case between Japan's naturalized enfant terrible, Debito Arudou, and the managers of the Yunohana public bath in Otaru,...
COMMENTARY
Jan 6, 2009

Prophet of world-culture clashes is dead

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — A giant died early last week. His name was Samuel Huntington, a Harvard professor whose gigantism was intellectual. His ideas left huge footprints on our intellectual landscape, the way giant storms impact the Earth. Minds were shaken, sometimes stirred, and never left untouched....
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jan 4, 2009

Yomiuri Giants prepare to commemorate 75th anniversary in 2009

A Happy New Year to all readers of the Baseball Bullet-In.
JAPAN / THE MANY FACES OF CITIZENSHIP
Jan 4, 2009

Multinationalism remains far from acceptance in Japan

Third in a series
EDITORIALS
Jan 3, 2009

A year of transition

In 2008, talk of change was everywhere. This year that talk will be realized as historic changes take place around the world. In most cases, the process will be gradual and evolutionary. But we must also be prepared for revolutionary transformations as accumulated strains and stresses produce paradigm...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 3, 2009

Why does Germany's chancellor hesitate?

MUNICH — "Where is Angela?" is the question The Economist asked when Nicolas Sarkozy, Gordon Brown and Jose Manuel Barroso met to prepare a European economic stimulus plan without Chancellor Merkel being present. Indeed, Germany is currently the spoiler in the competition to provide billions to prevent...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 3, 2009

Small parties play up 'big' role in national politics

Political parties with fewer than 20 Diet seats face an identity crisis as the legislature moves closer to a two-party system following the huge gains made by the Democratic Party of Japan in the July 2007 Upper House election.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2009

Is Aso only postponing the inevitable?

The political news that will have the most far-reaching repercussions into the new year is the plummeting approval rating of Prime Minister Taro Aso and his Cabinet, and his delay in dissolving the Lower House of the Diet for a general election.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 1, 2009

Finding beauty in a world of waste

"If we live in a creative universe, we are constantly pushing the chaos out of the way to protect ourselves from the nonlogical — the natural," muses Vik Muniz at an interview late last year at Tokyo Wonder Site. "Even when you think, you create waste. But everything is made in a way to conceal the...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Dec 31, 2008

Boozer should take vow of silence

NEW YORK — This week's Bernie Madoff Chutzpah Award goes to Carlos Boozer. In this epoch of bankruptcies and bailouts, unemployment and unsold tickets, he went out of his way recently to damage the reputation of the "Me" generation.
EDITORIALS
Dec 30, 2008

American capitalism, battered

It was a bruising year for U.S. capitalism. Not only did the world's largest economy plunge into recession, but financial mismanagement and misjudgment triggered a global financial crisis. The question now is whether President-elect Barack Obama has learned lessons of history and can rally domestic and...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Dec 30, 2008

Foreign university faculty face annual round of 'musical jobs'

Universities in Japan force most of their foreign instructors to play an unnerving version of musical chairs. Every year the music starts and instructors with expiring contracts scramble for an opening at a new school. University administrators force teachers to play "musical jobs" by offering limited-term...
EDITORIALS
Dec 29, 2008

An oddly familiar year

Historians like to say that "history doesn't repeat itself, it rhymes." That would explain the feeling of familiarity that many experienced throughout 2008. While there was one truly unprecedented event — the election of Mr. Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States — there was also...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2008

Deng legacy after 30 years

SINGAPORE — The approaching close of 2008 should remind us of the day 30 years ago that marked the onset of a chain of events that was to alter the course of Asian — and human — history.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Dec 29, 2008

Suppressing more than free speech

I recently read a book that, a decade ago, created a controversy in Japan about homosexuality. In it the prize-winning writer Jiro Fukushima described his sexual relationship with Yukio Mishima dating from 1951.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Dec 29, 2008

Finance, goods must reconcile to restore economic partnership

Crises come and crises go, but this one seems to be in a class of its own. And now that it has arrived, it doesn't look like it's going away anytime soon.

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