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Reader Mail
Sep 8, 2011

Boon for a new tourism drive

Ontarians as well as people from around the world recognized Sept. 1 as Dolphin Day. Unfortunately, Japan became the focus.
COMMENTARY
Sep 8, 2011

How to drive away friends and lose influence

In the 19th century, Japan, unlike China, responded to Western pressure to open up to trade not by fighting back but by transforming itself so that, while still geographically in Asia, it became in effect a European country.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 4, 2011

Alfons Deeken: Priest-philosopher makes death his life's work

On Friday, July 22, as the stifling heat and humidity of summer relented for just a fleeting few days, hundreds of people filled a hall at Enkakuji Temple in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, to listen to a lecture by philosophy scholar Alfons Deeken.
JAPAN
Aug 28, 2011

Contenders' backgrounds

Seiji Maehara Seiji Maehara represents Kyoto's No. 2 electoral district, a cultural cornucopia where in some ways he could be considered an outsider.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Aug 23, 2011

Restoring foreign tourism tall order

Foreign tourist numbers have been plunging since the March 11 quake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Fukushima Prefecture, and not only for visitors to the disaster zone.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 23, 2011

Peace Boat-Rolls Royce talks lay bare ethical minefield

Convinced the recovery in Tohoku will result in the birth of widespread corporate philanthropy in Japan, in the same way the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake prompted the proliferation of volunteerism, Peace Boat director Tatsuya Yoshioka spent a day in June shepherding a busload of businesspeople on a...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Aug 9, 2011

Top blogger illustrates Chinese wife's struggles

W ith his winning of the prestigious Alpha Blogger Awards 2010, Tokyo-based cartoonist Junichi Inoue is now recognized as one of the most influential Japanese bloggers.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 27, 2011

Left-behind parents waiting

Ever since Christopher Savoie was arrested in 2009 after a failed attempt to retrieve his abducted children, Japan has been overwhelmed by international pressure to resolve its ever-increasing number of abduction cases. After years of demarches and public pleas by foreign governments, Japan has finally...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 24, 2011

March 11: nation transformation?

REIMAGINING JAPAN: The Quest for a Future that Works. Edited by McKinsey & Company; executive editors Clay Chandler, Heang Chhor and Brian Salsberg. VIZ Media, 2011, 464 pp., $38.99 (hardcover) Read any business report on Japan of recent times and there is a familiar theme: economically eclipsed by China,...
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2011

Key players got nuclear ball rolling

How did earthquake-prone Japan, where two atomic bombs were dropped at the end of World War II creating a strong antinuclear weapons culture, come to embrace nuclear power just a few decades later?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Jul 12, 2011

Youth said to need voice, opinions

Lena Lindahl has for the past two decades produced environment-related events in Japan in an effort to apply her home country Sweden's notion of sustainable society here. And she believes the key is education to encourage children to develop and express opinions about issues that concern their own future....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 12, 2011

Foreign students back but numbers look likely to fall

They're back. Worries that foreign students would abandon Japan following the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and accompanying fiasco at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have proven to be largely unfounded.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Jul 8, 2011

Live from Tokyo, it's Saturday Night!

Ladies and gentlemen, it's Saturday Night Live Japan!
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jul 5, 2011

Disunited 'English-speaking diaspora' bites back

The Community Page received a large number of emails in response to Debito Arudou's June 7 Just Be Cause column, headlined " 'English-speaking diaspora' should unite, not backbite."
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 4, 2011

The risks of 'disaster nationalism'

A common sight seen throughout Japan these days are signs that read Ganbaro Nippon (translated "Don't give up Japan").
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 3, 2011

Kotaro Horiuchi: A life spent in uncharted waters of boat design

Considering the current state of Japan's economy, it's remarkable to recall that 60 years ago there were hundreds of companies both old and new jockeying restlessly to fill the vacuum left after almost all the nation's cities were heavily bombed in World War II — jockeying, that is, with the kind of...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jun 26, 2011

Readers offer 3/11 insights, valuable resources

As Japan has struggled with the physical and emotional challenges of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 11, and the ongoing nuclear crisis that resulted, I have written three Our Planet Earth columns related to those events: one on Japan's response (March 27); one on alternative...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jun 19, 2011

Anti-whalers should just stop ...

Nearly a quarter of a century since Japan began its controversial "research whaling" cull off Antarctica, there was a major development this year in the annual contest of wills between whalers and conservationists.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 15, 2011

A dentist need not be a masked demon

Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / BY THE GLASS
Jun 10, 2011

Koshu wine gets uncorked abroad

On June 19, Shizen, a white wine made in Japan with the native Koshu grape, will make its debut at Vinexpo, Bordeaux. By exhibiting at one of the wine industry's most important events, Ernest Singer, the man behind Shizen and a project to improve winemaking in Japan, is declaring his confidence in Koshu...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 7, 2011

Hague treaty seeks to balance rights of kids, parents

Prime Minister Naoto Kan's administration said in May it would establish legislation as part of preparations for Japan joining an international convention to prevent cross-border abductions of children by their parents.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jun 7, 2011

'Flyjin,' 'sheeple,' angry people: readers' views

Debito Arudou's May 3 Just Be Cause column, headlined " Better to be branded a 'flyjin' than a man of the 'sheeple,'" provoked an online skirmish between contributors to the columnist's blog, Debito.org, and its self-proclaimed "debunker" site. Here are just some of the mails received at The Japan Times...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 5, 2011

Can we all just get along?

THE POLITICS OF ECONOMIC REGIONALISM, by Kevin G. Cai. Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 196 pp., $80 (hardcover) CHINA, JAPAN AND REGIONAL LEADERSHIP IN EAST ASIA, by Christopher M. Dent. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010, 311 pp., $50 (paper)
EDITORIALS
Jun 3, 2011

Back to basics with Russia

Prime Minister Naoto Kan met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on May 27 in the French seaside resort of Deauville shortly after a two-day Group of Eight summit held there. No substantive development came out of the meeting concerning a long-standing bilateral territorial dispute, except that Mr....
EDITORIALS
May 26, 2011

Helping hands to Mr. Kan

The perseverance that people in northeastern Japan have shown after the massive earthquake and tsunami devastated their communities March 11 has impressed many people around the world.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 24, 2011

Travel firms feel pinch, pitch in after disasters

Every spring, as the wave of blossoms sweeps up the archipelago from south to north, washing up from the coasts into the higher altitudes, travelers flood into Japan. Rivaled only by the cool autumn months that redden maple leaves across the country, March and April are high season for tourism in Japan....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 14, 2011

Finding fulfillment the hard way through NGOs, activism

The tiny Amnesty International Japan headquarters is hidden on the fourth floor of a nondescript building in a dull business district not far from Ochanomizu, in central Tokyo.
JAPAN
May 12, 2011

Nuclear energy at a crossroads

The choice Japan must soon make over the future of its energy policy will determine whether it will develop safer nuclear power plants, expand reliance on other energy sources or remain in power-save mode for decades to come.
CULTURE / Music
May 5, 2011

New record label Pachinko starts up despite uncertain times

In 2010, legal downloads of music in Japan increased marginally over 2009, but CD sales were down by 12 percent, and sales by foreign artists, both imports and nihonban (domestically manufactured discs), by 15 percent. It doesn't sound like the best time to start a new record label featuring overseas...

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