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CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Aug 11, 2013

An "Unknown Escape" and an explanation of the LDP's Constitution plans; CM of the week: Potenon

In June, 11 Japanese people whose family members died shortly after the end of World War II in the area now called North Korea traveled to the communist country to carry out memorial services for their kin. It was the first time they'd ever done so on North Korean soil.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 10, 2013

'Haiku killings' recall infamous horror story

Mitake, a tiny mountain hamlet located in eastern Yamaguchi Prefecture, is administrated as part of the city of Shunan (pop. 150,000). The area is so remote, cell phones don't always receive signals there.
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Aug 10, 2013

Online firearms loophole 'bigger than gun shows'

The marketplace for firearms on the Internet, where buyers are not required to undergo background checks, is so vast that advocates for stricter regulations now consider online sales a greater threat than the gun show loophole.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Aug 9, 2013

Film helps heal A-bombing, and family, wounds

In a poignant scene in the award-winning 2010 documentary "Atomic Mom," filmmaker M.T. Silvia tells the story of Sadako Sasaki, a Hiroshima atomic bombing victim, as she presents 1,000 paper cranes to Silvia's mother, Pauline, a former U.S. Navy biologist involved in radiation testing on animals in the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 9, 2013

Sounds that stem from quietude — when a tree falls down

Perhaps the best thing about living on a small island in Japan of just 583 people (258 men and 325 women) is that you can walk out your door and kiss the online world goodbye. Here, most people don't walk around glued to their cellphones, the majority don't even have smartphones, and very few take pictures...
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 9, 2013

The Central African Republic abandoned to its violent fate

It was dusk when armed Seleka rebels dragged the teenager from the road leading north toward Kobe. They pulled her into the jungle and raped her for several hours. Her friend, Lisa Moussa, 17, was more fortunate. As soon as she saw the rebels, she began running. They tried to kill her, shooting until...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 7, 2013

Koki Mitani adds comedy to bunraku

Koki Mitani is Japan's top comedy writer, having written a number of stage plays, TV dramas and films. He also loves working with puppets, and has put together a serialized puppet drama for public broadcaster NHK. Despite a love of puppets, however, it was only about 10 years ago when he first saw a...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 7, 2013

'No more hibakusha' takes on new meaning after 3/11

A Japanese scholar writes of his outrage in 2011 over the realization that the Fukushima nuclear plant accidents would produce a new generation of hibakusha.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 6, 2013

Homo economicus might be an idiot

Surprisingly, in social simulations, the species that helped others to gain resources and reproduce ended up doing better than those who acted out of pure self-interest.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 6, 2013

SkyTruth, the environment and the satellite revolution

Somewhere in the South Pacific, thousands of miles from the nearest landfall, there is a fishing ship. Let's say you're on it. Go onto the open deck, scream, jump around naked, fire a machine gun into the air — who will ever know? You are about as far from anyone as it is possible to be.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / FOCUS
Aug 6, 2013

Grahams shepherded Post through tumultuous eight decades

It began with a bankruptcy sale in 1933, when a Republican businessman and presidential confidant reinvented himself as a newspaper publisher in the nation's capital. It ended with an announcement that his descendants had sold the newspaper to an Internet wizard who lives in the Washington on the other...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Aug 5, 2013

SOFA: an unequal treaty that trumps the Constitution?

The prime minister's dogged focus on amending the American-tainted Constitution might reflect an uncomfortable unspoken truth — that it may be easier to change the Constitution than revise another document of potentially greater importance: the Status of Forces Agreement between Japan and the United States, which governs the legal status of the U.S. military presence in Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / How-tos / HOME TRUTHS
Aug 5, 2013

The aging issue of Chiba New Town

The Chiba New Town development project was begun in the late 1960s by the Chiba prefectural government, and a decade later, joined by the Land Development Corporation, the government housing organ that would morph into the Urban Renaissance (UR) Agency in 2004. It is located in the northern part of the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / OUR MAN IN TOKYO
Aug 5, 2013

Young Ethiopia envoy brings new ideas, energy

Ethiopian Ambassador Markos Tekle Rike, 34, says he has always felt a special connection between his country and Japan, although he did not have any personal interest in this country before he arrived here 2½ years ago.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2013

Openings of Iwaki beaches offer semblance of normalcy

Every day, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., a part-time worker at one of Fukushima's most well-known beaches walks toward the shoreline and lowers a dosimeter to the water. The device measures radiation, and its readings this summer have delivered the best news one can hope for 70 km south of a still-leaking nuclear...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2013

Can Egypt's past spur respect for plurality now?

One must hope that Egypt's experience of recent decades will induce a broad range of Egyptians to seek an answer based on respect for a plurality of ideas today.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 3, 2013

YouTube videos hold a sliver of hope for future elections

During the recent campaign for the Upper House, a YouTube video emerged revealing the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's attitude toward the electorate. A woman attending a rally in Fukushima by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe carried a placard that asked the LDP leader his stance on the nuclear energy controversy....
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 2, 2013

Why acupuncture is giving doubters the needle

You can't get crystal healing on the National Health Service. It doesn't fund faith healing. And most doctors believe magnets are best stuck on fridges, not patients. But ask for a treatment in which an expert examines your tongue, smells your skin and tries to unblock the flow of life force running...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 1, 2013

It's never too late to go in search of forgotten love

Filmmaker David Frankel has an ear for what women say — to each other, to their men and to themselves, though the last is not necessarily made audible to others.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 1, 2013

Linkin Park returns to Summer Sonic

Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park always starts his trips to Tokyo the same way. Jet-lagged and unable to sleep on the first night, the band's founding member has made a ritual of hitting up the Tsukiji fish market around 4 a.m. for sushi and a beer.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUJI ROCK 2013
Jul 31, 2013

Tame Impala

You've been to Japan as visitors before, how does this trip compare?
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 31, 2013

Kerry fights the wrong war as Syria grieves on

Now into their third year of grief, with 2 million people in refugee camps, the Syrians know better than to expect deliverance from the pre-eminent Western power.
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 31, 2013

Shark attacks on humans are rare but not unheard of

With beach season in full swing, the question inevitably arises: What are the chances of getting attacked by a shark?
Japan Times
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Jul 30, 2013

Fairley tries to avoid spoilers but it's all part of the game

The standard opening line when speaking to someone about the TV series "Game of Thrones" basically amounts to a spoiler alert.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jul 30, 2013

Long-living Japanese society needs better 'quality of death'

A quarter of a million bedbound elderly people are kept alive in Japan, often for years, by a feeding tube surgically inserted into their stomach. A few months ago, my 96-year-old grandmother became one of them.

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers