Search - people

 
 
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 2011

Jobs could reboot working class

In the week since he announced he was stepping down as Apple's CEO, Steve Jobs has been accorded the kind of demigod status that Americans bestow on the handful of their countrymen who invent, manufacture and market the goods that change their lives for the better.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 1, 2011

Sachiko Hara makes her mark in Germany

Tokyo-born Sachiko Hara, 46, was the apple of her ordinary, working-parents' eye. She was encouraged to get a degree in German studies from the prestigious Sophia University, and after that it seemed some sort of high-flying career was hers for the taking.
JAPAN
Aug 31, 2011

Public looks to Noda to provide stability

People interviewed Tuesday on the streets of Tokyo voiced hope that new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda will quickly find ways to rebuild the tsunami-ravaged Tohoku region but were frustrated by the frequent changes in leaders and called for a stable government.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 31, 2011

Goodbye totalitarianism, hello elected strongmen

A month ago, I was sitting in a restaurant with Srdja Popovic, a democratic activist and leader of the revolution that toppled Slobodan Milosevic in 2000. We had met to discuss the revolutions ricocheting around the Middle East.
EDITORIALS
Aug 31, 2011

Leading a nation in crisis

Democratic Party of Japan lawmakers on Monday chose Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda as the party's new chief. On Tuesday, the Diet elected him as Japan's new prime minister, succeeding Prime Minister Naoto Kan.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 30, 2011

'Protection racket' for Net domain names

The Internet's domain-name system (DNS) was formalized in the late 1990s by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). I was ICANN's founding chairman, and we more or less followed the rules of trademarks, with an overlay of "first come, first served."
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 28, 2011

The best of his years . . .

This summer, my translator and I stood in Izumi Matsumoto's home-cum-office in Tokyo, where he had just been searching in vain for any original drawings from "Spring Wonder," which was, 27 years ago, the first manga serial he pitched to leading comics magazine Weekly Shonen Jump.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Aug 26, 2011

Vlaikidis knows path won't be easy in Iwate

Before sitting down for dinner on Tuesday evening, Iwate Big Bulls coach Vlasios Vlaikidis spoke in measured tones about the difficult work of building a team from scratch.
JAPAN
Aug 25, 2011

Nuclear refugees struggle to cope with uncertain future

Like thousands of other people, Miwa Kamoshita's life was turned upside down when the March 11 tsunami struck the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, leading her and her family to voluntarily evacuate their home in Iwaki, some 40 km south of the crippled power station.
Reader Mail
Aug 25, 2011

Laws that enforce conservation

Regarding James Dobson's Aug. 14 letter, "Power-saving mindset has limits": If the government would make laws to enforce conservation, Japan could easily reduce energy usage, greenhouse gas emissions, and pollution-related health conditions.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Aug 24, 2011

Kim's compassion enhances her legendary stature

"No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child."
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2011

Latest famine in Somalia born of old failures

If the past is anything to go by, televisions the world over will show heart-wrenching pictures of malnourished Somali babies with distended bellies; of flies feeding on their eyes; of mouths sucking at milkless breasts. Environmental experts will pontificate on the recurrent droughts in Somalia.
Reader Mail
Aug 21, 2011

No country for Asian refugees

Regarding the July 6 article "UNHCR exec lauds refugee strides, urges more": In the 1970s, Japanese vessels in the South China Sea rescued a lot of boat people who hoped to live in Japan. After several years, though, most of them left for the United States and other Western countries.
Reader Mail
Aug 21, 2011

Japan's wall of double standards

It's not clear whether the comment by Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda, reported in the Aug. 17 Kyodo article "S. Korea blasts Noda's war criminal remarks," is aimed at the Japanese public or at other countries including the United States.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WEEK 3
Aug 21, 2011

Three Mile Island's lessons for Japan

In the early hours of March 28, 1979, human errors and mechanical failures combined to cause a cooling system to stop working at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. One of the station's two nuclear cores overheated, thrusting the plant into a crisis that would...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 21, 2011

Should wartime and peace allow such different attitudes to murder?

It is now nearly a month since the July 22 attacks on innocent Norwegians by the rightwing anti-Muslim terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, and aftershocks from those mass murders are still reverberating around the world. Yet massacres of innocents are everyday occurrences in wartime.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 20, 2011

Amnesty chief targets death penalty

There is a wide gap between Japan and much of the rest of the world when it comes to human rights issues, and nongovernmental organizations need to play a role in changing people's awareness, especially on the death penalty, said Hideki Wakabayashi, the newly appointed executive director of Amnesty International...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 19, 2011

Pitt, Penn heap praise on Malick's 'real world'

Terrence Malick kicks off his new film, "The Tree of Life," with a bang. The Big Bang, actually. Over the next 138 minutes, the viewer witnesses a journey through history that ends up in a small town in Texas. Critics seem to agree that you'll either love it or hate it.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 18, 2011

Sidelined by quake, Libyans here still seek Gadhafi ouster

Japan's tiny Libyan community found itself in a tight spot when radiation scares swept the nation following the Tohoku triple disaster and foreigners fled the country en masse.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 18, 2011

Dommune goes outside for summer

Naohiro Ukawa, creator of live-streaming microclub Dommune, is pulling out all the stops this weekend with Freedommune 0 (Zero) in aid of victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, when he takes the studio outdoors for a full day and night of dance music.
EDITORIALS
Aug 18, 2011

Pondering victims and the future

Japan on Monday marked the 66th anniversary of its surrender to the Allied Powers in World War II amid unprecedented circumstances. Both those who attended the anniversary ceremony at Tokyo's Budokan and other Japanese must have superimposed the Tohoku-Pacific region devastation from the March 11 earthquake...
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Aug 17, 2011

Why do Japanese advertisers suggest Internet-search keywords?

It seems that everywhere you look in Japan these days, printed advertising has Internet-style "search buttons" somewhere in the design, with Japanese text inside a box indicating the term to be searched. And many TV commercials end with a short phrase "such and such de kensaku" ("search on the Internet...
COMMENTARY
Aug 17, 2011

Britain gropes for solutions

The images of burning buildings and looting of shops that took place between Aug. 5 and 9 in parts of London and other major cities, including Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, have rightly made the English people ashamed. The damage caused has been serious and some families have lost their homes...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Aug 16, 2011

Post-3/11 meeting leaves group of strangers weeping in Bath

Here at our home in Louisiana in March, my daughters and I were so touched by the news of the Japanese earthquakes and tsunami that we decided to fold 1,000 origami cranes — a senbazuru — to send to Japan.
Reader Mail
Aug 14, 2011

Innate keys to a bright future

One of the many interesting and unique aspects of Japanese culture that I experienced as a foreigner in Japan from 2003 to 2010 was jishuku. Jishuku refers to voluntary moderation in one's actions, typically after a terrible event or occurrence involving loss of life or human suffering. Jishuku is a...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Aug 14, 2011

Japan's unsung role in India's struggle for independence

Nestled in the upmarket Wada district of Tokyo's Suginami Ward, Renkoji Temple is a model of gentility. On weekday mornings, pensioners sit and sketch its prayer hall while housewives chat quietly in the shade of its well-tended trees. Given this setting, it would be easy to mistake the bust of a bespectacled...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 14, 2011

A heady witches' brew of midsummer nightmares

Aside from the Summer High School Baseball Tournament at Koshien Stadium and NHK documentaries reminiscing about World War II, mid-August tends to be a quiet time and most of Japan's weekly magazines skip an issue.
Reader Mail
Aug 14, 2011

Emergency care system in trouble

Regarding the July 24 Kyodo article "Hospitals turn away patients at record rate": The central and local governments need to exercise strong leadership in getting hospitals and the public to take steps to streamline Japan's emergency care system.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past