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JAPAN
Jun 2, 2011

No-confidence vote set for Kan Cabinet

The Liberal Democratic Party, New Komeito and Tachiagare Nippon (Sunrise Party of Japan) submitted a binding no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Naoto Kan on Wednesday evening, shaking the administration to the core as discontented members of the Democratic Party of Japan, including Cabinet appointees,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 2, 2011

Pakistan again turns toward China

Large events sometimes have unintended strategic consequences, as the killing of Osama bin Laden in a compound in Abbottabad, a military-dominated town near Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, shows.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 2, 2011

Festival season kicks into gear with Taico Club

This weekend's Taico Club in Nagano Prefecture will be the first of four summer-festival appearances for Tokyo synth-pop/postpunk act Kimonos. Formed only last year, the duo of Leo Imai and Zazen Boys' Shutoku Mukai will also play at Fuji Rock (July 30), World Happiness (Aug. 7) and the Rising Sun Rock...
COMMENTARY
May 31, 2011

Business bent deflates the sails of India's left

A common joke used to make the rounds in Kolkata, where I grew up and found my footing in journalism. The joke was that West Bengal, whose capital city is Kolkata, was more Marxist than China — this in the heyday of communism. While China retained its Marxist model of governance, it was shrewd enough...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 31, 2011

The edified and TEDified in Japan

On May 21, Tokyo's third annual TEDx event was held at Miraikan (the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation) in Odaiba. Though officially closed until June 11 due to the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake, Miraikan hosted 300 guests to this year's event: TEDxTokyo 2011: Enter the Unknown.
Reader Mail
May 29, 2011

An unimaginable commitment

The advice that Kotaku Wamura, former mayor of Fudai, Iwate Prefecture, is quoted as giving at his retirement — "Even if you encounter opposition, have conviction and finish what you start. In the end, people will understand" (May 18 AP article "How one village defied the tsunami") — reminds me of...
Reader Mail
May 29, 2011

Six decades of 'inconveniences'

The May 8 letter by Yoshio Shimoji, "" only shows there are many Okinawan/Japanese people plagued with heiwaboke (taking peace for granted), who don't appreciate what Americans have done for Japan. Its democracy and economic prosperity were not just the result of hard work. The U.S. government protected...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 29, 2011

Kan government struggles to raise reconstruction funds

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), the British economist who advocated government intervention to regulate financial health, has lately been cited in the Japanese press in reference to the current administration's plan to raise the consumption tax (CT). When he held the post of finance minister for five...
COMMENTARY
May 25, 2011

Risky business, IMF style

We need to have a clear understanding about what is happening with the International Monetary Fund. Do not for a minute believe the current scandal is just one of those more or less happening things. It may not be the total end of the world for the IMF, but if the world's largest money-granting bureaucracy...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
May 24, 2011

Polyglot comfortable between cultures

Alessandro Gerevini, an Italian writer and translator who has lived and worked in Japan for 16 years, believes that Japanese and Italian cultures have a lot in common.
COMMENTARY
May 23, 2011

Health in hand with education

Better education, particularly among mothers, is widely associated with better health. Experiences in several countries have shown the power of education to increase the nutritional levels and the health status of the poor.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 23, 2011

Tamura residents challenge hot zone for short trip home

Residents of Tamura, Fukushima Prefecture, were allowed to visit their homes in the nuclear no-go zone for two hours Sunday.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 22, 2011

Nuclear policy was once sold by Japan's media

Prime Minister Naoto Kan's decision to ask Chubu Electric Power Co. to shut the Hamaoka nuclear power plant in Shizuoka Prefecture met with mixed reactions. The residents of nearby Omaezaki are concerned since the facility employs about 2,800 people, but Chubu's subsequent announcement that it would...
Japan Times
LIFE
May 22, 2011

Up close and personal: Why Dylan is so big in Japan

It was the fall of 1963, when — in what seemed like a flash of lightning — I became a fan of Bob Dylan the moment I heard "Blowin' in the Wind" on the radio. I was in my first year of high school.
EDITORIALS
May 21, 2011

Trying conditions for evacuees

More than t wo months after the massive earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan, the pace of reconstruction work is gradually picking up. But more than 100,000 people continue to live in harsh conditions at temporary shelters.
EDITORIALS
May 21, 2011

Reforming social welfare system

The health and welfare ministry on May 12 announced a social welfare reform proposal aimed at making the nation's social welfare system sustainable in the face of Japan's graying population and low economic growth.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 20, 2011

Depp adds more gold to his treasure chest

Johnny Depp is wrestling with a monster. No, it's not one of the numerous sea monsters from "Pirates of the Caribbean" — it's the franchise itself.
COMMENTARY / World
May 19, 2011

A visit to Libya's front line of democracy

Last week I flew to Benghazi to meet Libya's Transitional National Council (TNC), a visit coordinated with European Union High Representative Catherine Ashton and NATO allies. What I saw reminded me of my country 20 years ago, just after Poland's first free elections.
COMMENTARY
May 18, 2011

'Neverendum' returns to Scotland's agenda

"I'd grown up with the assumption that Scotland was a poor, wee, deprived place that had never had a fair kick of the ball and could certainly never stand on its own two feet," said Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP), whose goal is an independent Scotland.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
May 16, 2011

The new enervated Tepco

With the onset of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant crisis following the March 11 Tohoku-Pacific earthquake, radioactive substances continue to seep into the sea, air and soil. Residents within a designated proximity of the plant will likely have to live away from their homes a long time. The prospect...
EDITORIALS
May 16, 2011

Volunteer force declines

During the Golden Week holidays from April 28 to May 8, a total of some 78,000 volunteers worked in Iwate, Miyagi and Fukushima prefectures, which were devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, according to "disaster volunteer centers" set up by local governments in the prefectures.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
May 15, 2011

Japan's renegade hero gives Saipan new hope

Graciano Lisua doesn't look like someone who would get too worked up about ghosts. Yet superstition, says the broad-shouldered, barrel-chested Chomorron as he leans on his machete, is of great import for the inhabitants of the Mariana Islands.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 14, 2011

Questions that keep eating me

Here's a short list of some of the questions I first heard in my early days in Japan, in the mid 1970s.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
May 13, 2011

Rookie coach Blackwell admires veteran peers

Leading their teams to three consecutive Final Fours, Ryukyu's Dai Oketani and Hamamatsu Higashimikawa's Kazuo Nakamura have earned respect from their coaching peers and helped set the standard of excellence for which all future bj-league coaches will be judged.
JAPAN
May 13, 2011

Fukushima village on way to becoming ghost town

Sleepy, idyllic and dangerously irradiated, the village of Iitate is preparing to evacuate.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 13, 2011

Aronofsky's footwork faultless in 'Black Swan'

We liked Darren Aronofsky when he was the scrappy young filmmaker from Brooklyn (via Harvard) who financed his debut, "Pi," in 1998 with $100-loans from friends and relatives, and relied on promotion that consisted of tagging Tokyo's streets with the film's logo.
Reader Mail
May 12, 2011

Good time to mull future course

Regarding Chubu Electric Power Co.'s decision to suspend operations of its Hamaoka nuclear plant in Shizuoka Prefecture in response to Prime Minister Naoto Kan's call to do so for safety reasons: What we need now are the right decisions and it is time to review and think.

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