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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Feb 25, 2010

Albion Art President Kazumi Arikawa

Kazumi Arikawa, 57, is the president of the Albion Art Co. Ltd. in Tokyo. Arikawa is one of the world's top dealers and collectors of historical jewelry, from the Greco-Roman era to the Art Deco period. He specializes in tiaras and cameos of European monarchs, and jewels that adorned historical figures....
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Feb 18, 2010

Time for Okada to step back and take stock

National team manager Takeshi Okada vowed to get straight back in the saddle after his public dressing-down on Monday. After the beating he has just taken, a period of quiet reflection might be a better option.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 13, 2010

Computer whiz turns 'strangeness' into asset

From his early days in Japan as a destitute student sleeping in train station stairwells to living in a 3-mat room that cost him ¥10,000 a month, Richard Northcott went on to head a mobile software company that now enjoys sales of $2 million a year.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 12, 2010

Phoenix fired up for Japan

"If I knew the answer to that, I would have done it earlier," jokes Thomas Mars, singer with French electro- poppers Phoenix, when asked how his band of perennially stylish underachievers has been transformed into a mainstream, gloriously out-of-place Grammy winning act of the moment.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 12, 2010

The magical mystery tour of 'media artist' Yuri Suzuki

The youngest artist showing at "Cyber Arts Japan," 29-year-old Yuri Suzuki, is among the generation that grew up immersed in the culture that informs so much of new media art today. He has received honorable mentions in Ars Electronica's interactive art division for two pieces — "Prepared Turntable"...
COMMENTARY
Feb 10, 2010

More research key to solving glaciers' riddles

Three years ago, a grim warning from the panel of scientists advising the United Nations on climate change caught the attention of policymakers in Asia.
SOCCER / World cup
Feb 6, 2010

Okada wants to see players' fighting spirit

National team manager Takeshi Okada has warned his players they will be fighting for their World Cup lives at the East Asian Football Championship over the coming week.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 5, 2010

Sunday's stakes in Ukraine

MOSCOW — "A pox on both your houses" may be an appropriate individual response to frustration with the political candidates on offer in an election. But it is a dangerous sentiment for governments to hold. Choice is the essence of governance, and to abstain from it — for whatever reason — is to...
COMMENTARY
Feb 1, 2010

Heated politics of disbelief

LONDON — Last November we had "Climategate," in which somebody hacked into the e-mails at the University of East Anglia and discovered that professor Phil Jones, head of the university's Climate Research Unit (CRU), had been trying to exclude scientific papers he regarded as flawed from being considered...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 30, 2010

Year of U.S.-China discord?

NEW YORK — In 2009, Forbes magazine named U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao the "world's most powerful people." In 2010, we will discover that neither has the power to keep U.S.-Chinese relations on track. That is bad news for those who believe that U.S.-China cooperation...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jan 30, 2010

Campbell set for challenge in Arsenal return

LONDON — Sol Campbell returns to English football's biggest stage on Sunday when Arsenal plays Manchester United at Emirates Stadium.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 28, 2010

It doesn't pay to appease China

LONDON — When former Czech President Vaclav Havel knocked on the door of the Chinese Embassy in Prague to demand the release of the writer Liu Xiaobo, I had an eerie sense of deja vu. Thirty-three years ago, Havel helped initiate Charter 77, the landmark document that crystallized the ideals of all...
EDITORIALS
Jan 28, 2010

The reconstruction of Haiti

As the horrific death toll in Haiti has so tragically demonstrated, the primary defense against earthquakes is to have buildings strong enough to withstand their destructive force. It is estimated that at least 150,000 Haitians perished in the magnitude-7.0 temblor and aftershocks that flattened much...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 27, 2010

A Chinese champion of peace and freedom

PRAGUE — On this past Christmas Day, one of China's best-known human rights activists, the writer and university professor Liu Xiaobo, was condemned to 11 years in prison. Liu is one of the main drafters of Charter 08, a petition inspired by Czechoslovakia's Charter 77, calling on the Chinese government...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 26, 2010

Cool head for the hottest issues

LONDON — Reading Barack Obama's "Dreams From My Father," the U.S. president's beautifully written reflections on his early life and identity, most people are struck by his cool and intellectual approach. This is not to say that he is unemotional. Obama can rage and weep. But he rarely seems to act...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jan 24, 2010

Saving the planet through its trees

Negotiators at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen didn't see eye to eye on much last month, but almost everyone agreed on one thing: To protect the planet we need to save its forests.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 22, 2010

'Surrogates'/'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus'

"Surrogates," the new Bruce Willis sci-fi flick directed by Jonathan Rostow, sketches out a brave new world where the plasticky digital-airbrush aesthetic of Photoshop and Ayumi Hamasaki album covers has triumphed over the imperfections of the meat body; humans lie in "Stim-chairs" all day plugged into...
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Jan 21, 2010

Okada straying from beaten path with Ogasawara callup

As national team manager Takeshi Okada would have it, last week's decision to end J. League player of the year Mitsuo Ogasawara's three-and-half-year international exile was just the next step on his road map toward the World Cup.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 19, 2010

Resolve to get involved this new year

It's that time of year when a lot of us make resolutions — many of which last only a few days. 2010 offers you the opportunity to do something new and get more involved in the community.
Reader Mail
Jan 17, 2010

Retire the foreign player limit

Regarding the Jan. 8 article "NPB, MLB commissioners to discuss prospect of true World Series": At the start of the 2009 Major League Baseball season, there were 229 foreign-born players on team rosters, comprising 28 percent of all players. Thus, MLB teams, with their collection of so many of the best...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 16, 2010

Hope and peril for Sudan

ALGIERS — The future of Sudan hangs in the balance. National elections are due in April. A referendum on the future status of the south of the country is supposed to follow in 2011. Both were key ingredients of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended 20 years of civil war between north...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 15, 2010

Russia looking to expand oil markets in East

SINGAPORE — For a long time, energy-hungry Asia has watched in frustration as Russia, currently the world's biggest producer of both oil and natural gas, sent nearly all its exports to former Soviet bloc partners and Europe, leaving Asian consumers increasingly dependent on imports from the Middle...
COMMENTARY
Jan 11, 2010

Incredible shrinking media

SEATTLE — As you flip through a range of channels on your TV or browse through a stack of newspapers and magazines at a newsstand, you may feel lucky to live in a world where such a plethora of viewpoints is available. It might also seem that the apparent increase in media choices also increases the...
JAPAN / LOOMING CHALLENGES
Jan 6, 2010

Japan urged to exploit its tech, pop culture

Last of five parts
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 3, 2010

Soaking up the simians

Outside the car windows the landscape was a textured patchwork: winter orchards, rice paddies and tile-roofed farmhouses all stitched together by the threads of narrow roads.
COMMENTARY
Dec 30, 2009

A decade of Western losses and Asian gains

Decades don't usually have the courtesy to begin and end on the right year. The social and cultural revolution that Western countries think of when they talk of the " '60s" only got under way in 1962-63, and didn't end until the Middle East war and oil embargo of 1973-74.
BUSINESS
Dec 29, 2009

Lowly Nikkei still has upside to offer

The Nikkei 225 stock average, the world's worst performer in the 20 years since it set its highest level, offers a cheap way to bet on emerging markets, according to Mitsubishi UFJ Asset Management Co.
COMMENTARY
Dec 28, 2009

Star artists reveal the essence of a nation's bureaucratic ways

LOS ANGELES — In America, trying to understand what makes other complex countries and cultures tick is usually done in the university classroom, through travel abroad or by following the mass news media. But there's another option that sometimes produces gold: Peering into other cultures through the...

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear