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LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 13, 2008

Hopes of silence in Tokyo undergo brutal assault

The concept of chinmoku wa kin (silence is golden) isn't a Tokyo thing. Like a lot of other nifty modernities, such as buttered pancakes and the subway system, it was imported into Japan and adopted into city living when the country opened up to the West in the late 19th century.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 13, 2008

Team Japan faces huge hurdles on road to Homeless World Cup

Japan's collective image of homelessness is a fairly bleak one: Men in unwashed clothing, faces devoid of expression, hauling armfuls of flattened cardboard that will be their resting place for the night; rows of depressingly permanent-looking blue tarp huts in parks and beneath bridges, tucked out of...
EDITORIALS
May 13, 2008

Yet more tragedy for Myanmar

The tragedy that is Myanmar worsens. A country that was once Southeast Asia's richest and most promising has steadily deteriorated. It is now a corrupt military-run tyranny, an economic basket case and an international pariah. The man-made disaster in Myanmar was horribly compounded this month when cyclone...
COMMENTARY
May 12, 2008

Clinton's surprise appeal on campaign trail

LOS ANGELES — How much suffering must a nation and its people go through before everyone says enough is enough?
EDITORIALS
May 11, 2008

Coping with new strains of flu

The Diet has passed revisions to the Infectious Disease Law and the Quarantine Law to effectively cope with a possible outbreak of new types of influenza. There is fear that deadly new types of influenza will emerge, since the H5N1 bird flu is spreading mainly in Southeast Asia and bird-to-human infection...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / FREEWHEELIN' ACROSS JAPAN
May 9, 2008

Green and to the heart of the matter

First of two parts
EDITORIALS
May 8, 2008

Help to live instead of die

Suicide by inhaling hydrogen sulfide has become a social phenomenon in Japan. Police say that some 300 people may have killed themselves this way in the past year, including at least 70 from January to April. Even during the first week of May, suicides by inhaling the gas continued.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 8, 2008

An aura of controversy in the chase for the new

Ever since 1917, when Marcel Duchamp submitted a urinal to the Society of Independent Artists' exhibition, arguing that it was art, anything has become acceptable. Artist Chris Burden shot himself in the arm in a Los Angeles gallery in 1971; Piero Manzoni canned what was allegedly his own feces and sold...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 5, 2008

Nobel Peace Prize winner hits moves to change Article 9

CHIBA — Altering the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution could threaten the safety of Asian people and trigger a regional arms race, Nobel laureate Mairead Corrigan-Maguire told a symposium Sunday.
Reader Mail
May 4, 2008

Mental check of sailors a good idea

Regarding the April 30 article "U.S. sailors to undergo mental check": The survey seems like a great idea and should have been part of our overseas survey. But people are going to lie about things and lie about stuff they did.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 4, 2008

Japan's media plays nursemaid to nation's immature democracy

A major Japanese newspaper publishes an article denouncing the prime minister. Reporters hold a rally to criticize his Cabinet. The government responds by banning sales of the edition of the newspaper that carried the article, indicting its author for violation of the Newspaper Law. Rightwing agitators...
Japan Times
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
May 3, 2008

It's a voyage of discovery for Peace Boat couple

Tatsuya Yoshioka and Rachel Armstrong Yoshioka met in 1998 aboard a cruise ship during an international exchange organized by Peace Boat, the Japan-based nongovernmental organization that works toward social change mainly by chartering passenger vessels for "peace voyages."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Apr 29, 2008

Yasujiro Tanaka

Yasujiro Tanaka, aged 65, is a turnaround expert and volunteer guide in the city of Nagasaki, in Kyushu, where walking is often the only form of transportation. Born and raised in this beautiful port city famous for its steep hills and the winding steps that weave through its houses, Tanaka has always...
Reader Mail
Apr 27, 2008

Protests serve to remind

Regarding the April 16 article "What China and the world must do now," I am surprised and disappointed that professor Tom Plate understands so little about the anti-Chinese protests sweeping the world. I and everyone else are well aware of the fact that China regards Tibet as a part of China. The problem...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 27, 2008

Taking readers back to the Occupation

FROM JAPAN WITH LOVE, text and photos by Mary Ruggieri, foreword by Richard Ruggieri. San Rafael, CA: Portsmouth Publishing, 2008, 264 pp., 400 monochrome photos, $24.95 (paper) From the autumn of 1946 to the spring of 1948 Mary Ruggieri was stationed in the Women's Army Corps as a member of the Allied...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 27, 2008

Weighing up a media culture that sees 58-cm waistlines as the norm

Earlier this month, the French Parliament began contemplating a bill that would make it illegal to promote extreme thinness. Following the death in 2006 of a Brazilian supermodel from complications associated with anorexia, the issue of young women purposely starving themselves for the sake of self-image...
COMMENTARY
Apr 25, 2008

World must shame African leaders into taking action

LONDON — The recent African summit at the United Nations could not conceal the number of failed states in Africa.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Apr 25, 2008

Set the controls to quirk factor 10

After listening to Tokyo Pinsalocks' brilliant new minialbum "Planet Rita," it's frightening to think that the trio — bassist Hisayo, singer Naoko and drummer Reiko — almost sold their soul to the devil, and not the rock 'n' roll one at that, which would be cool. No, in a bid to get famous they almost...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 23, 2008

Kamei seeks to undermine death penalty

Japanese politicians are generally not very vocal when it comes to their views on capital punishment, mainly because a large majority of the public supports the death penalty.
JAPAN
Apr 23, 2008

Lawmakers visit Yasukuni festival

A group of lawmakers from the ruling and opposition parties paid a visit to Yasukuni Shrine on Tuesday for its annual spring festival, just one day after South Korean President Lee Myung Bak said in Tokyo he would focus on building friendly ties with Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Apr 22, 2008

Do you expect the Nagano leg of the Olympic torch relay to go smoothly?

Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 22, 2008

Bilateral ties hinge on young: Lee

The future appears to be the key theme South Korean President Lee Myung Bak has chosen to stress during his first trip to Japan since his inauguration.
EDITORIALS
Apr 20, 2008

Major ruling on SDF's Iraq mission

The Nagoya High Court Thursday ruled that the Air Self-Defense Force's mission in Iraq includes activities that violate the war-renouncing Constitution. It rejects the government's explanations concerning the dispatch of an ASDF unit to Iraq. Although the government says that the ruling does not bind...

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