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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 30, 2013

Preaching Endo's theme of a maternal divinity

Endo Shusaku has helped Japanese Christians to assimilate their painful past and has weaned them away from narrow concerns with dogma or sexual guilt to project instead a broad and humane vision of the faith, sensitively attuned to the Japanese context.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 30, 2013

Charting U.S. decline, without anger

One of the odd things about American news programs is how little American news they feature. Typhoons and hurricanes, crazies and lone gunmen, Barack Obama staging a press conference, 10 seconds about the Middle East, a famous actor doing something scandalous, back to the weather: All this giddy fragmentation...
Reader Mail
Jun 30, 2013

Universities are for the Japanese

In his June 24 article, "Top students shunning Japan," professor Takamitsu Sawa presents interesting facts and rightly concludes that Japan may not attract outstanding students from abroad. But he misses a very important point: Are there global brands among the Japanese universities, and do they present...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 30, 2013

Smartphones are killing the art of conversation

If our age is rich in anything, it is, one would think (wrongly), rich in things to talk about. How can anyone nowadays be at a loss for words? What excuse is there for awkward silence? The merest glance at a newspaper furnishes conversational fodder for a lifetime — reminding us, if anyone is in danger...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 29, 2013

Exploring Japan's ancient past through pilgrimage

I've been running pilgrimages in Japan since 1997. So far, I've run the Shikoku 88-Temple Pilgrimage, the Mount Hiei Kaihogyo route in Kyoto (of the Tendai-shu monks), and tens of other smaller pilgrimages in Japan. If you are a runner in Japan, you should be running pilgrimages. If you're a hiker, you...
BUSINESS / Economy / GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS SYMPOSIUM
Jun 28, 2013

Massive data can aid competitiveness if properly harnessed

Big data can be a new tool of corporate competitiveness that offers vast business opportunities, but proper use and analysis of the massive volume of data will require new sets of skills and mind-sets on the part of management, said Phillip Leslie, an associate professor at UCLA Anderson School of Management....
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Jun 28, 2013

Nash set for second season at Toyama

The Toyama Grouses solidified their chance of being a quality playoff contender again next season by securing the services of head coach Bob Nash and veteran guards Masashi Joho and Takeshi Mito for the 2013-14 campaign.
WORLD
Jun 28, 2013

Snowden had contempt for leakers

When he was working in the intelligence community in 2009, Edward Snowden, the U.S. National Security Agency contractor who passed top-secret documents to journalists, appears to have had nothing but disdain for those who leaked classified information, the newspapers that printed their revelations and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 28, 2013

Documenting Japan's 'strange' election campaigns

A native of Tochigi Prefecture and a graduate of the University of Tokyo, where he majored in religious studies, Kazuhiro Soda took an early turn off a conventional career path when he went to New York in 1993 to study filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts. After a stab at fiction filmmaking, which...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 28, 2013

'Compliance'

Of all the films you'll see this year, "Compliance" has, for sure, the most unbelievable plot of them all. The little tagline at the beginning saying "inspired by true events" hasn't stopped people from taking outrage at director Craig Zobel's supposed exaggerations, with "Nobody could possibly be that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 28, 2013

'Stanley Ka Dabba (Japanese Title: Stanley no Obentobako)'

The politics of the bento (lunch box) are embedded in the Japanese DNA and most of us have an ingrained sense of the power play brewing inside one's lunch. Which is why "Stanley Ka Dabba" (international title: "Stanley's Tiffin Box") will strike a chord."Stanley Ka Dabba" hails from Bollywood, but it's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 27, 2013

July Live

Though you might be dreading July, with its sweltering heat and seasonal rain, the month makes up for it with a slew of exciting concerts. It's time to let loose — and pray the venues have air conditioning. Here's a selection of what July has in store.
Japan Times
WORLD / FOCUS
Jun 26, 2013

Snowden files stoke U.S. security concerns

The ability of contractor-turned-fugitive Edward Snowden to evade arrest is raising new concerns among U.S. officials about the security of top-secret documents he is believed to have in his possession — and about the possibility that he could willingly share them with those who assist his escape....
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 26, 2013

U.S. spying aimed at citizens

The U.S. government's efforts to monitor digital communications are more dangerous to civil liberties than they are to al-Qaida and other organizations like it.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 26, 2013

James Gandolfini and the art of 'The Sopranos'

James Gandolfini's legacy will remain a cascade of popular television programs that people who search for quality aren't embarrassed about to watch and debate.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 26, 2013

Disaster-relief volunteer networks are essential

Takashi Yamamoto, 42, president of Peace Boat Disaster Relief Volunteer Center, is Japan's leading expert on volunteer disaster-relief activities. In 1995, when he was a staffer of the educational cruise ship Peace Boat, Yamamoto began working on disaster relief for Kobe after the Great Hanshin Earthquake...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Jun 25, 2013

Finally, 'The Last of Us' is here

Finally, 'The Last of Us' is here
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jun 25, 2013

Tweak the Constitution now, think later?

Whether it happens or not depends heavily on the results of the upcoming House of Councilors elections, but Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has clearly announced his intention to make amending the Constitution a campaign issue.
COMMUNITY
Jun 25, 2013

Western men, on Japanese women: book excerpts

• From "Understanding Japanese Women: Taking the Mystery Out of the Mysterious Women of Japan" by David J. Radtke:
ASIA PACIFIC / FOCUS
Jun 24, 2013

China's slump puts U.S. economy at risk

Concerns are growing about China's economy as the country's new leadership tries to get a handle on deep problems that experts say have been years in the making.
COMMENTARY / Japan / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 24, 2013

Going with the flow in the trade office for Japan

There are some things to say as one leaves the New York office of Japan's JETRO, having worked amid the ebb and flow of trade for 44 years.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 23, 2013

Taking the long Trans-Siberian road to Japan

In the late summer of 2009, while standing hung over on a pier at Fushiki Port in Takaoka, Toyama Prefecture, one of those little-visited industrial cities on the west coast of Honshu, I suddenly found myself staring into the eyes of a tiger. This came as no surprise: It seemed a quite proper way to...
Reader Mail
Jun 23, 2013

Right to express religious views

When I noticed Drusilla de Lanor's June 13 letter, "No offense taken to 'that guy' " (which was a reaction to Brian Redmond's June 9 letter, "An offensive religious reference"), I thought of how enlightened De Lanor must be.

Longform

A mushroom cloud from the atomic bombing on Hiroshima taken from a U.S. military aircraft on Aug. 6, 1945. Copying the photo without permission is prohibited.
80 years on, a Japanese American hibakusha recalls the day the bomb dropped