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EDITORIALS
Apr 20, 2012

Stopping the North's next move

The United Nations Security Council on Monday "strongly condemned" North Korea for its failed rocket launch three days earlier and announced that it will impose new sanctions. The North's failed attempt to launch a satellite clearly violates a 2009 UNSC resolution that prohibits it from carrying out...
COMMENTARY
Apr 19, 2012

Afghan lies mirror deception of Vietnam War

In the midst of the Taliban attacks in central Kabul on Sunday, a journalist called the British embassy for a comment. "I really don't know why they are doing this," said the exasperated diplomat who answered the phone. "We'll be out of here in two years' time. All they have to do is wait."
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 18, 2012

A white flag in Latin America's war on drugs

The retired general who won Guatemala's presidency in November seems an unlikely advocate of a kinder approach toward counternarcotics policy. Otto Perez — whose party's symbol is a clenched fist — campaigned on the promise that his government would crack down on the crime ravaging parts of the country....
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 17, 2012

Too little outcry over Palestinian censorship

A university lecturer and single mother of two, Ismat Abdul-Khaleq, was arrested in the West Bank on March 28 for criticizing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Facebook. Perhaps this is what Abbas meant when he said during a recent interview with al-Jazeera that his party, Fatah, was a political...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 16, 2012

Could happiness be the new frontier?

Bookstore shelves all over Tokyo are stacked with shiawase hautsū bon (幸せハウツー本, how-to-be-happy books), which, surprisingly perhaps, outnumber the dire-prediction books that spin tales about what's ailing the global economy and how Japan will chinbotsu (沈没, sink) in five years or less....
BASKETBALL
Apr 16, 2012

Shining Suns spoil Jets' home finale

There was a storybook finish to Sunday's Chiba Jets-Miyazaki Shining Suns game. But unlike a Disney-like fantasy for the hosts, the Shining Suns authored a riveting last-second finish, winning 78-76.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / WEEK 3
Apr 15, 2012

Legendary Chigusa jazz cafe reborn

A lot of people were left feeling blue after Chigusa, Japan's oldest jazz cafe, closed in 2007 when the Noge district of Yokohama where it had been serving Satchmo with its coffees since 1933 fell victim to developers.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 15, 2012

Wild Watch turns 30 this month

As April 2nd's 30th anniversary of my first Wild Watch column in The Japan Times neared, I was in India — teeming Delhi to be precise, with its cacophony of people, honking traffic and barking dogs, though a tailorbird would stop and call outside my window, where a palm squirrel never tired of chattering....
EDITORIALS
Apr 14, 2012

North Korea's failure that provokes

North Korea on Friday failed in its anticipated satellite launch, with the rocket splintering into pieces. The North should not attempt another launch or nuclear test, which will only contribute to heightening tensions in the region.
JAPAN
Apr 13, 2012

Threat of monster tsunami poses ominous possibilities

The government's revised quake-tsunami estimates have sent shock waves across Japan and forced local municipalities to reassess their worst-case scenarios.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Apr 13, 2012

Ota exemplifies impact good role players can have

Role players rarely dominate the headlines. But smart coaches and successful player-personnel bosses build teams that get potent production from lesser-known players.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 12, 2012

Voina points to the art of dissent

The photo shows an unshaven Russian glaring into the distance from behind prison bars. It's a striking shot, so it is hardly surprising that when it was printed on a 4×6-meter banner and unfurled at an entrance to the 20-km exclusion zone around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the police officers...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 12, 2012

Voina points to the art of dissent

The photo shows an unshaven Russian glaring into the distance from behind prison bars. It's a striking shot, so it is hardly surprising that when it was printed on a 4×6-meter banner and unfurled at an entrance to the 20-km exclusion zone around the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the police officers...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Apr 10, 2012

Architect builds bridge to Thai wife

Yoichi Kubota, a scholar in environmental planning and design, met Patmakorn Suntharothok, who was to become his future wife, for the first time when she was studying business management in the United States 12 years ago.
JAPAN
Apr 10, 2012

LDP and Komeito shoot down reform talks

Two main opposition parties on Monday spurned a call by the ruling Democratic Party of Japan to hold talks on social security and tax reform, dealing another setback to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda as he seeks support for a contentious tax hike bill.
BUSINESS / ASEAN-JAPAN SYMPOSIUM
Apr 7, 2012

ASEAN members see mixed future; ties with Japan entering new phase

Southeast Asia has emerged from the 2008-2009 global financial crisis with a robust economic expansion that, along with China and India, makes up a new growth center of the world economy. Still, major countries in the region foresee a mixed picture in the years ahead.
EDITORIALS
Apr 6, 2012

Consumption tax tizzy

The March 30 submission to the Diet by the Noda Cabinet of a bill to raise the consumption tax from April 2014 has led some lawmakers of the ruling bloc to express their opposition to the bill. On March 29, Mr. Shizuka Kamei, head of the New People's Party, a minor party forming a coalition with the...

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