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JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 31, 2008

Surrogate path for dads not always as easy as for Ricky

When Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin announced on Aug. 21 that he was the father of twin boys born to a surrogate mother, the media reacted cautiously. Martin is single, and for years rumors have circulated that he is gay. Celebrity interviewer Barbara Walters once asked him about this, and he dodged...
Reader Mail
Aug 31, 2008

The language of discrimination

Regarding the Aug. 26 article "Japan defends steps to end discrimination": A country that makes it hard for foreigners to obtain permanent residence speaks its own language of discrimination, don't you think?
CULTURE / Books
Aug 31, 2008

Fiery romance raging in the tumult of war

BESIDE A BURNING SEA by John Shors. New American Library, 2008, 424 pp., $14 (paper) Although most history now is of the revisionist kind, the public still dwells in the past, comfortable with its standard accounting. Little attention is paid to the correction of received fictions. History, as they say,...
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 31, 2008

Why is Japan lagging in solar-energy field?

In the renewable energy industry, how does Japan compare with the rest of the world?
Reader Mail
Aug 31, 2008

What does the government mean?

The news that the Japanese government is making "every conceivable effort" to eliminate racial discrimination makes me wonder -- as a foreigner who has lived in Japan for more than six years -- what the word "conceivable" means.
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Aug 31, 2008

Toyota flies toward the future

Toyota aims to take us on a magic- carpet ride in mobility in about two years with its new vehicle called the Winglet. The device is the latest addition to the company's range of "partner robots" — concept vehicles whose purpose is to explore future forms of personal transportation. Toyota believes...
EDITORIALS
Aug 31, 2008

Overcoming economic drag

One year after the subprime mortgage crisis surfaced in the United States, it is still impacting the global economy. Soaring prices of oil and other natural resources are also affecting it. The Japanese economy appears to have entered a period of contraction. Policymakers of major economies face the...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 31, 2008

Living a clean, green life

Sporting a smart, modern exterior, the home of Keiko and Yoshiyuki Shimizu and their children Ayano, 13, and Haruki, 11, in a residential area of Kawasaki, south of Tokyo in Kanagawa Prefecture, is full of fun features inside. The three- story house has a grassy garden on its flat roof, where you can...
Reader Mail
Aug 31, 2008

Making do when GDPs level off

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BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Aug 31, 2008

Results in Beijing prove that baseball has a place in Olympics

After watching that cliff-hanging, nail-biter, barn-burner of a victory by South Korea over Cuba in the gold medal game at the Beijing Olympics, I am more convinced than ever that baseball — and softball — belong in the Games.
COMMENTARY
Aug 31, 2008

Biden brings a liberal interventionist slant

LONDON — Barack Obama, we are told, chose Joe Biden to be his running mate because he needed an older man, more experienced in foreign policy, to fill the gaps in his resume and reassure American voters that the United States would be safe under an Obama presidency.
Reader Mail
Aug 31, 2008

Attacks on McCain misfire

While I sympathize with the editorial goals of Yoshi Tsurumi in his Aug. 28 article, "McCain aims to win by pandering to bigotry" -- about U.S. Sen. John McCain's attacks on Sen. Barack Obama -- I feel that Tsurumi crosses the line from legitimate complaint and analysis into hysterical and inaccurate...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 31, 2008

Spain to China: Letters of a lasting friendship

AUSTIN COATES: Souvenirs and Letters, by Ramon Rodamilans. London: Athena Press, 2007, 140 pp, £5.99 (paper) The Spanish author of this memoir recognizes early on just how much his subject, the British writer and historian Austin Coates (1922-97), like Coates' Vietnamese companion, "came from south-east...
Reader Mail
Aug 31, 2008

Responsibility for 'doing right'

Douglas Robb, in his Aug. 10 letter, "Japan has a responsibility," presents the credentials of one who, at first glance, appears to have come to terms with the evils of nuclear weapons. He speaks sympathetically of the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and in admiration of their denunciation of these...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 31, 2008

'Backyard naturalist' finds it fun to be green

Tadashi Nemoto's home in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, is proof that you don't need lots of expensive equipment to enjoy an ecological lifestyle.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 31, 2008

Can poetry in translation ever be as poetic in its new language?

A friend who was visiting recently from Germany posed me a difficult question: How can poetry be translated?
JAPAN
Aug 30, 2008

Four one short of forming party

Four Upper House lawmakers Friday declared the formation of Kaikaku Club, a tentative new party, saying they want to change the situation in the currently divided Diet.
JAPAN
Aug 30, 2008

Sub's radioactive leak not harmful, U.S. says

The U.S. government Friday filed its final report on the submarine USS Houston's radioactive leak earlier this year, saying it had no adverse effect on human health or the environment, the Foreign Ministry said.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Aug 30, 2008

Strange transfers have Spurs in trouble just two games into season

LONDON — Tottenham made a dodgy start to last season and manager Martin Jol was shown the door.

Longform

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person