search

 
 
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2008

Rights of rational beings who are not human

MELBOURNE — On June 25, in a historic vote, the Spanish parliament's Commission for the Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries declared its support for The Great Ape Project, a proposal to grant rights to life, liberty and protection from torture to our closest nonhuman relatives: chimpanzees, bonobos,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2008

Progress in making criminal leaders pay

PRAGUE — It has been only a little more than 15 years since the first of the contemporary international courts was created to prosecute those who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Yet there is already a persistent theme in criticism of such tribunals: In their effort to do justice,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2008

Scorched-manager policy

MONTREAL — Signs of the American economy's perilous condition are everywhere — from yawning fiscal and current-account deficits to plummeting home prices and a feeble dollar.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jul 22, 2008

Clustering with the Europeans

Japan was among the 111 countries that took part in an international conference held in Dublin, Ireland, in May and unanimously adopted a treaty that, in principle, prohibits all signatories from using, developing, producing, stockpiling, retaining or transferring cluster munitions.
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Jul 22, 2008

Big clubs' shortcomings taking shine off J. League championship race

On the face of it, a league table where just 10 points separated the top 13 teams at the halfway point of the season would suggest an exciting contest, but this year's J. League has been more infuriating than it has been enthralling.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2008

Quiet changes in Japan's defense

OSAKA — Japan appears to be drifting aimlessly under a divided government, and its external policy seems equally disoriented under a Fukuda administration that has been up to its neck and largely unsuccessful in blazing new trails for the country. Surprisingly, though, bureaucratic autopilot does not...
COMMUNITY
Jul 22, 2008

Diet member Fujita responds to reader's criticisms on 9/11

L ast week the Community Page published a selection of readers' responses to to John Spiri's June 17 Zeit Gist article on Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Yukihisa Fujita. Following is Mr. Fujita's response to one reader's criticisms of the Diet member's stance on the Sept. 11 attacks.
EDITORIALS
Jul 22, 2008

Peace or justice with the ICC?

In a historic move, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) has charged Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with genocide. After years of conflict in Darfur that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, the move would seem to have been obvious, but the decision to bring...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 22, 2008

Whaling: the meat of the matter

Whales are magnificent creatures I have always dreamt of seeing in the flesh. However, tucking into a slab of whale steak at a restaurant in Tokyo was not what I had in mind. Nevertheless, this was a close encounter with one of the world's largest mammals that I felt I could not duck out of: If I was...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jul 22, 2008

Professor Kunihiko Takeda

JUDIT KAWAGUCHI Professor Kunihiko Takeda, Ph.D., is vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University and one of the world's leading authorities on both uranium enrichment and recycling. The 65-year-old is also a bestselling author of books with titles such as “We...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 22, 2008

Akihabara tour guides point way in English, Chinese

Visitors to "Electric Town" now have the option of getting information about the area in English and Chinese through a tourism office that opened Monday inside the Tokyo Anime Center in Akihabara, Tokyo.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Jul 22, 2008

Do you eat whale?

Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Jul 22, 2008

A head-turning umbrella and other designer treats

Electric bean
LIFE / Language
Jul 22, 2008

Katakana makes Japanese trendy and accessible

Words and phrases in katakana may appear to be easily recognizable to non-native speakers of Japanese, but they are often fiendishly difficult. This generally comes as a surprise to Japanese, who naturally assume that we can understand katakana words readily, seeing as many of them originated in foreign...
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jul 22, 2008

Nation opens its eyes to audiobooks

Seen as a good way for busy people to catch up on their "reading" during commutes or on-the-job breaks, audiobooks are quickly becoming a fixture among time-pressed Japanese.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 21, 2008

Keep pressuring Pyongyang

HONOLULU (Scott Snyder is a senior associate of the Pacific Forum CSIS. This article was originally published in PacNet Newsletter.

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