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LIFE / Travel
Jun 22, 2008

In the footsteps of Dylan Thomas

SWANSEA, Wales — Thursday night in Swansea and it's a full house. Outside, it's the kind of night that Dylan Thomas would have described as "starless and Bible black." Inside, text-messaging teenagers and polite pensioners count the seconds to the interval and the ritual stampede for ice-cream as the...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 22, 2008

An impressionable connoisseur of cultures

TRAVELS IN THE EAST by Donald Richie, with a foreword by Stephen Mansfield. Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press, 2007, 180 pp., $14.95 (paper) Donald Richie continues to write learnedly, wittily and insightfully about Japan, of whose culture he is one of the world's greatest interpreters. Readers...
Reader Mail
Jun 22, 2008

India, China do not act alone

Regarding Brahma Chellaney's June 18 article, Is the India and China hype true?": India and China do not act alone in challenging the two-century-old Western domination of the world. Indeed, they have history on their side, but they also have strong, dynamic partners. They belong to the BRIC (Brazil,...
Reader Mail
Jun 22, 2008

Kids love stories, even in English

Every time I read a letter arguing that the lack of skilled linguists among staff is reason enough not to offer foreign languages at the primary school level in Japan, I wonder if the authors have noticed the polychromatic pachyderm peering over their shoulders as they write.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 22, 2008

Fortune-teller detective mystery, manga drama of the business world, Ethiopia trivia special

Misuzu Maruyama (Kumiko Okae) is one of Ginza's most popular street fortunetellers, but she's also an amateur detective. In the two-hour mystery special "Uranaishi Misuzu Jiken wa Unmei no Kanata ni (Fortune Teller Misuzu's Incidents Are Beyond Fate)" (TBS, Monday, 9 p.m.), Misuzu plies her trade in...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 22, 2008

The many different ways Japan spells 'nationalism'

A HISTORY OF NATIONALISM IN MODERN JAPAN: Placing the People, by Kevin M. Doak. Leiden: Brill, 2006, 292 pp., $93 (cloth) There is no shortage of writing about nationalism in modern Japanese history. Nonetheless, the object of investigation has not always been clear, and until recently the term "nationalism"...
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Jun 22, 2008

Women drive today's car industry

There's a common misconception that cars only interest men — and that the secret to success in the automotive industry is therefore to find new and better ways to build vehicles that appeal to them.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 22, 2008

Adding too much fiction to the history

PEARL HARBOR: A Novel of December 8th, by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2007, 366 pp., $25.95 (cloth) Last week, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Newt Gingrich said on CBS-TV that the U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow enemy combatants to challenge...
Reader Mail
Jun 22, 2008

Deplorable claim about Bhutto

Regarding the June 2 Washington Post article "Bhutto gave key nuclear data to Pyongyang" (which is based on conversations that London-based Indian journalist Shyam Bhatia claims to have had with former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2003): It is illogical to believe that an international...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 22, 2008

Has Japan's dogged idealism of '68 become truly poodled?

On June 7, The New York Times' op-ed columnist Bob Herbert wrote an intriguing piece about the United States in 1968, recalling the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy exactly 40 years ago, and also referring to Sen. Barack Obama clinching the 2008 Democratic Party nomination for the presidency....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 22, 2008

How can the press be free if it's used as a public-relations tool?

The Supreme Court's decision on June 12 to reverse a lower-court ruling that had found in favor of a women's group received a fair share of concerned media coverage. The suit involved a program NHK had produced about a 2001 citizens' tribunal, which prosecuted Japan's wartime leaders on behalf of sex...
Reader Mail
Jun 22, 2008

Give guest workers a set contract

Regarding Nick Wood's June 12 letter, "Whiff of hypocrisy in gate-tending," which referred to my June 5 letter on foreign workers ("Hold guest workers to a timeline"): Wood uses rather emotive language such as guest workers being "sent packing when their contracts expire."
BASKETBALL
Jun 21, 2008

Shiga signs ex-Hawaii player Nash

Ex-University of Hawaii guard/forward Bobby Nash put his signature on the dotted line to play for the Shiga Lakestars next season, the bj-league expansion team announced Thursday.
SOCCER
Jun 21, 2008

Mourinho wants Lampard, Adriano

SAO PAULO — New Inter Milan coach Jose Mourinho suggested he was looking to lure Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard and striker Didier Drogba, along with FC Barcelona's Deco.
JAPAN
Jun 21, 2008

Fukuda gets report on boosting immigrants

Members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party submitted a bold report Friday to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, calling for Japan to increase its foreign residents to up to 10 percent of the nation's population in the next 50 years.
COMMENTARY
Jun 21, 2008

Security versus freedom

How to maintain a fair balance between national and individual security and traditional freedoms and human rights is an important political issue in Britain. We have been forced to accept increasing intrusion into our private lives by government agencies. Some fear we are living in a world similar to...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / U.S. BUSINESS SCHOOL SYMPOSIUM
Jun 21, 2008

Long-term success can hamstring a company's ability to adapt to change and ultimately survive

Adaptability is the key to survival of even big, successful companies over time, said professor Charles O'Reilly, a professor at Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear