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Reader Mail
May 11, 2008

The Japanese view of ending life

Regarding David Quintero's May 4 letter, "High Japanese suicide rate mystifies," and the question he poses (Why do so many Japanese people kill themselves?): I don't have a definitive answer, but I have come up with a few theories:
Reader Mail
May 11, 2008

Ignorance of foreign knowledge

Walt Gardner's May 4 letter, "Naming and shaming doesn't help," makes a significant prescription: "Japan is not Finland. But that's no reason to reject out of hand lessons learned from the other side of the globe." As an education consultant and business English instructor in Japan for 17 years, I have...
Reader Mail
May 11, 2008

East jump-started West's progress

Guy Sorman's May 1 article, "What exactly is the West," is the most confused piece of writing I ever read, displaying an amazing ignorance of the world and its history that only the French are capable of! Sorman claims the progress made in Europe in the last few centuries, including some progress in...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
May 11, 2008

Ramirez clubs game-winning hit

Alex Ramirez didn't get to do his home run dance against the Chunichi Dragons, so he gave Yomiuri Giants fans something to dance about instead.
Reader Mail
May 11, 2008

Forefront of humanitarian work

It was nice to see in the Pakistani newspaper Dawn (May 7) the photo of a Japanese young lady, a member of the Follow the Women Foundation, visiting a refugee camp in Damascus, Syria. She was part of a group of 300 women from 26 countries who took part in the event in pursuit of their campaign for peace...
Reader Mail
May 11, 2008

Measure of Christian influence

I read with great interest Florian Coulmas' May 4 article, "Japan as a land of many religions," which was a review of the book "Prophet Motive" -- about the important role played by Oomoto founder Deguchi Onisaburo, founder of the "highly successful syncretistic sect" Oomoto.
Reader Mail
May 11, 2008

Constitutional checks necessary

I too agree that we should keep whatever is necessary in Japan's Constitution to keep peace. If the efforts to change it are some kind of ploy by conflicting government parties to acquire and increase power, the results will be all the worse and meaningless. As so often is the case, gestures hide underlying...
Japan Times
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
May 11, 2008

Minchey comes back to Japan as scout for Indians

One-time Hiroshima Carp and Chiba Lotte Marines pitcher Nate Minchey was back in the country this week in his current capacity as a scout for the Cleveland Indians.
EDITORIALS
May 11, 2008

Coping with new strains of flu

The Diet has passed revisions to the Infectious Disease Law and the Quarantine Law to effectively cope with a possible outbreak of new types of influenza. There is fear that deadly new types of influenza will emerge, since the H5N1 bird flu is spreading mainly in Southeast Asia and bird-to-human infection...
Reader Mail
May 11, 2008

Winners in war remain hidden

The April 30 article about Raymond "Hap" Halloran, "War trauma leads to efforts to reconcile," brought tears to my eyes. Not so much the part about his being displayed as a war prisoner at Tokyo's Ueno Zoo in 1945, but the very end of the article, where Halloran declares that he has no answer as to what...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 11, 2008

Home-interaction game show, retail documentary, school-age drama

The last thing we need is yet another quiz show featuring comedians proving how smart or dumb they are, but "The Quiz Man" (TV Asahi, Tuesday, 7 p.m.) promises something quite different. The difference has nothing to do with the content.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 11, 2008

The authorities gain complete control of the stories

Prior to the recent retrial of a man who was eventually sentenced to death by the Hiroshima High Court for killing a woman and her 1-year-old child in 1999, the Broadcasting Ethics and Program Improvement Organization complained about the coverage of the case. The BPO said that media outlets concentrated...
JAPAN
May 11, 2008

Hu concludes summit with Osaka, Nara events

NARA — Amid the tightest security of his trip, Chinese President Hu Jintao concluded his visit to Japan in the Kansai region this weekend, dining with Osaka political and business leaders on Friday night and seeing the sights in the ancient capital of Nara on Saturday.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
May 11, 2008

Japan's gourmands should hit the highway

At the beginning of the postwar period of economic growth in Japan, highways were more for transporting parts and goods to jump-start the economy than for going on a Sunday drive. Even into the 1980s, pit stops in highway rest areas were still the stuff of nightmares. Surrounded by trucks belching acrid...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 11, 2008

Brushwork ethereal as the London mists

YOSHIO MARKINO: A Japanese Artist in Edwardian London, revised edition, by Sammy I. Tsunematsu, preface by Ross S. Kilpatrick. London: The Soseki Museum, 2008, 208 pp. ¥1,850 (paper) Born in 1869, died in 1956, Yoshio Markino, an artist better remembered in England than in Japan, spent much of his life...
Japan Times
LIFE
May 11, 2008

Reaching from the skies

One of the classic images from Japanese anime — immortalized in the famous post-apocalyptic "Neon Genesis Evangelion" franchise — is of a child-pilot sitting at the controls of a robot that's so huge it stands head and shoulders above the surrounding buildings. It's the key to the genre's escapist...
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
May 11, 2008

JEF United shows commitment with hiring of Miller

Given the state JEF United Chiba finds itself in, the club has pulled off a real coup in snaring Alex Miller for its vacant manager's job.
EDITORIALS
May 11, 2008

Less costly means of voting

Electronic voting is likely to be partially used in the next general elections. A recent agreement between the ruling camp and the Democratic Party of Japan on a revision of a related bill has assured its enactment in the current Diet session.
Reader Mail
May 11, 2008

U.S. knew what it wanted in Iraq

Regarding Hiroaki Sato's April 28 article, "Bush's brutal war stirs memories of Vietnam": May I point out one big difference between America's invasion of Vietnam and the internationally illegal one going on in Iraq right now? To this day the world still can't pin down exactly why the United States invaded...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 11, 2008

Alma mater addresses wartime treatment of its Japanese-Americans

When it comes to making amends, it's never too late. If there were a single principle to guide us in our relations with others — either on a personal or a broader scale — it would be this.
CULTURE / Books
May 11, 2008

Who says there's no poetry in a game?

BASEBALL HAIKU: American and Japanese Haiku and Senryu on Baseball, edited with translations by Cor van den Heuvel & Nanae Tamura. W.W. Norton, 2007, 214 pp., $19.95 (cloth) In Ueno Park in Tokyo, among the museums and other attractions, there is a baseball ground. It is not large, and its name is not...

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