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JAPAN
Jan 1, 2011

Kan's foreign policy plate full, waiting to be attacked

The foreign policy agenda of Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his Democratic Party of Japan-led government in 2011 is stacked with pressing bilateral diplomatic issues with the United States and China, as well as broader, strategic goals, including curbing global warming and promoting regional free trade....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Oct 23, 2010

Megijima, where the wild, cute things are

Megijima (Woman Tree Island) is a small island in the Seto Inland Sea where 200 very quiet people live. It is said that long ago Megijima harbored demons. No wonder there are only 200 people left. The island was made famous by the legend of Momotaro, the Peach Boy.
Japan Times
LIFE
Sep 12, 2010

Aging through the ages

"If only, when one heard That Old Age was coming One could bolt the door Answer 'not at home' And refuse to meet him!" (Anonymous, "Kokinshu" Imperial poetry anthology, 10th century)
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 1, 2010

Japanese quotes cast country's life and culture in disparate lights

SECOND IN A THREE-PART SERIES — In its current issue, the popular monthly magazine Bungei Shunju has a long feature titled "Tekichushita yogen 50," meaning "50 predictions that hit the mark."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 4, 2010

Manga's Cinderella story

"I want to tell you a real love story," whispers a pen-wielding Misako, a graphic-novel version of comic artist Misako Takashima, on the first page of the 2007 book, "Rock and Roll Love."
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 6, 2010

Dancing for joy in Japan

As I sipped my vin rouge last week during an interval in "The Sleeping Beauty," K-Ballet's latest Tokyo production, a woman at the next table said to her companion: "I can't believe that evil fairy was a man! I just naturally thought it was a woman dancing that role."
JAPAN
May 21, 2010

Former negotiator lays base woes on Okinawa

Every story has more than one side.
COMMENTARY
Dec 10, 2009

Asia's new strategic partners

The recently concluded India-Australia security agreement has come at a time when tectonic power shifts are challenging Asian strategic stability. Asia has come a long way since the emergence of two Koreas, two Chinas, two Vietnams and a partitioned India. It has risen dramatically as the world's main...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 15, 2009

Movie JAL doesn't want you to see snubbed by media

Big-budget movies need all the help they can get recovering their production and promotional costs at the box office, so advertisements stating that the 3 1/2-hour epic "Shizumanu Taiyo" ("The Sun That Doesn't Set") is a "big hit" should be taken with a grain of salt. First of all, every movie released...
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Nov 10, 2009

Will two of sumo's top dogs retire at Kyushu 2009?

Kyushu 2009 will, if for nothing else, be remembered as the tournament in which the old warhorse ozeki Kaio breaks former sekiwake Takamiyama's long-standing record of 97 basho in the sport's top flight. For Kaio — Kyushu will be number 98.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Sep 20, 2009

Car-sharing catches on as a cheap and cheerful way to go

Thinking of traveling from Tokyo to Osaka? Take a shinkansen bullet train or fly and it will set you back around ¥14,000. But if you share the costs of making the trip by car, you'll likely pay half that or less.
LIFE
Apr 26, 2009

A literary loner

In Tokyo and even in the Occident, I have known almost no society except that of courtesans. — Nagai Kafu There's not much left of Kafu today. Among the major Japanese writers of the early 20th century, he scarcely ranks as a survivor. Natsume Soseki, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Junichiro Tanizaki are the...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Oct 1, 2008

Helping a healthy river flow

My eldest daughter, Miwako, gave birth to twin girls in March of this year, raising the number of my grandchildren to five. So, when my busy schedule finally permitted, I recently nipped over to Vancouver to see them all and to help out Miwako and her partner, Don McCubbing, by being houseboy and chief...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Aug 3, 2008

Jiang Rong: Writing in a world of wolves

Jiang Rong (pen name of Lu Jiamin), who is now 62, was born in Jiangsu Province, China, and educated in Beijing. In 1967, at age 21, he volunteered to go and work in Inner Mongolia, where he'd heard about the practice of people there paying homage to "wolf totems" erected in the rolling grasslands that...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / IN BLOOM
Jul 16, 2008

Flax

It was the schooner Hesperus, That sailed the wint'ry sea; And the skipper had taken his little daughter, To bear him company.Blue were her eyes as the fairy-flax,Her cheeks like the dawn of day, And her bosom white as the hawthorn buds That ope in the month of May.
Japan Times
Features
Jul 13, 2008

Japan's culture policy lingers in limbo

It's a fact that has long puzzled devotees and plain old tourists alike. Japan's manga and anime arts have been wowing the world for more than a decade, and yet the national government still hasn't got around to setting up a proper museum for their enjoyment, preservation and study.
JAPAN
Jul 6, 2008

Fukuda's low-carbon society 'vision' needs to shorten its sights, include medium-term target

On June 9, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda released his "vision" for creating a low-carbon society in a determined bid to fulfill his responsibility as chairman of the summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in Toyako, Hokkaido.
JAPAN
Jun 21, 2008

After the drama, the curtain drops quietly on the current Diet session

The curtain drops on the ordinary Diet session Saturday, quietly and without the catharsis the Democratic Party of Japan aimed for with its last-minute censure motion against Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda last week.
JAPAN / G8 COUNTDOWN
Jun 20, 2008

Consensus elusive ahead of climate meet

Time is running out for Japanese diplomacy — and possibly for the future of the Earth, too.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 28, 2007

Study the school before studying English

OSAKA — Thinking about studying English at a private school chain? If so, proceed with caution and know what you're getting into, say university English professors, teachers union representatives and the English-language schools themselves.
LIFE / QUEUING
May 27, 2007

Patience pays off for firms on standby to queue for you

With queuing playing such an important role in Japanese life — just watch any breathlessly excitable TV magazine program fearlessly reporting any day of the week on long lines outside noodle shops or dog groomers — there are even those who cash in on the phenomenon directly.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 18, 2007

An unflinching account of a cinema legend

Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies With Akira Kurosawa, by Teruyo Nogami. Stone Bridge Press: Berkeley, University of California Press, 2006, 296pp, $25 (cloth) Great directors, once dead, inevitably attract biographers, memoirists and critics in large numbers who chronicle and critique every aspect...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Dec 28, 2006

A lifetime's observations

He saw Ginza when it was a blackened plain but for the bombed-out Mitsukoshi department store, the Hattori Building and a handful of other structures left standing. He observed the city as it was rebuilt, and its people. He observed, and then he wrote.
SUMO
Nov 7, 2006

The safe money goes on Asashoryu

In November, 1957, a maegashira ranked near the foot of the makunouchi division went 15-0 to claim his first ever yusho. His name was Tamanoumi, a 34-year-old Oita man, and his name goes down in history as the winner of the first official Kyushu Grand Sumo Tournament.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 28, 2006

Moving toward an East Asian Community

One of the first tasks the new administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe needs to address is to mend bilateral fences with China and South Korea, which have been strained primarily as a result of his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi's visits to Yasukuni Shrine.
JAPAN
Sep 3, 2006

Royal boy will put off succession crisis, not solve it

and Emperor Akihito (second from left) walk on a beach in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture, with Prince Akishino (third from left) and his family -- Princess Mako, Princess Kiko and Princess Kako (from left to right), in this file photo taken Aug. 4, 2004. KYODO PHOTO
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jul 7, 2006

Finding Africa in the heart of Japan

We explored the Africa Remix exhibition at the Mori Art Museum the other day and came back buzzing with inspiration, hungry for more of the vibrant cultures and flavors of that great continent. There aren't a lot of options here in Tokyo, but at least there's Calabash.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2006

Building a better safety net for workers

NEW HAVEN, Connecticut -- A lot of public attention and worry nowadays surrounds the new risks that globalization and information technology create for our wages and livelihoods. But there has been far less constructive discussion of new ideas about how to confront these risks. In fact, we might be losing...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Oct 16, 2005

Revitalized Chiba Lotte franchise alive and well in Makuhari

Most Japanese fans of Major League Baseball are pulling for a Chicago-St. Louis World Series, hoping to see a match-up of the "Guchi Brothers," former Japan Pacific League rivals Tadahito Iguchi of the White Sox and So Taguchi of the Cardinals.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 18, 2005

What a curious wonder the walrus is

The walrus is a peculiar, even comical, creature -- and not only in Lewis Carroll's 1872 poem, "The Walrus and the Carpenter."

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami