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Reader Mail
May 25, 2008

Japan already finances U.S. wars

Regarding the May 21 front-page article "Up defense spending, Schieffer tells Tokyo": U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer's complaint about Japan's military spending amounts to blatant interference in Japan's internal affairs. More than 60 years after the end of the war, Schieffer is still not free from...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 25, 2008

Children following their ambitions, cartoonists discussion, nature-speciality

One of the most popular segments on the Saturday morning variety show "Shittoko!" profiles children who are working hard to fulfill individual dreams. In order to celebrate 100 segments on the show, TBS will air a special two-hour program, "Kodomo no Chikara wa Mugendai (The Power of Children is Unlimited)"...
CULTURE / Books
May 25, 2008

Abu Ghraib stirs memory of a prisoner of conscience

BLACK GLASSES LIKE CLARK KENT: A GI's Secret From Postwar Japan, by Terese Svoboda. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 2008, 225 pp., $14 (paper) In most of the developed world, for most of the post-World War II era, the notion that torture might be OK was about as open to discussion as the notion...
Reader Mail
May 25, 2008

Overcoming the food crisis

With reference to the May 17 article "Import-dependent Japan fears food crisis": As a researcher (human health, environment and rice) and fellow citizen, I am deeply concerned about the "import-dependent" Japan food crisis. Japan has the land, technology and human resources (albeit aging) to offset this...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 25, 2008

St. Petersburg, where a morose spirituality brings forth poets

In Petersburg we will come together again As if we had buried the sun there. — Osip Mandelstam What city in the world can boast as many great poets and novelists as St. Petersburg? Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Blok, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, the Bohemian Kharms, the satirist Zoshchenko, Brodsky (the poet...
Reader Mail
May 25, 2008

Let the SDF deploy overseas

Craig Martin's May 21 article, "Permanent SDF overseas deployment law endangers democracy," was an extreme pleasure to read, although I do not agree with everything in it.
Reader Mail
May 25, 2008

Better answers are out there

As a member of the diplomatic corps in Tokyo, I would like to share my thoughts on Peter Singer's article. Singer obviously capitalizes on the recent catastrophes in Myanmar and China to deliver to the distraught public a classical piece of atheist propaganda. It always strikes me how reliable anti-religious...
Reader Mail
May 25, 2008

Know where the argument leads

I would say that it is important to understand not only Peter Singer's arguments, but where those arguments lead him. For example, in a question-and-answer article published in Britain's Independent in 2006, Singer repeated his notorious stand on the killing of disabled newborns. Asked if he would kill...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 25, 2008

The poetic power of skepticism

AMERICA AND OTHER POEMS by Nobuo Ayukawa, selected and translated by Shogo Oketani and Leza Lowitz. New York: Kaya Press, 2008, 152 pp. $14.95 (paper) Nobuo Ayukawa (1920-1986) has in the West remained a relatively unknown poet. Though included in the "Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature"...
Japan Times
JAPAN / AFRICA LIFELINE
May 25, 2008

Opportunity to knock on Japan's door at TICAD, Gabon envoy says

The upcoming conference on African development in Yokohama will showcase opportunities in resource-rich African countries that are hoping to build strategic partnerships with Japan, according to Gabon's ambassador to Japan.
Japan Times
JAPAN / G8 COUNTDOWN
May 25, 2008

Climate confab kicks off in Kobe

KOBE — The invention of the Gutenberg Bible in the mid-15th century revolutionized printing and led to the Renaissance, mass literacy, and the industrial revolution, leading to the development of mass production and the use of fossil fuels.
Japan Times
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
May 25, 2008

Morozov blames agent for breakup with Takahashi

When you have been in the business as long as I have, you develop a kind of sixth sense about when something is not right.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 25, 2008

The art of 'not being funny' drums up big laughs on TV

It was a year ago that comedian Yoshio Kojima got his big break, and Japanese TV hasn't been the same since. Kojima is the young man who wears the colorful bikini briefs and nothing else while happily dancing and declaiming in meter: "Sonna no kankei nai (I couldn't care less)." His only punch line is...
COMMENTARY
May 24, 2008

Cross-strait opportunity

"Be careful what you wish for." This Chinese proverb came repeatedly to mind when listening to incoming Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou's forward-leaning inauguration address that sent so many olive branches toward Beijing that even some of his ardent supporters feared he had "gone too far." Protesters...
COMMENTARY / World
May 24, 2008

Is China's Tibet policy bad for business?

PRAGUE — When a Chinese government security official recently accused followers of the Dalai Lama of organizing suicide attacks — merely the most extreme of a barrage of allegations against the "Dalai clique" — it was as though the Cultural Revolution were still raging. Indeed, particularly where...
Japan Times
JAPAN / G8 COUNTDOWN
May 24, 2008

Status quo may block climate pact

KYOTO — A weak prime minister, a divided bureaucracy and opposition from big business mean Japan's ability to use the July Group of Eight Summit at Lake Toya to forge an effective global warming treaty is at risk, a leading environmental activist warns.
JAPAN / G8 COUNTDOWN
May 24, 2008

Environment summit's elusive dream: Consensus

KOBE — Environment ministers from the Group of Eight industrialized nations and 10 other countries, including China and India, will gather Saturday in Kobe for a three-day summit on climate change.

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years