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Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Feb 22, 2011

NPO tax status threatened by Diet split

With the opposition camp trying to veto all budget-related bills in the divided Diet, the fate of legislation proposed by the Democratic Party of Japan-led government to enhance the tax-exempt status of nonprofit organizations is hanging in the air.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 20, 2011

Remember Takuboku: A model to rouse today's thwarted youth

Social change is a volcanic phenomenon. The first rumblings may not be widely seen or heard; then there is an eruption that takes society unawares. All of a sudden — or so it seems — a new generation with new needs and demands is born. Until that happens, society often outwardly appears placid, calm...
JAPAN
Feb 19, 2011

DPJ revolt shows signs of growing

The rebellion against Naoto Kan is far from over and a few more lawmakers are likely to get on the bandwagon, a Democratic Party of Japan source said Friday, fueling speculation the uprising within the party could force the prime minister to step down.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 18, 2011

Best Coast / Wavves

Early in his career, Wavves' Nathan Williams earned almost as much attention for his erratic behavior as he did for his lo-fi, noisy pop and punk songs. In 2009, the guitarist for the California trio infamously had an onstage meltdown during a performance at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona,...
JAPAN
Feb 18, 2011

Punish Ozawa at your peril: 16 DPJ allies

Sixteen Lower House members of the Democratic Party of Japan loyal to Ichiro Ozawa applied Thursday to leave the DPJ's parliamentary group in the Diet and form a new group in an apparent attempt to pressure party leaders to back away from punishing the kingpin.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 18, 2011

Japan's celebrated Edo Period painters: Having the good fortune to see all that is Gitter's

The first time I met renowned Japanese art collector Dr. Kurt Gitter was at an Asian art conference in New York in 2001, where he was on a discussion panel on Japanese art. An audience member asked Gitter, "Sir, since you and others have passionately collected antique Japanese works for decades and since...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 18, 2011

Visit Tokyo's 'Frontline' for Japan's contemporary art

Shigeo Goto, director of Tokyo Frontline, a new art fair to start in Tokyo this year, calls himself an "outsider," meaning he considers himself not quite inside Tokyo's commercial "art scene."
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Feb 17, 2011

Planned school will offer diversity in the classroom

Lin Kobayashi explains that in the high school that she attended in Canada, in the early 1990s, there were 86 different nationalities represented in her year alone. Needless to say, Japan has no schools that could compete in terms of diversity, even today. But, if the 36-year-old Tokyo native gets her...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2011

The world needs more elephant mothers

MELBOURNE — Many years ago, my wife and I were driving somewhere with our three young daughters in the back, when one of them suddenly asked: "Would you rather that we were clever or that we were happy?"
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Feb 15, 2011

Canadian's health issue unites couple

On their first date, Eiko Tiernan was told by her future husband, Laurier, that he has Marfan syndrome, a congenital hereditary disease that affects about 1 in 5,000 people. At first, she did not know how to react, as she knew nothing about the disease.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 13, 2011

K-pop takes on the world while J-pop stays home

Last week, the Fuji TV newsmagazine "Mr. Sunday" looked at Korean pop's success in Japan from two angles. Taking a street-level perspective, the show's host, Seiji Miyane, hung out in Tokyo's Okubo district, which has become "the new Harajuku" because young Japanese women flock there to rub up against...
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Feb 13, 2011

Ex-slugger Canseco seeking tryout with NPB team

One of baseball's most colorful and controversial figures is looking to make a comeback as a player at age 46, and his agent thinks Japan might be the place where Jose Canseco can resume his checkered career.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 11, 2011

Shindo Tsuji: From the trees to the earth

In 1948, the respected Zen elder Ian Kishizawa told the sculptor Shindo Tsuji, "Forget whatever you can and express whatever remains." Despite its enigmatic and paradoxical quality, this typically Zen-like admonition nevertheless manages to sum up the career of Tsuji (1910-1981), an important Japanese...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 11, 2011

Playwright Noda asks, 'What is a Japanese?'

In the early 1980s, when he was a student at the University of Tokyo, Hideki Noda began to emerge as a standard bearer of something new in Japan: Contemporary theater by — and for — young people seeking to change their country.
EDITORIALS
Feb 10, 2011

Major parties put on notice

The results of the "triple vote" in Nagoya last Sunday smack of political theatrics but serve as a warning to the current two main parties — the Democratic Party of Japan and the Liberal Democratic Party — to correctly respond to people's dissatisfaction.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past