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Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Oct 18, 2016

China's real 'House of Cards': TV series unveils corruption excesses

Chinese state television is airing a documentary series on President Xi Jinping's signature anti-corruption campaign in prime time this week, unveiling new footage and salacious details of high-profile corruption cases ahead of a key Communist Party meeting.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 18, 2016

Sci-fi and fact at the Okayama Art Summit

The city of Okayama was flattened by incendiary bombs in 1945. Many people died, more than 12,000 homes were destroyed and Okayama's centuries-old wooden castle burned to its stone foundations. In 1966, the donjon was rebuilt with modern concrete, which was likely made in Mizushima — a smoke-spewing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 11, 2016

Thomas Ruff: in the grand scheme of things

Thomas Ruff is one of the key figures of photography in the postmodern era, and his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, will probably already be pencilled into your calendar if you have any interest in contemporary art.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 6, 2016

Festival/Tokyo speaks with a defiant voice

Press conferences are usually upbeat affairs, but at the one held to herald Festival/Tokyo — a two-month theater festival that kicks off Oct. 15 — Artistic Director Sachio Ichimura appears looking worried and begins proceedings by bemoaning the event's financial situation and wondering aloud about...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 5, 2016

'Genius': The wordsmith who shaped Wolfe

Once upon a time, the word "genius" made us think not the help counter in an Apple Store but of people of incredible intellect who accomplished amazing things and relied on nothing more than their brains and bare hands. This "Genius" transports us back to such a time: 1929, when in New York City, the...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 1, 2016

Who advises Japan's business leaders?

Take a wild guess: Who's the second most influential management guru in Japan, after — it almost goes without saying — Peter Drucker?
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Sep 29, 2016

Fove Inc. to debut VR goggles that track eyeball movements

Virtual reality is on the cusp of becoming mainstream, but one startup in Japan is betting the technology won't really succeed unless it cracks a critical piece of the puzzle: human eyeballs.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Sep 28, 2016

FBI probes hacks targeting phones of Democratic Party officials

The FBI is investigating suspected attempts to hack mobile phones used by Democratic Party officials as recently as the past month, four people with direct knowledge of the attacks and the investigation told Reuters.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Sep 27, 2016

'No refuge could save the hireling and slave'

Is the U.S. national anthem racist or are the lyrics of the third stanza merely misunderstood?
WORLD / Politics
Sep 25, 2016

Trump's potential guest at first debate: Gennifer Flowers

Donald Trump has threatened to invite Gennifer Flowers, who had an affair with Hillary Clinton's husband, to attend Monday night's presidential debate.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 21, 2016

Hany Abu-Assad: Making strong voices heard

Ever since the first series of "Pop Idol" screened on British TV in 2001, the televised music competition has become practically inescapable, with franchises springing up everywhere from Macedonia to the Maldives. Given how cannily stage-managed these "reality" shows really are, though, it almost comes...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 17, 2016

Okinawan chronicles: 10 books that show the many faces of Japan's 'island paradise'

Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 14, 2016

Love beyond the laws of physics and nature

"Correspondence" (also known as "La Corrispondenza") is the kind of romance the Japanese have traditionally loved to love — two people locked in a relationship that barely exists.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 12, 2016

Can Japanese speakers really read Chinese? It depends on what you mean by 'read'

Will acquiring the ability to read Japanese give you some degree of literacy in Chinese? Well, it could at least give you a head start.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Sep 10, 2016

Pricing system offers scant protection as Amazon Japan hacks away at bookstores' benefits

Japan's saihan seido system may not be enough to save the country's remaining bookstores, whose advantages Amazon.jp has systematically worked to nullify over the years.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 6, 2016

It's the end of the world as we know it, and we still feel fine

Hiroshi Sugimoto's "Lost Human Genetic Archive," the inaugural exhibition for the reopening of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (now the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum), is an erudite and elaborate exercise in gallows humor. The theme is the end of civilization and human life, but possibly...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 5, 2016

Line makes splash by launching cut-rate smartphone service

Internet giant Line Corp. on Monday made its foray into mobile phone services, launching low-cost smartphone and SIM card packages that offer subscribers free use of its messaging app.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 27, 2016

Who says printed books have a shelf life?

The printed page is not dead. Sure, many of its mainstream forms need a lie-down, and probably should be thinking about taking early retirement, but as text and images are being increasingly viewed in the same way — pristinely flat with glassy surfaces and shrunk to fit the size of the smartphone —...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 23, 2016

Flamenco fusion set to fire up Tokyo

Surrender to the heat of September as the Antonio Gades Company brings its sultry blend of ballet and flamenco to Tokyo, showcasing three of its classic works in two separate programs at Bunkamura's magnificent Orchard Hall.
JAPAN / Politics
Aug 23, 2016

Risking political suicide, LDP veteran Funada challenges Abe over Constitution

Like other Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers, Hajime Funada is a strong proponent of amending the postwar Constitution, but not the way Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Aug 20, 2016

An awakening gives birth to modern medicine

Illness we share with our ancestors. Diagnosis and remedies set us and them apart.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 19, 2016

Dentsu to push simplified Japanese to ease communication with tourists

As part of its project to encourage the creation of tourism services, advertising giant Dentsu Inc. will urge the public to use simple Japanese when communicating with tourists.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 16, 2016

Populism trumping the TPP

Washington's ambitious plan to take on the might of China is dying.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Aug 14, 2016

It's true: SMAP to split up at year's end

After a quarter-century run, the Japanese boy band SMAP has decided to call it quits on Dec. 31, its management agency said in a press release Sunday, shocking die-hard fans in Asia and around the world.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 14, 2016

Record heat in 2016 nudges Earth toward Paris ceiling

The Earth is so hot this year that a limit for global warming agreed upon by world leaders at a climate summit in Paris just a few months ago is in danger of being breached.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 13, 2016

The lure of Japan's mysterious ruins

Abandoned sites offer explorers a numinous mix of history, mortality and a sense of the passage of time
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 13, 2016

Latour: rethinking ecological crisis from the ground down

The earth underneath Tokyo is trembling. This time, however, the activity is not seismic; it is not one of the many tremors that intermittently punctuate daily life in this city. It is, rather, a constant trembling: a condition of the global ecological crisis in which we now find ourselves.

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