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JAPAN / Media / DARK SIDE OF THE RISING SUN
Aug 2, 2014

The v-word doesn't always mean victory

If you are easily offended, please don't read this column because it's about obscenity laws in Japan and that in itself may be obscene. If my editor will let me, we'll even put up a possibly obscene image! (Don't worry, I won't — Ed.)
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Aug 1, 2014

After Iraqi army crumbles, Maliki turns to state TV for help

State television is working overtime to persuade Iraqis to help Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki confront an al-Qaida offshoot that has seized wide tracts of the country, but its unifying call has been blunted by his sectarian reputation.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Markets
Jul 31, 2014

Tokyo Stock Exchange moves toward longer hours as night session eyed

TSE moves toward longer hours as night session eyed
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 26, 2014

Art vs. morals debate plays out in the press

In her semiautobiographical feature film "Who's Afraid of Vagina Wolf?," Anna Margarita Albelo plays a struggling film director who makes ends meet by screening her movies in art galleries where she shows up dressed as a vagina. Though the story is mainly about relationships, the prominence of the female...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 26, 2014

Is Japan sinking further into 'Aum-ification'?

The world — this insignificant little spinning rock we call home — is nearing its end. Armageddon lies ahead: violence, upheaval, horror. The normal human mind shrinks from the mere thought, but "higher consciousness" embraces it. Higher consciousness sees things in a wider perspective. Where you...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jul 21, 2014

Selective consumption tax weighed

It's only been three months since the consumption tax was hiked to 8 percent, but the ruling coalition is already expediting talks on another increase scheduled to come into effect in October next year.
Japan Times
OLYMPICS / OLYMPIC NOTEBOOK
Jul 19, 2014

New sports center symbol of Haiti's recovery

Haiti's recovery from the 2010 earthquake that devastated the Caribbean nation is a slow, difficult process.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 19, 2014

Politician Nonomura weeps and the world laughs

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone. For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth, but has trouble enough of its own."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 19, 2014

The murky call on a hardball interview with Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga

The tabloid press plays fast and loose with the truth, so anyone who gobbled up last week's NHK story in the weekly Friday should have added a dash of salt. An unnamed employee told Friday that the prime minister's office demanded the public broadcaster apologize for questions asked in its interview...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 18, 2014

The real shale revolution

It was the mastery of horizontal drilling around 1990 — originally for oil rather than gas exploration — that lit the long fuse for the so-called shale revolution that erupted 15 years later.
JAPAN / Politics / ANALYSIS
Jul 18, 2014

Abductee probe stirs thoughts of snap poll

As Tokyo presses North Korea for information on the fate of Japanese citizens abducted decades ago, speculation is simmering that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe could use a possible breakthrough on the emotive issue to call a snap election.
ASIA PACIFIC
Jul 14, 2014

Thai activists decry junta vow to deport Myanmar refugees

Thailand's military government said Monday it would send home 100,000 refugees who have been living in camps for two decades and more along the border with Myanmar, a move rights groups say would create chaos at a tense time for both nations.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jul 14, 2014

Budget phones challenge the majors

Smartphones may be convenient, but there's one thing about them that bugs many people: their costly monthly data plans.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 12, 2014

The high cost of peace and quiet

Peace and quiet! How rare it is, how precious. Why rare? Because a full-blooded modern economy is no monastery, no "ancient pond" into which a frog may jump, producing the hushed "sound of water" immortalized by the haiku poet Basho (1644-94).
CULTURE / Music
Jul 12, 2014

Bump of Chicken to make a return to TV

Rock act Bump Of Chicken has announced it will perform live on the small screen for the first time since its major debut in 2000.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 30, 2014

New station to boost Shinagawa's international role

East Japan Railway Co. (JR East) announced in early June it will open a new station on the Yamanote loop in Tokyo in time for the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Jun 29, 2014

Comic books champion debate on Fukushima disaster

Farmers in Fukushima try to convince skeptical visitors that their crops are safe from radiation. Blood trickles from the nose of a reporter who visits the area.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Jun 29, 2014

Cartoonist Ernst captured 'fish-out-of-water' gaijin as they floundered

Having often been told by the Japanese that he would 'never understand' their culture because he was not one of them, American cartoonist Tim Ernst decided to embrace this notion and deploy it creatively.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 28, 2014

Sexist remarks seen through a clouded lens

It's assumed that the heckling of Tokyo assembly member Ayaka Shiomura by some of her male colleagues on June 18 became a major news story in Japan only after the foreign press picked it up as an example of intractable Japanese sexism. The situation is more nuanced than how Western media described it,...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 23, 2014

Abe looks to put his stamp on foreign aid

Next up for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe? Figuring out how to put official development assistance (ODA) to "strategic" use so the international aid program can help Japan make a more "proactive contribution" to world peace, one of Abe's pet policy goals.
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Jun 23, 2014

ASIJ abuse scandal stirs dark memories among readers

Some letters in response to Jon Mitchell's The Foreign Element articles about sexual abuse by late American School in Japan teacher Jack Moyer.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 22, 2014

Bewildering take on the American job market

With the U.S. government's latest monthly employment report, the American job market has entered a bewildering phase. The U.S. may be closer to 'full employment' than is commonly supposed, but the weak recovery since 2009 is hardly typical of economic cycles since World War II.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 21, 2014

Advances in robotics present singular worry

'Singularity' is an odd word. Originally it meant peculiarity. Then 20th-century physicists got hold of it and situated it at the very boundary of space-time, to the eternal bafflement of the lay mind.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 16, 2014

Japan's gambit in WWI set stage for a dark future

One hundred years ago, on June 28, 1914, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. It was the spark that led, one month later, to the beginning of World War I, which originally was expected to be confined to Europe and end in weeks. By the time it ended on Nov. 11, 1918, an estimated...
Japan Times
OLYMPICS
Jun 13, 2014

JOC grooms young athletes for international success at Elite Academy

Since 2008, the Japanese Olympic Committee has run a national youth athlete development program called the JOC Elite Academy. It's a part of the JOC Gold Plan, which was drawn up to improve Japan's international competitiveness in sports seven years before the development program was established.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2014

'Sweet Poolside'

Puberty is a time of physical changes that range from the wondrous to the excruciating, but once accomplished are soon forgotten. The beard that greets you in the mirror, which once seemed miraculous and strange, is now just one more morning chore.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 10, 2014

Some companies still struggle with their dark WWII history

The amount of bookshelf space dedicated to the 12 years of Hitler's Third Reich often exceeds that of any other period in history, but the role and the complicity of companies in the atrocities committed by the Nazis continue to be shrouded in obscurity.

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