Search - life

 
 
BUSINESS
Feb 7, 2003

Cuts to guaranteed yields only hope for insurance industry

Keiko Horikoshi, 41, sought out a financial planner last month to make sense of her and her husband's life insurance coverage.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Aug 25, 2018

Former Hosei University guard Michael Malhotra aims to boost blood donations throughout Japan

Modern life is bombarded by a 24/7 news cycle, an endless loop often filled with cynicism, scandals, and superficiality. So it's refreshing to stumble upon an upbeat story that's not any of those things.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / INTERNATIONAL RATIONALE
Apr 11, 2002

Domestic, foreign insurers engaged in turf war

The deregulation of Japan's insurance sector last year has set domestic and foreign-affiliated companies squarely against each other in the cancer and medical insurance battlefield.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Feb 21, 2002

Living under pressure

Life, as we knew it only a few decades ago, needed sunlight and warmth. No one imagined that anything could survive in extreme environments -- in intolerable places such as high-pressure, high-temperature deep-sea vents or under Antarctic ice sheets.
Japan Times
Special Supplements
Jun 17, 2021

Working to achieve SDGs through strong ESG investing

In his book “A Brief History of the Future: A Brave and Controversial Look at the Twenty-First Century” (2006), Jacques Attali predicted two industries would emerge as the most influential of the 21st century — entertainment and insurance.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Jan 28, 2021

Geisha-turned-YouTuber Kimono Mom taps into the heart of parenting

The life of a geisha in Japan is often perceived as being shrouded in mystery, the exact opposite of what you'd imagine life is like for a YouTuber. It's a contradiction that “Kimono Mom” knows well.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 10, 2016

President Trump: Japanese-Americans, Japanese in U.S. weigh in

People of Japanese ancestry speak up about their impressions of President-elect Donald Trump.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Aug 4, 2012

Atomic bomb survivor credits desire to learn for living 'four lives'

Yuuki Yoshida, 80, divides his lifetime into four different "lives," but he has lived each of them by following one maxim: "Try to learn as if you were to live forever, and live as if you were to die tomorrow."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Sep 13, 2011

The loneliness — or otherwise — of the long-distance foreigner

The Japan Times received a large number of readers' emails in response to Debito Arudou's Just Be Cause column published Aug. 2, headlined "The loneliness of the long-distance foreigner." Here, belatedly, are a selection.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 18, 2008

AIG Japan unit safe for time being

The U.S. Federal Reserve's emergency $85 billion rescue of the U.S. insurer American International Group eased concerns Wednesday that its Japanese unit will survive, at least for the time being.
BUSINESS
Jul 4, 2008

FSA slaps 10 insurers over 'nonpayments'

The Financial Services Agency slapped 10 life insurers, including two foreign ones, with business improvement orders Thursday saying their internal controls are insufficient to prevent them from failing to pay benefits to policyholders.
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2006

Japan struggles with the right-to-die issue

The revelation in late March that a Toyama Prefecture surgeon shut off the life support of six patients and let them die has raised once again the issue of how to treat the terminally ill.
In the quest for immortality, some researchers believe mind uploading will be our ticket to an eternal existence.
PODCAST / deep dive
Feb 8, 2024

Japan’s take on immortality; problems in Palworld

As scientists and technologists attempt to tackle the problem of aging and death, we discuss Japanese ideas about immortality.
The Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance headquarters in Tokyo. Japan's life insurers will lay out their investment plans for the new fiscal year starting this month.
BUSINESS / Companies
Apr 15, 2024

Investment plans for Japan’s insurers will likely favor JGBs

Companies will lay out their plans for the fiscal year starting this month.
Emperors sought eternal life for centuries, but scientists believe our physical bodies have limits. That's where technologists come in.
BUSINESS / Tech / Longform
Feb 3, 2024

The digital beyond: Is an eternal existence within grasp?

Immortality has been a dream for centuries, but scientists doubt its possibility. Can technologists and coders find a virtual path instead?
Some of science’s most sensational claims were later debunked by skeptical scientists, showing how hype can overshadow facts but also how scrutiny keeps science reliable.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 1, 2025

Too many scientific ‘discoveries’ get discredited

Volunteer scientific sleuths play an important role in policing their fields.
A woman stands on one side of the wall texting in front of a nightclub while, on the other side of the wall, a man works in an izakaya.
PODCAST / deep dive
Aug 24, 2023

One night out in Tokyo

As the last trains leave the central hubs of Shinjuku and Shibuya for the suburbs, much of the city heads home. However, Tokyo never sleeps.
Karen Hill Anton's “A Thousand Graces" centers on a young woman who takes her first steps toward adulthood by leaving her home in the countryside to go to college and live on her own terms.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 27, 2023

An intimate portrayal of resisting society’s expectations

Set in the 1970s, Karen Hill Anton’s novel captures a woman’s emotional struggle to bear the pressures of Japanese society while pursuing her dreams.
Was Japan's "sakoku" a prison? What else, when rulers were absolute, and law a weapon in the hands of high against low.
JAPAN / History / The Living Past
Nov 24, 2023

Tales of a Closed Country: Part 1

Long before COVID-19 was known, the gates to Japan slammed shut. It was an era of "sakoku," the closed country, but was it a prison?
There are no villains in Saikaku's stories … just people caught more or less helplessly in life's vortex.
JAPAN / History / The Living Past
Dec 17, 2023

Tales of a Closed Country: Part 3

There are no truly evil villains in Ihara Saikaku's stories, just people caught helplessly in life's vortex.
At the Akan International Crane Center, just north of the city of Kushiro proper, visitors can see the majestic red-crowned crane — a symbol of Hokkaido.
JAPAN / Society / Longform
Feb 17, 2024

Faces of the north: A Hokkaido town grapples with depopulation

Residents of Kushiro face an issue that more and more communities in Japan are having to deal with. The city may be young, but it's rich with tradition.
Luvsanbaldan Batsukh gets ready to leave his ger, or Mongolian tent, in Khishig-Undur in Bulgan province, Mongolia, on July 5.
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Jul 30, 2024

Mongolia's urban-rural divide deepens as young women leave the steppe

Many raised in a traditional nomadic lifestyle have rejected a life of physical labor and fighting the elements, seeking education and employment in Ulaanbaatar.
Toshikazu Shiba (right), 71, works full-time along with younger staff at sofa manufacturer Eucas in Kurume, Fukuoka Prefecture.
JAPAN / Society / Regional Voices: Kyushu
Feb 17, 2025

More older people choosing to work for social connection and survival

Older residents are exploring ways to navigate the later stages of their lives, whether continuing their careers or with new ventures.
Ahn Hak-sop sits in front of his foster daughter’s paper-craft art-pieces in a small church in the Civilian Controlled Zone, near the border with North Korea, in Gimpo, South Korea.
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Sep 16, 2025

The communist warrior stranded for decades in an ‘American colony’

Ahn Hak-sop was captured during the Korean War by the South and imprisoned for more than 40 years. Now 95, he wants to return to the North to die.
Pages from a new Otaku Dictionary catalog the lexicons of Japan’s various subcultures.
PODCAST / deep dive
Nov 30, 2023

A problematic otaku dictionary and the Japanese approach to sitting

An “Otaku Dictionary” has Japan’s subcultures upset at an attempt to define them.
Shitsui Hakoishi, 107, works with researcher Yasumichi Arai (left) while her younger brother, Hidemasa, looks on. Researchers like Arai believe the healthy and active Hakoishi's cells may hold the secret to living a long life.
JAPAN / Science & Health / Longform
Jan 27, 2024

Living until 100, if not forever, in good health

Immortality may be out of reach, but can a slew of research projects prolong our natural aging process?
The annual World Happiness Report, launched in 2012 to support the United Nations' sustainable development goals, is based on data from U.S. market research company Gallup, analyzed by a global team now led by the University of Oxford.
WORLD / Society
Mar 20, 2024

Gloomy youth pull U.S. and Western Europe down global happiness ranking

Japan was 51st in the annual rankings, ahead of South Korea at No. 52 and China at No. 60.
At the New England Organ Bank in Massachusetts. A U.S. sex offender donated an organ in 2022 to help a sick child and redeem himself.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 26, 2024

Giving organs can save donors’ lives, too

A U.S. sex offender donated an organ to save a sick child, showing others like him that a path to redemption exists — and multiplying the good of his action.
Shrunali Ranade moved to Japan in 2015 and has carved a niche for herself as both an engineer and a cricket player.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Oct 9, 2025

Shrunali Ranade: ‘Stepping back isn’t failure but another form of strength’

As an engineer and member of the women’s national cricket team in Japan, Shrunali Ranade has carved out her own niche over the past 10 years.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes