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Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Sep 21, 2018

University of Tokyo student goes the extra trillions of miles to study exoplanets

A Ph.D. student at the University of Tokyo, has recently helped discover 44 planets outside of our solar system. Such planets — known as exoplanets — were until recently only theoretical, and they inspire great excitement among astronomers.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Oct 14, 2017

Japan's 'way of the sword' baffles foreign observers

All cultures present aspects that cannot but baffle the foreign observer. For example: nothing in the native tradition equips a Japanese to grasp the concept of the blood of the crucified son of the one God washing believers clean of sin.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 25, 2017

Counting what really counts in development

Statistics, while useful, do not tell the entire story of development.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Aug 27, 2017

How a love of Japan led me to stop dating its women

A British academic concludes that the only way he can truly enjoy and develop his love for Japan is by excluding his love life from the equation.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 25, 2017

Enjoy Earth Day, while you last

Earth's climate will probably recover from this human-fueled round of global warming, but on time scales that are unimaginable to humans. And perhaps without humans.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jan 14, 2017

The evolution of the Japanese ego: Learning to say 'I'

When Adam and Eve defied God, creator and master of the universe, and ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, what did they learn? To say "I."
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 17, 2016

Should children be granted the right to die?

Minors with a demonstrable capacity for rational decision-making should have the right to request euthanasia.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 2, 2016

Black Illumination: Zen and the poetry of death

On a winter morning in 1360, Zen master Kozan Ichikyo gathered together his pupils. Kozan, 77, told them that, upon his death, they should bury his body, perform no ceremony and hold no services in his memory. Sitting in the traditional Zen posture, he then wrote the following:
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Oct 10, 2015

Home sweet home: Preserving the traditional Kanazawa townhouse

Traditional wooden townhouses called machiya could once be found throughout Japan and were especially common in cities such as Kyoto and Nara in Kansai, as well as Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society / FOCUS
Apr 16, 2015

Some prisons in Japan becoming 'like nursing homes' amid surge in elderly offenders

Most prisons spend a lot of time and effort keeping inmates from escaping, but a greater challenge is convincing some convicts to leave.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Apr 8, 2015

Do Western men have it bad in Japan? Readers discuss

A small selection of the large number of comments received in response to Olga Garnova's recent column, 'Spare a thought for Western men trapped in Japan.'
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jan 10, 2015

Code + culture: New Internet artists from Japan

If the Internet is an ocean, why do we spend so much time floating on its surface? What's really going on down there? Not just in the deepest, darkest trenches, but among the forgotten protocols, faulty algorithms and emerging parameters outside the busy shipping lanes and far from the crowded life rafts...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 23, 2014

Choosing death when loss of self is imminent

For people who do not want to live on when their mind has gone, deciding whether and when to die is difficult, and likely to meet resistance from loved ones.
JAPAN / JAPAN TIMES FORUM ON FEMALE SCIENCE MAJORS
Jun 30, 2014

Majoring in science may expand opportunities for women

Moderator: Let's discuss the challenge of hiring more female science majors and solutions to that issue. Let me first ask you what kind of skills are you seeking in women? I wonder if the marketing skills of female science majors, instead of just their capabilities in research and development, could...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 4, 2014

Our beastly post-Fukushima age

We have to remember the Fukushima nuclear disaster from the perspective of how Japan's system for providing meat, vegetables, rice, fish and other foods is still suffering as a result.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Sep 15, 2013

2013: A space conundrum

Long ago, in a dreamier era, space stations were imagined as portals to the heavens. In the 1968 movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," the huge structure twirled in orbit, aesthetically sublime, a relaxing way station for astronauts heading to the moon. It featured a Hilton and a Howard Johnson's.
EDITORIALS
Jan 6, 2013

Happiest people in the world

Japan may have a relatively high standard of living and the longest life expectancy in the world, but it does not have the happiest people. According to a new Gallup poll of 148 countries, Japan ranks somewhere in the middle of world happiness levels. The recent poll showed just how little economic levels...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Nov 10, 2012

Pregnancy crisis center lends guidance, support

Demographic statistics released by the health and welfare ministry continue to paint a bleak future for Japan, whose population is forecast to decline steadily in coming decades unless measures are taken to reverse the birthrate decline. The number of babies born in 2011 was the lowest on record since...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jul 28, 2012

Small lives changed through the power of a photo

For over five years now, The Japan Times has run a weekly photo box featuring a cat or dog in need of a home, as well as success stories of animals that have been adopted.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 3, 2012

DiCaprio visits America's dark past in 'J. Edgar'

Leonardo DiCaprio admits that he didn't hear much about the famously feared J. Edgar Hoover while he was growing up. That doesn't stop him from making an astute observation: "The man was a troll."
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 9, 2011

Women warriors of Japan

"Ah, for some bold warrior to match with, that Kiso might see how fine a death I can die!"
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 8, 2011

Communication skill, beyond language, called key necessity

When Mark Rubiner drove tens of thousands of kilometers from Arizona to Mexico and through South America when he was only 21 years old, his high school Spanish skills became a key tool for survival.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Sep 13, 2011

Swede on mission to help Japan seniors

Gustav Strandell believes that if there is something good about his home country, Sweden, that he can bring to Japan, it's the concept and some of the technical skills of its social welfare system developed over its 100-year-plus history as an aging society.
JAPAN
Aug 25, 2011

Nuclear refugees struggle to cope with uncertain future

Like thousands of other people, Miwa Kamoshita's life was turned upside down when the March 11 tsunami struck the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, leading her and her family to voluntarily evacuate their home in Iwaki, some 40 km south of the crippled power station.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 19, 2011

Pitt, Penn heap praise on Malick's 'real world'

Terrence Malick kicks off his new film, "The Tree of Life," with a bang. The Big Bang, actually. Over the next 138 minutes, the viewer witnesses a journey through history that ends up in a small town in Texas. Critics seem to agree that you'll either love it or hate it.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 26, 2011

Inside Aokigahara, Japan's 'Suicide Forest'

I am walking through Aokigahara Jukai forest, the light rapidly fading on a mid-winter afternoon, when I am stopped dead in my tracks by a blood-curdling scream. The natural reaction would be to run, but the forest floor is a maze of roots and slippery rocks and, truth be told, I am lost in this vast...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Apr 3, 2011

Japan's 'La Gaijine'

On Francoise Morechand's living room table there sits a book once owned by a samurai in the Edo Period (1603-1867) that she says she has been studying.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 9, 2011

Adoor: India's master storyteller of the silver screen

ADOOR GOPALAKRISHNAN: A Life in Cinema. The Authorized Biography, by Gautaman Bhaskaran. Penguin, 2010, 281 pp. (hardcover) Celebrating the centenary of Akira Kurosawa last year, Donald Richie, the noted writer on Japanese films, observed that Kurosawa believed that he existed only through his films....
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jul 3, 2010

AIG may sell Japan insurance units to help reshape company

American International Group Inc., the insurer selling assets to repay a U.S. rescue, may seek buyers for its Japanese life units as Chief Executive Officer Robert Benmosche reshapes the firm.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Mar 30, 2010

Capital crimes soon to lose statute

The Democratic Party of Japan-led government recently approved a bill to abolish the statute of limitations on crimes that could be punishable by hanging in a move experts say signals a major shift in the justice system.

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