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Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 11, 2010

Takamatsu then and now

In 1988 I was an awkward, dreamy kid with clumsy elbows and scraped knees, and Japan was a place I'd never even thought about. Impossibly far away and altogether foreign, it seemed fantastical.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 18, 2010

Lack of funds fail to stop Tokyo's young theater brigade

As a promising playwright, director and actor, 31-year-old Junichi Hirota highlights a cruel fact running through Japan's theater world — namely that once technicians such as lighting engineers, sound people and set-builders are paid from box-office profits, there's often little or nothing left for...
COMMENTARY
Jun 13, 2010

Japan-U.S. relations cry out for new management, dialogue

Ripples, frictions, uneasiness, concern and even dismay — these are the words by which most of the Japanese mass-media commentaries characterize present Japan-U.S. relations.
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Jun 5, 2010

No end to JBA's incompetence

Only the names change, but the story remains the same, someone wiser than I once said.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 5, 2010

Niseko's real estate boom: Bigger picture in sight for local development

For some it was a flash in the pan, at best an experiment destined to fail, at worst a mini-bubble hyper-inflated by greedy "outsiders" with little interest other than the type accumulating in the bank.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 25, 2010

Looking East as British system goes south

In the months preceding the Lower House election last year, an ambitious Ichiro Ozawa, destined to become Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) secretary general, headed to Britain to study the "Westminster system." His aim was to bring Japan's politics closer to that of Britain, to weaken the power of the...
BUSINESS / THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Apr 5, 2010

Japan-EU Summit a chance to chart new decade of change

On April 28, Japanese and European leaders will meet for the 19th bilateral Japan-EU Summit in Tokyo. At first sight, the summit is just another in a long series of annual events that began back in 1991 with the European-Japan Joint Declaration of The Hague. It will, however, be one of the most important...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 21, 2010

Where history whiffs in the air

As anyone with even a scant knowledge of Japanese history is probably aware, the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 was the "Big One." The absolute victory of Tokugawa Ieyasu made shoguns of him and his successors, who kept their hands firmly clutching the reins of power until they were wrenched away in 1868's...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Feb 14, 2010

Could 'Godzilla cherry blossom' save Japanese culture?

Cherry blossom is as quintessentially Japanese as sushi and samurai.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 7, 2010

Different folks, different strokes

Can Japan's corporate system withstand globalization? Once considered the source of the nation's competitive strength, traditional practices such as lifetime employment and seniority-based pay have in recent years been increasingly attacked as contributors to poor performance. The postbubble slump eroded...
COMMENTARY
Feb 4, 2010

The world's radioactive rubbish is piling up

The Pacific Sandpiper, a specially built cargo ship with safety features far in excess of those found on conventional vessels, left Britain's Barrow port bound for Japan the other day.
EDITORIALS
Feb 2, 2010

Sri Lanka's chance to start again

Mr. Mahinda Rajapaksa, president of Sri Lanka, has been re-elected. Mr. Rajapaksa's victory was expected following the government's victory last year over the Tamil Tigers, ending a 26-year insurgency. Peace on the island opens the door to long-delayed economic development, a key to enduring stability....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 22, 2010

Depp the magical mystery man

HOLLYWOOD — It's no surprise Johnny Depp is starring in a fantastical new movie titled "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus," which opens in Japan on Saturday.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jan 17, 2010

Learning old ways to build for today

For lovers of traditional Japanese architecture, a visit to Akihisa Kitamori's laboratory at the Kyoto University Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere (RISH) would likely evoke similar emotions to those felt by an animal-rights activist in a cosmetics test lab full of tormented rabbits.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Jan 5, 2010

Human rights in Japan: a top 10 for '09

They say that human rights advances come in threes: two steps forward and one back.
COMMENTARY
Nov 4, 2009

Still wrestling with Europe

Some things seem to go on forever. For half a century the British have been wrestling with the question of their relations with the rest of continental Europe and the struggle continues unabated and still unsolved.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 18, 2009

Pottering down Chita way

It dangles down from Nagoya, dividing Ise Bay from Mikawa Bay in the inglorious shape of one of yesterday's socks. While the upper, northern end soaks up the industrial overspill from Japan's fourth-largest city, its southern half works as a calming antidote to the madding metropolitan crowd. It goes...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 9, 2009

Kengo Kuma's Nezu Museum: an urban haven

"This is the maximum number of people that should ever come in here," says Kengo Kuma, glancing toward a small group of people murmuring quietly in front of a nearby Buddha statue. "It's much nicer when it's empty."
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 9, 2009

In Hatoyama's 'fraternity,' people the end, not means

An opinion piece by Democratic Party of Japan President Yukio Hatoyama that was originally published in the September edition of the Japanese monthly journal Voice has triggered controversy in the United States for appearing to have an antiglobalization bent.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 27, 2009

Hamas takes on Gaza Strip's Islamic radicals

GAZA CITY — A recent shootout in a Gaza mosque between Hamas security officers and militants from the radical jihadi group the Warriors of God brought to the surface the deep tensions that divide Palestinian Islamists. Twenty-two people died, including the Warriors of God's leader, Abdel Latif Moussa....
Japan Times
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Aug 8, 2009

Harley guide makes good on flight attendant's plight

David Macklin, a dual citizen of Australia and Britain, said meeting his future wife, Yoriko Suzuki, in Cairns, Australia, in May 1999 was a matter of fate.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / LIQUID CULTURE
Jul 24, 2009

A bar crawl up Center Gai

Shibuya, I once wrote, is the heart of Young Japan, and the street named Center Gai is its throbbing artery. Some people pay handsomely for cliches like that.
COMMENTARY
Jul 7, 2009

Battles with racism in India's own backyard

CHENNAI, India — It has long been known that India has its own brand of racism, manifested in a number of ways. Largely out of sight from the rest of the world, the malaise needed the gutsy chief minister of India's northeastern state of Mizoram, Pu Lalthanhawla, to get dramatic exposure.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 14, 2009

New university library puts focus on the fans

Perhaps no single cultural product is held more dear in Japan than manga. It was a dominant form of pulp entertainment in the early post-World War II period, a forum for social dissent in the 1960s, then for female creativity in the '70s. By the '80s, manga was at the center of a mass market that outstripped...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 22, 2009

Collector steps into the void

How a psychiatrist from Yamagata came to possess one of the world's most important collections of Japanese contemporary art — meaning art made in the last 15 years — is almost embarrassingly simple. Ryutaro Takahashi had the savings and liked the art, so he bought it. As far as the 62-year- old is...
COMMENTARY
May 14, 2009

Military insiders threaten Pakistan's nuclear assets

DELHI — Without naming the United States as his source, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said recently: "We have been assured that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are in safe hands as of now. And I have no reason to disbelieve the assurance."
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Feb 15, 2009

Celebrating a life with cranes

In the dim gray light just before a winter's dawn, a wash of sound emanates from some 12,000 tall, long-necked and long-legged birds as they awake in the fields of rural Kyushu.
LIFE / Lifestyle / 2008 MEDIA ROUND-UP
Dec 28, 2008

Making sense of the strange changes of 2008

Every year, the Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation selects a "kanji of the year." This year's is "hen," meaning "change" or, equally, "strange, peculiar."
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 30, 2008

Every Japanese is party to their state's 'barbaric' legal murders

The death penalty brutalizes everyone connected with it: Judges and juries who pass it down, politicians who turn an evil or a blind eye to it, jailers, executioners, and more than anyone, the person whose life is extinguished by it.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Nov 26, 2008

Pressure on Mao for victory at upcoming NHK Trophy

Defending world champion Mao Asada got a taste of what it is like to have everybody gunning for you following her recent second-place finish at the Trophee Bompard in Paris two weeks ago.

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