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EDITORIALS
Feb 18, 2013

Mr. Obama's first principles

The challenge for President Obama has been how to restore growth while facing implacable Republican Party opposition to almost everything he does.
Japan Times
TENNIS
Feb 17, 2013

Serena regains No. 1 ranking

Serena Williams secures her historic return to the top spot by rallying past Petra Kvitova in the Qatar Total Open.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 17, 2013

Nuclear dispute shapes fight over future of fading town

This superbly told tale about the waxing and waning fortunes of Kaminoseki town over the past four centuries presents some interesting local counterpoints to the more familiar national narrative.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Feb 17, 2013

Bringing the love of short films to a local audience

If there was a birthday cake for the Brillia Short Shorts Theater, it would probably be an elegant, minimalist affair — no excessive decorations, nothing too calorific and five slim candles giving off a modest orange glow. One of just four movie theaters in and around Tokyo dedicated to short films,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 17, 2013

Kanai's provocative, textured 'girls' fiction' wistfully surprises

INDIAN SUMMER, by Mieko Kanai, translated by Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley. Cornell East Asia Series, 2012, 149 pp., $24 (paperback)
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Markets
Feb 16, 2013

G-20 strengthens exchange-rate stance without singling out Japan

The Group of 20 finance chiefs seek to avoid 'competitive currency devaluation' amid the yen's decline on Prime Minister Abe's drastic monetary easing.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2013

Mr. Obama, did you or did you not kill Anwar al-Awlaki?

The big problem with U.S. drone policy is that it lets the government kill its citizens in secret and then refuse to acknowledge later that it has done so.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 14, 2013

Danger is mounting in Asia

The cliche that the 21st century will be a Pacific century may still prove out. But the Asia-Pacific of late has become a zone of frightening confrontation.
EDITORIALS
Feb 14, 2013

Judo culture needs to change

Reverberations from the claims of violence in women's judo continue with the resignations of an All Japan Judo Federation board member and a coach.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 11, 2013

'Good seed' versus 'evil weed': Hemp activists eye legalization

In the cannabis plant family, hemp is the good seed. Marijuana, the evil weed. Michael Bowman, a gregarious Colorado farmer who grows corn and wheat, has been working his contacts in Congress in an attempt to persuade lawmakers that hemp has been framed, unfairly lumped with the stuff people smoke to...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 10, 2013

The evolution of Japan's turn away from Confucian ideas

'The evolution of political thought in this relatively isolated island nation during the period in question is unique to the point of being somewhat freakish,” writes political thought scholar Hiroshi Watanabe of the University of Tokyo.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Feb 8, 2013

Android 'fragmentation' leaves smartphones vulnerable

In late October, researchers at North Carolina State University alerted Google to a security flaw that could let scam artists send phony text messages to Android phones — a practice called "smishing" that can ensnare consumers in fraud.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 7, 2013

Turning China into an enemy

The rise in tensions over disputed claims to islands and rocky outcrops in the South China Sea has the potential to harm the interests of Australia.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 4, 2013

'Abenomics' missing the mark

The economic policies enunciated by the Abe government may have some beneficial effects, but seem inadequate in themselves to revive the Japanese economy in the long run.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Feb 3, 2013

All aglow with the 'water of life'

In 1983, I talked myself into a marvelous job with a Japanese magazine. I set off in the early summer, when the days would be long and the nights short, to tour around Scotland with cameraman Moriyama Touru.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 1, 2013

Your body — not just a temple, but a laboratory too

1. Appendix to life The appendix gets a bad press. It is usually treated as a body part that lost its function millions of years ago. All it seems to do is occasionally get infected and cause appendicitis. Yet recently it has been discovered that the appendix is very useful to the bacteria that help...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Feb 1, 2013

Canadian uses sports as bridge to teaching, writing, understanding

Writer, teacher and sports fan Trevor Kew, 32, pedals and kicks his way through culture shock. He uses sports to help him adapt to unfamiliar cultures or new places when traveling, trusting his bike or a soccer ball to bridge the gap with locals.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 1, 2013

Bidding farewell to Hillary Clinton, for now ...

As Hillary Clinton prepares to step down as U.S. Secretary of State, millions of Americans would like to see her write another political act — as president.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jan 31, 2013

Schools have knack for healthy meals

In Japan, school lunch means a regular meal, not one that harms your health. The food is grown locally and almost never frozen. There's no mystery behind the meat. From time to time, parents even call up with an unusual question: Can they get the recipes?
LIFE / Digital
Jan 30, 2013

Why the Apple and Facebook empires are destined to collapse

Nothing lasts forever: if history has any lesson for us, it is this. It's a thought that comes from rereading Paul Kennedy's magisterial tome, "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," in which he shows that none of the great nation-states or empires of history — Rome; imperial Spain in 1600; France...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jan 28, 2013

Blame it on the hara: harassment vocabulary makes us all victims

Japan has a new hara. No, the nice couple down the hall didn't just have a baby; according to recent news, yet another form of harassment is supposedly becoming a social problem.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jan 25, 2013

Why the future of aviation needs the Dreamliner

As Boeing showed off its multibillion-dollar baby on the Dreamliner's promotional world tour in 2011, one quirky feature was regularly pointed out: a sleekly designed but redundant ashtray, a compliance with regulations laid down in a different age.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 25, 2013

The unloved dollar standard

The role of the U.S. dollar as international anchor is faltering as emerging markets grow increasingly frustrated by the Fed's near-zero interest-rate policy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 25, 2013

'Minasan, Sayonara (See You Tomorrow, Everyone)'

Those directors who return to the same theme over and over commonly use the same actor to embody it. Akira Kurosawa cast Toshiro Mifune as the intense hero in film after film about masculine, if not always traditionally macho, heroism. Juzo Itami starred wife Nobuko Miyamoto as the tough cookie taking...

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers