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Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jan 15, 2012

Danger! Nuclear waste! Keep out — forever!

The earliest known cave paintings date from about 30,000 years ago, and the earliest bone tools found so far predate those paintings by another 40,000 years. Go back 100,000 years, and Homo sapiens — us lot — are only just emerging, though the fossil record suggests our ancestors back then had larger...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Oct 23, 2011

Only the Japanese public's will can raze that lethal 'village'

"Of all the places in all the world where no one in their right mind would build scores of nuclear power plants, Japan would be pretty near the top of the list," wrote Leuren Moret in a "Power and the people" Timeout special in The Japan Times on May 23, 2004.
COMMENTARY
Oct 19, 2011

A decade of Afghan tragedy

On July 1, 2002, the United States bombed an Afghan wedding in the small village of Deh Rawud. Located to the north of Kandahar, the village seemed fortified by the region's many mountains. For a few hours, its people thought they were safe from a war they had never invited. They celebrated, and as customs...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2011

The 9/11-3/11 connection

It's an interesting twist that the recent Sept. 11, 2011, anniversary marks two momentous events — 10 years since the multiple terrorist attacks in the United States that spawned a worldwide "war on terror", and six months since the devastating combination of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear plant disaster...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 14, 2011

More than a little help from Gadhafi's Western friends

With Col. Moammar Gadhafi's regime in ruins and Gadhafi himself on the run, it is time to ponder just how he survived in power for so long. Greed for markets and money, it seems, often trumped the West's supposed concern for basic human rights.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 24, 2011

Powering Japan's future

Last year, Japan produced close to one quadrillion watt-hours of electricity — that's 1 followed by 15 zeros. The vast majority of that — which translates into one billion megawatt hours (MWh) — came from coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants operated by 10 utilities that, only a few months...
COMMENTARY
Jul 16, 2011

A media empire crumbles

Scandals have often dominated the British media, but few have been as remarkable as the revelations which have been appearing almost every day about the misdeeds of journalists on the British populist mass circulation Sunday paper The News of the World. This was owned by News International which is run...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Apr 17, 2011

Capturing the eerie beauty of Chernobyl

Pripyat, Ukraine, has been a ghost town for the last 25 years. On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant's No. 4 reactor experienced a sudden power surge resulting in several explosions and fires that sent a massive amount of nuclear debris into the air.
COMMENTARY
Apr 5, 2011

Equality for women helps to reduce hunger

NEW YORK — Giving women the same tools and resources as men, such as financial support, education and access to markets, could reduce the number of hungry people worldwide by up to 150 million, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 31, 2011

Quake relief effort highlights a vital U.S. military function

SENDAI — In September 2009, I resigned my tenured faculty position at a Japanese national university to begin working for the U.S. Marine Corps in Okinawa. While at Osaka University, I had the opportunity to teach many talented Japanese and international students over the years both at the undergraduate...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 19, 2011

Poetess achieves duality of words, numbers

Statistically, there's no accounting for Jessica Goodfellow's life in Japan. The daughter of an engineer, on a fast track in her early 20s to a Ph.D. in economics at California Institute of Technology, Goodfellow realized something essential didn't correlate: her incalculable love of poetry.
COMMENTARY
Dec 9, 2010

Tree studies link climate change to calamity

SINGAPORE — Extreme weather, from heat waves and drought to snowstorms and floods, is nothing new. The big question is what are the causes. Are they natural or man-made, or a combination of both?
COMMENTARY
Oct 5, 2010

Mr. Kan, stop wasting time

It has taken the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) two long months to settle on the continuation of Kan Naoto as prime minister. Whatever past grudges or future intricacies might exist, the Kan Cabinet must get down to work without further delay.
EDITORIALS
Sep 6, 2010

Risks of a more active defense

A private advisory panel to Prime Minister Naoto Kan submitted a report Aug. 27 calling for changing Japan from a "passive peace-loving nation" to a "proactive peace-loving nation." The panel was formed in view of a planned revision of the defense program outline — a guideline for building up defense...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 1, 2010

Gunma city does battle with beards

I would like to draw readers' attention to the outstanding work of the municipal government of Isesaki, Gunma Prefecture. After receiving complaints that citizens find bearded men unpleasant, Isesaki — just as all levels of Japanese government often do — took decisive action to address an important...
JAPAN
May 21, 2010

Hatoyama slams North over Cheonan sinking

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Thursday denounced the sinking of a South Korean warship that Seoul has blamed on North Korea but did not elaborate on how Japan might respond to the incident.
EDITORIALS
Mar 27, 2010

China's leaders walk a fine line

While China's National People's Congress (NPC) does not function like a legislature in the West, its annual meeting is still an important date on the country's political calendar. At the conclave, the Chinese leadership lays out its policy agenda for the year ahead, and the government work program is...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Feb 10, 2010

U.S. friends in high places involved in Toyota probe

WASHINGTON — Toyota has friends in high places in Washington, including some of the very people now investigating the carmaker.
BUSINESS
Jan 22, 2010

JAL may spark major revamp in pension finance

Japan Airlines Corp.'s $25.5 billion bankruptcy may be the impetus for such companies as Hitachi Ltd. and Toyota Motor Corp., Japan's biggest private employers, to shore up their deficit-ridden pension plans.
JAPAN
Jan 9, 2010

Ship collision coverage exposes media bias

This week's collision in which a Japanese whaling ship chopped off the bow of an antiwhaling boat off Antarctica not only highlights the international tussle over the contentious hunt but has also led to a clash between Japanese and Western media as well.
JAPAN
Dec 7, 2009

Breakthrough hoped for at climate talks

COPENHAGEN — A conference billed by some as the world's last chance to halt global warming and catastrophic climate change opens Monday in Copenhagen in an atmosphere of optimism among U.N. delegates and political leaders that a basic agreement can be reached now and a formal treaty hammered out later....
COMMENTARY
Sep 4, 2009

Less water for more food as Asia urbanizes

SINGAPORE — Industrialization and urbanization across Asia have encouraged the misconception that they are the main gluttons of water. But the dominant force in Asian water consumption is agriculture.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 11, 2009

TOEIC no turkey at 30

The Test of English for International Communication turns 30 this year. In three decades it has risen from humble beginnings to become one of the best-known tests in Japan. In December 1979, 3,000 people sat the first TOEIC. In 2008, people in Japan took it 1.7 million times. Many were repeat customers;...
Japan Times
Events / WHERE IT'S AT
Jul 28, 2009

English speakers gather for human rights

Amnesty International Tokyo English Network offers English speakers, both native and otherwise, an opportunity to participate in the activities of the worldwide human rights organization Amnesty International while in Japan.
COMMENTARY
Jun 3, 2009

The nuclear nightmare

North Korea and Pakistan present unique nuclear-proliferation risks because they challenge the very premise on which the international anti-proliferation measures have been built.

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