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Reader Mail
Aug 31, 2013

Egypt's transition to democracy

As ambassador of Egypt, I wrote the following so that Japanese friends will accurately know about recent developments in my country.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 31, 2013

Irish poet, 'Beowulf' translator Seamus Heaney dies

Seamus Heaney, the Irish poet whose verse captured the transcendent power, darkness and humanity of his conflicted homeland, died Friday at a hospital in Dublin. He was 74.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 30, 2013

Investing in global group home — while telling kids to 'smile'

As part of the Liberal Democratic Party's "national resilience plan" to protect against natural and made-made disasters, I noticed one obvious natural disaster missing from the list: aging.
LIFE / Food & Drink / JAPANESE KITCHEN
Aug 22, 2013

Translating Japan's top cooking site

The Internet isn't all kitten videos and saucy stuff, you know. In Japan, food and cooking makes up a large part of the Net — and recipe-sharing site Cookpad is its biggest juggernaut. With 20 million users — including an astonishing 80 to 90 percent of all Japanese women in their 20s and 30s —...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2013

Global threat of nuclear deterrence

lmost half a century after the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was signed, the world is still perched precariously on the edge of the nuclear precipice.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 18, 2013

Wearable tech liberates disabled

It has been 18 years since Tammie Lou Van Sant held a camera. But nearly two decades after a car accident left her paralyzed from the chest down, Van Sant is shooting again — thanks to a device that could be part of technology's next big trend.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 16, 2013

NSA broke privacy rules repeatedly, audit finds

The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 14, 2013

Jeté-ing from ballet to kitchen-sink drama

Though she's moved from elegant arabesques to doing the washing up, former prima ballerina Tamiyo Kusakari is stealing the show in "Ani Kaeru (The Older Brother Returns)," a kitchen-sink drama playing every night through Sept. 1 at Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre in Ikebukuro.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 13, 2013

Can Bezos provide what good journalism needs?

A veteran journalist never imagined that American newspaper reporters and editors would become the economically threatened steelworkers of the 21st century.
EDITORIALS
Aug 6, 2013

Police blunders taint murder probe

The case of the assistant police inspector who confessed to killing a Toyama couple in 2010 appears headed for an inquest panel after prosecutors decline to indict him.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 5, 2013

Phone sex partner rues her affair with Weiner

Yes, Sydney Leathers is her real name. And despite the phone sex and the offers from porn producers, the Indiana woman at the center of the latest Anthony Weiner scandal says she was looking for love — not fame — when she first got involved with the disgraced New York politician.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 2, 2013

Why acupuncture is giving doubters the needle

You can't get crystal healing on the National Health Service. It doesn't fund faith healing. And most doctors believe magnets are best stuck on fridges, not patients. But ask for a treatment in which an expert examines your tongue, smells your skin and tries to unblock the flow of life force running...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health
Jul 30, 2013

Long-living Japanese society needs better 'quality of death'

A quarter of a million bedbound elderly people are kept alive in Japan, often for years, by a feeding tube surgically inserted into their stomach. A few months ago, my 96-year-old grandmother became one of them.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 30, 2013

Crowdsourced art project to printout the Web honors free-information activist

The World Wide Web began to show up by snail mail at the end of May. It arrived on sheets of office paper, stacked in white boxes, slipped into bubble-wrapped manila sleeves, folded into a clean, white business envelope with Rosa Parks stamps, stuffed in neon-green packaging from Farmington Hills, Michigan....
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 28, 2013

Idaho mom sues Obama over surveillance program

Anna Smith is a mother of two who lives in rural Idaho, works the night shift as a nurse and goes to the gym a lot. She rarely follows the news and knows little about the debate over government surveillance and privacy that has rocked Washington in recent weeks.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jul 27, 2013

Jilted mistresses emerge as China's new whistle-blowers on corruption

As President Xi Jinping pledges to clean up government corruption in China, an unlikely group of self-styled whistle-blowers has emerged: jilted mistresses.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 21, 2013

Resetting Egypt's prospects for a full revolution

Getting Egypt back on the revolutionary road will depend on a broadly agreed constitution, economic reforms and 'street' pressure for a political settlement.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 20, 2013

Murky backstory of 'Gatsby'

What is it about 'The Great Gatsby'? The dark star of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unquiet masterpiece draws writers, critics and filmmakers into its force field, drives them a little mad, and hurls them back into the darkness. The book and its author add up to a mystery whose fascination never fades.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 17, 2013

The different brush strokes of Tani Buncho

The latest exhibition at the Suntory Museum of Art commemorates the 250th anniversary of the birth of Tani Buncho — a painter, connoisseur and art historian of formidable energy and with an insatiable drive for knowledge. Of samurai lineage, Buncho underwent foundational art training in Kano School...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 17, 2013

Can Snowden cite rights and still applaud Putin?

It's easy to admire Edward Snowden for what he has revealed about U.S. and U.K. spying, and still feel deeply uncomfortable about his praise for Russia, of all places.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 16, 2013

Do unto Exxon as you would do unto yourself

Last week's resolution on climate change by the General Synod of the United Church of Christ has garnered mostly admiring attention from the news media. But I must admit to a degree of perplexity and sorrow over the document, which seems to place the blame for our heavy use of fossil fuels on the companies...
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 15, 2013

NSA chief on quest to 'collect it all'

In late 2005, as Iraqi roadside bombings were nearing an all-time peak, the National Security Agency's newly appointed chief began pitching a radical plan for halting the attacks that then were killing or wounding a dozen Americans a day.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jul 14, 2013

Zimmerman acquitted of Martin killing

A Florida jury acquits George Zimmerman of second-degree murder and manslaughter in a case that both fascinated and appalled large segments of a spellbound America.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jul 14, 2013

Furigana: read the fine print, decode the hidden meanings

Years ago, a colleague at a company where I worked had a surname written using a character so obscure, that when handing out his business card he used to joke apologetically, 名前の漢字、ほとんど誰も読めない (namae no kanji, hotondo dare mo yomenai, hardly anybody can read the kanji in...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2013

American Revolution bore stripes of a holy war

Americans have considered their wars sacred even when the primary objectives were political. The American Revolution bore the stripes of a holy war.
WORLD / Science & Health
Jul 14, 2013

'Alarm fatigue' at hospitals poses risks

Walk into a hospital intensive care unit and hear the din: A ventilator honks loudly. An infusion pump emits a high-pitched beep-beep every six seconds. A blood pressure monitor pushes out one long tone after another.
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Jul 12, 2013

Tweet Beat: #七夕, #鯖アニメ, #愛国競争

Tanabata wishes, political demonstration and a whole pile of anime premieres featured big in last week's Japanese Twitter hashtags! #TweetBeat
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 11, 2013

Who'll stand for spied-on?

By hearing only the state side of the story, the U.S. secret surveillance courts lose the appearance of impartiality. Court disputes need to have adversaries.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past