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April 28, 2024
 

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HANS NIEMAN

Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Sep 24, 2022
The chess world isn’t ready for a cheating scandal
Magnus Carlsen, the World Chess Championship winner, withdrew from the Sinquefield Cup after losing to Hans Niemann.
EDITORIALS
Jan 15, 2010
Population decline worsening
The population dynamics estimate of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry indicates that Japan's population decline is accelerating. The report, based on birth and death registers submitted from January 2009 to October 2009, estimates the number of births in Japan in that year at 1,069,000, or 22,000 less than in 2008, and the number of deaths in 2009 at 1,144,000, or 2,000 more than in 2008. The death figure is the highest since 1947 and represents the ninth straight yearly increase.
Reader Mail
Jun 27, 2007
Profiting off a soft target
Regarding the June 17 article "Sony apologizes for using cathedral in violent video game": As a longtime resident of Japan and a one-time Sony investor, I would like to ask the responsible people at Sony Computer Entertainment to consider the consequences if they had used another place besides Manchester Cathedral to stage the scene of a shootout massacre in their computer game -- say, the Kaaba in Mecca or Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo.
Reader Mail
Jun 24, 2007
Review missed half of the joke
Regarding Giovanni Fazio's May 25 review of the comedy hit film "Borat": Fazio claims that the backbone of this farce lies in its "cultural misunderstandings" and sight gags. Fair enough, but the longest-running joke in this masterpiece of absurdity, one that Fazio should have elicited, is that the two main characters -- Borat and his companion Azamat -- are not having a two-way conversation. Borat is speaking Hebrew and Azamat is speaking Persian (Iranian), and the two are basically just jabbering -- chitchat that most of the time is making fun of what finally appears in the subtitles. Get it? Two friends each speaking the language of the other's enemy? Brilliant!
Reader Mail
Jun 13, 2007
Make high school exams relevant
Proposed education reforms reported in recent articles do not address the most glaring, fundamental problems in the school system. Most crucially, no mention is made of the fact that it is too hard to enter university and too easy to graduate.
Reader Mail
May 20, 2007
Do the poor dream of nationalism?
Regarding Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party's repeated pushes to re-militarize Japan, I think it is useful to consider this in the wider social context of what is happening in this country right now.
Reader Mail
Apr 22, 2007
Hardly a utopia for criminals
In his April 11 letter, "Reduction in crime is relative," James Holland misunderstands the purpose of my original letter ("Migrants are to be welcomed," April 1). It was not only to dispute claims of rampant crime in Britain and the alleged culpability of "unassimilated" foreigners, but also to challenge the basis on which these claims are premised. Public perceptions of threat appear to be considered sufficient evidence in the same way that fears, rather than facts, inform how foreigners are sometimes viewed in Japan.
Reader Mail
Apr 11, 2007
Risible claim on English expertise
The anonymous writer who pleads for "More stress on Indian English" (March 28 letter) is correct to withhold his name. Such a premise ranks with jokes about "military Intelligence." He cites British colonization of India as the main basis of his plea, but let me remind him that America and Australia, as well as Singapore, were all British colonies too. The first two were settled by Anglo-Celts whose first language was, and remains, English -- certainly not the case in India unless they changed their constitution recently. Is there a note of racialism -- and I use this word with deliberation -- in his slur on "Singlish"?
Reader Mail
Mar 14, 2007
A neutral to racist greeting
Regarding Hidesato Sakakibara's Feb. 28 letter, "Term 'gaijin' has run its course": When I arrived in Japan, it was another foreigner who presented "gaijin" to me as short for "gaikoku-jin" (someone from a foreign country). In Tahiti, where I come from, we use a similar expression: "Popaa." It has become associated with white people since most foreigners there are white. I, too, have been called "Popaa" because of my Tahitian-French blood.
Reader Mail
Mar 11, 2007
Education ministry needs reform
There's been a lot of talk about education reform; unfortunately, the reform presently being advanced by the education ministry has little to no reality on the ground. Our struggle as an international couple trying to give our 15-year-old son a decent education has been one of never-ending disappointment.
Reader Mail
Feb 7, 2007
Get divorced, face deportation
I got divorced recently and have two Japanese children. However, I am British. Therefore, I applied for any type of visa that would give me rights to work and support my children and ex-partner. My ex-partner wrote a letter stating I always provide financial support and that I can see my children whenever I like. Of course, in the United Kingdom, my Japanese partner after divorce would have full British rights, entitled to free health care, free education for the children, eligibility to vote in elections, and a pension if she stayed in the United Kingdom.
Reader Mail
Feb 4, 2007
Fight one 'myth' with another
It is so utterly ridiculous to read time and again about certain segments of Japanese society continuing to choose to deny the events and the brutality of the Nanjing Massacre, and now they even want to make a "documentary" to show that it was a myth.
Reader Mail
Jan 28, 2007
Seeing 'liberation' for what it was
Jeff Kingston's review was simply one of the best essays published recently in The Japan Times. It addresses some of the issues facing Japan over its World War II-era atrocities. For nearly 20 years the public has been told by various Japanese leaders (mainly of the Liberal Democratic Party) that the Tojo Hideki government set out to "liberate" Asia from Western colonialism, when in fact the true intent of the Japanese militarists was to ruthlessly root out European and American imperialism across Asia and the Pacific and replace it with a brutal new world order that incorporated belief in Japan's divine role in world affairs and the need to place "the eight corners of the world under a Japanese roof."
Reader Mail
Jan 24, 2007
Choice: all-out war or dialogue
It appears now that U.S. President George W. Bush has finally come to grips with his policy failures, but instead of withdrawing from Iraq, he is looking to expand the regional conflict, as his recent speech mentioning Syria and Iran clearly indicates. If such an escalation were to ensue, it would change the entire situation not only in Iraq but the entire Middle East and would require no less an effort than that required for World War II -- reinstatement of the U.S. military draft.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.
Number of homeless in Japan hits record low
Homeless people sleep on the street in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward in August 2021.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
Air China to buy 100 locally made C919 jets in $11 billion deal
A Comac C919 during an aerial display at the Singapore Airshow at Changi Exhibition Centre in Singapore in February
Casa del Cibo: A thriving jewel born from Tohoku’s harsh past
When chef Ryohei Ikemi moved to Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, and opened Casa del Cibo in 2011, it was the first proper Italian restaurant in the city.
Tokyo's Koto Ward by-election a race unlike any other
Natsumi Sakai, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan’s candidate and one of four female candidates running in the by-election, touts her experience as a cancer survivor and midwife as having prepared her to tackle issues that women currently face.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.
Top U.S. and China diplomats talk tough amid warnings of new ‘downward spiral’
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on Friday
Kyotographie's strong 12th edition shines light into the margins
Yassine Alaoui Ismaili, who goes by Yoriyas, turned to photography, shooting motion while in motion himself, after an injury forced him to give up his career as a professional breakdancer.

Podcast

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.
[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Longform

Later this month, author Shogo Imamura will open Honmaru, a bookstore that allows other businesses to rent its shelves. It's part of a wave of ideas Japanese booksellers are trying to compete with online spaces.
The story isn't over for Japan's bookstores
By Alex K.T. Martin

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