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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Sep 4, 2016

JBC marks 100 columns and a million page views

Column has been shining a critical light on issues affecting Japan's foreign residents since 2008.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jun 14, 2009

What lit the fuse of culture?

In this month's column, we solve the mystery of the emergence of modern human culture. As a bonus, there's a bit of good news for Tokyoites — and for those of us who may worry that success is solely down to brainpower.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 14, 2020

Life begins at 60 (or at least it starts anew)

Japan Times writer Daniel Morales celebrates his 60th column with a lesson on turning 60, a special birthday in Japan.
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Oct 13, 2011

When the 'City of Water' was a font of culture

From the Byzantine times in the 9th century, Venice was a strategic trading center straddling Europe and the East. Venetian merchants traded wool and silk textiles for spices, grains and other commodities from Asia, making the city — and the Venetian Republic of which it was the center — one of the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 17, 2018

Motobu: History and nature do the talking

The Motobu Peninsula is, at least to the casual guest, an earthly Utopia. How many of us, spellbound by nature, have dreamed of withdrawing to a rural idyll like this?
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 2, 2014

The conspicuous tendency to wish China well

If China fails and falls, the rest of the world will suffer more than a headache or a short-term setback. We need to be cautious about pessimism that might fuel self-fulfilling prophecy.
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.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Feb 24, 2010

Pulse Rate: 社畜 (shachiku)

In our new series, Pulse Rate looks at why everyone seeking info on 'corporate cattle' and black-listed companies in Japan's search engines.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Dec 24, 2015

The Japan Times advisory board rates paper's coverage

The Japan Times Media Advisory Board members who have been monitoring the newspapers' reporting met Nov. 18 to discuss progress from the previous board meetings and offer advice for the future.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 1, 2003

Writer fills niche with new yakuza movie book

Mark Schilling is feeling a bit bleary-eyed. His son -- a freshman in media studies at Glasgow University, unused to the time difference between Europe and Japan -- had rung from Scotland around 5 a.m.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Jul 9, 2017

Tributes to Jean Pearce, who shaped the foreign community's experience of Japan

Jean Pearce, who for decades helped Japan's foreign community feel more at home in their adopted country through her columns in The Japan Times, passed away peacefully on June 14 at the age of 96 in Washington, D.C.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 15, 2012

Wild Watch turns 30 this month

As April 2nd's 30th anniversary of my first Wild Watch column in The Japan Times neared, I was in India — teeming Delhi to be precise, with its cacophony of people, honking traffic and barking dogs, though a tailorbird would stop and call outside my window, where a palm squirrel never tired of chattering....
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Nov 21, 2021

Nordic exposure: Pantechnicon celebrates the synergy between Japanese and Scandinavian design

Despite disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pantechnicon has been gaining momentum among the design savvy London set since it first opened its doors in September 2020. Located in the heart of the Belgravia conservation area of London, the new cultural hub offers guests an opportunity “to go for...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 31, 2013

Last post: Japan's outdated model is dead; long live the emerging vision

As of today, Roger Pulvers takes leave of Counterpoint, for which he has written weekly since its inception on April 3, 2005. In his final three columns, he set out to consider in turn Japan in the past, present and future. This is the concluding part of that trilogy.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 7, 2013

Russia's homophobic curse

With the general mood in Russia's populace favoring a ban on gay culture, homophobic mobsters of all colors feel cozy under an official umbrella.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Jan 8, 2013

From Taiji to Okinawa, readers dissect some issues of 2012

In the first of our new Community Chest letters columns, we bring together a selection of mails received in response to some of the final Community stories of 2012.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / COMMUNITY CHEST
Oct 1, 2014

Readers' letters: Ian Thorpe, the Yushukan, racism, teaching English, tipping and sunlight

Some emails received in response to recent Community articles.
Reader Mail
Feb 14, 2020

Bring back the daily editorial

I am disappointed at recently finding that The Japan Times is no longer running a daily editorial column, and instead printing one only once a week.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 5, 2019

How Iacocca created the celebrity CEO, for better or worse

Saving Chrysler was a big accomplishment, but Iacocca's legacy is more about making the covers of Time and Newsweek.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / DAVOS SPECIAL 2016
Jan 20, 2016

Le Corbusier's Japanese ghost lives on in Ueno

The Swiss-French architect and artist Charles Eduoard Jeanneret-Gris, better known as Le Corbusier, was by any measure one of the greatest architects of the twentieth century.
Japan Times
JAPAN / TELLING LIVES
May 13, 2015

Nagoya DJ brings Japanese history to life

Chris Glenn's participation in relief efforts in the disaster-hit Tohoku region made the news in 2011, when as a member of a group of pilots he flew a helicopter to deliver food, water and medicines for evacuees.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Feb 19, 2013

Journey to Kenya turns writer's life on its head, spurs Africa fascination

It was a single visit to Kenya in 1972 that completely changed Michio Hiraiwa's philosophy on life. He fell in love with the country, and visited there 150 times over the past 40 years. Once a workaholic, Hiraiwa says he now leads a stress-free and relaxed life, visiting Kenya and Tanzania four times...
OLYMPICS / LONDON POSTCARD
Aug 8, 2012

Bolt's growing legend makes for good reading

My maternal great-grandmother used to wash the linens every Monday. She considered it a good tone-setter for the week.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 10, 2011

Watch your manners!

MANNERS AND MISCHIEF: Gender, Power and Etiquette in Japan. Edited by Jan Bardsley and Laura Miller. University of California Press, 2011, 245 pp., $22.95 (paper) Don't let the cutesy Hello Kitty cover fool you. "Manners and Mischief" disdains frivolity and stands firm as an academic text for students...
In order to emphasize its grandeur, architect Gonkuro Kume designed the entrance hall of Nikko Kanaya Hotel's Annex Building with "karahafu" curved gables.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 10, 2024

Nikko Kanaya Hotel: A gateway to the art of Meiji Japan in the hills of Tochigi

Over 150 years on, the structure stands as a remarkable example of Japanese art and architecture in an era known for rapid modernization.
Her, a self-described feminist bar in Shanghai, on March 15. Women in Shanghai gather in bars, salons and bookstores to reclaim their identities as the country’s leader calls for China to adopt a “childbearing culture.”
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
May 7, 2024

In China, ruled by men, women quietly find a powerful voice

Women in Shanghai gather to reclaim their identities as the country’s leader calls for China to adopt a “childbearing culture.”
Japan’s public bathhouses have been in decline for decades, with the number of such facilities in Tokyo alone dropping by nearly half in the last 15 years.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 14, 2023

Japan seeks digital detox with return to ‘way of the sauna’

Public bathhouses have been in decline for decades, with the number of sentō baths in Tokyo dropping by nearly half in the last 15 years.
Plamo Furniture’s Baum series of interior works, designed by Takuro Izumi, is made with vertically layered panels of engineered wood that can be custom-designed to seamlessly fit any space.
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Oct 5, 2024

Japan's flat-packed furniture doesn't skimp on aesthetics

Disappointed by flat-packed aesthetics? Not if you give these Japan-designed pieces a look.
Don Kenny leaves behind a wealth of English translations of kyogen as well as work on other aspects of Japanese culture.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Nov 14, 2024

A bridge between kyogen and the world, Don Kenny dies at 88

He came here a soldier, stationed at Atsugi air base after the war, and soon fell in love with the world of Japanese theater.

Longform

Yasuyuki Yoshida stirs a brew in a fermentation tank at his brewery in Hakusan.
The quake that shook Noto's sake brewing tradition