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Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Nov 24, 2011

Dressed to impress Tokyo's art crowd

A life-size bucking brown horse, pieced together from old leather jackets. A loom operated by a Noah's Ark collection of polar bears, birds and other beasts. A fashion boutique till that scans barcodes to create a cacophony of musical sounds.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Nov 20, 2011

Paradoxes pervade gender issues' public face in Japan

Transgender people are popping up everywhere in the current Japanese media landscape. Whether it's appearing on variety shows or hawking soft drinks or makeup in TV ads, the current crop of "new-half" celebrities have established themselves in the mainstream in a way that has surprised many onlookers....
COMMENTARY
Nov 16, 2011

Who in America gets to judge political truth?

The Stolen Valor Act of 2005, a compound of political pandering and moral exhibitionism, was whooped through the Senate, aka the "world's greatest deliberative body," by unanimous consent; the House, joining the stampede, passed it by a voice vote.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 15, 2011

Tokyo ordinance a potential contract-killer

A prediction: if Japan ever becomes a police state, it will come about not by national law but municipal ordinances. And the war on organized crime could be the engine that drives the process.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 13, 2011

Media takes both sides of TPP debate

Last week Kyodo News conducted a survey on the public's understanding of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Japan is thinking of joining. The TPP basically constitutes a free-trade zone among member countries in the Pacific rim region, including the United States, but right now it is still in the negotiation...
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 13, 2011

In the wake of the Vikings

At both its western and eastern extremes some 10,700 km apart in France and the Russian Far East respectively, the great, fused supercontinent of Eurasia breaks into fragments, into not quite matching fringes of islands.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 11, 2011

An audience with Kyoko Kagawa

Kyoko Kagawa is among the fast dwindling number of living witnesses to Japanese cinema's Golden Age of the 1950s and '60s.
COMMENTARY
Nov 7, 2011

Asian leader receives coveted American award

They honored the controversial, though increasingly appreciated, Asian statesman Lee Kuan Yew at the historic Ford Theater in Washington recently, and I wish I had been there.
BUSINESS / THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Nov 7, 2011

A U.S. of Euro Land may be what's needed but unity is in short supply

Japan launched major yen-selling intervention on Oct. 31 in response to massive speculative yen-buying — the first such action since August. The ever-rising yen is threatening Japan's export industry and can easily derail the eagerly awaited economic recovery from the March 11 shock. However, it remains...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 3, 2011

Japan has viable options on the TPP conundrum: Why not use one?

U.S. President Barack Obama will soon head to Hawaii for the 2011 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, November 8-13. Hosted by the United States, it and eight other APEC economies are holding talks to reach broad outlines of a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement.
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 23, 2011

Citizens' forum queries nuclear 'experts'

To whom does scientific debate belong?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 21, 2011

'Heartbreaker'

You can take a French boy out of France, but you can't take France out of the French boy. Usually — but this time, the formula doesn't apply, because nifty French romance "Heartbreaker" has all the trappings à la Française but ends up being a glossily plasticized Hollywood-style product.
EDITORIALS
Oct 18, 2011

Economic trouble in China

The decision of China's sovereign wealth fund to buy shares of four of the country's biggest banks is a warning signal. The move to prop up the plummeting value of those institutions is intended to boost confidence; instead, it has highlighted the many unknowns that dominate the country's financial system....
EDITORIALS
Oct 7, 2011

Missing Okinawa documents

The Tokyo High Court on Sept. 29 overturned an April 9, 2010, ruling by the Tokyo District Court that not only had determined that Japan and the United States had secret pacts over the 1972 reversion of Okinawa but also had ordered the state to disclose related diplomatic documents.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2011

Model T testing in the Internet Age

When Frederick Kelly invented the multiple-choice test in 1914, he was addressing a national crisis. The ranks of students attending secondary school had swollen from 200,000 in 1890 to more than 1.5 million as immigrants streamed onto American shores, and as new laws made two years of high school compulsory...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2011

JFK showed reluctance in acknowledging aide's help in crafting words for a generation

The recently released 1964 interviews of Jacqueline Kennedy by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. make for fascinating reading. But if the one subject on which I have some detailed knowledge is any indication, historians will need to be careful about putting too much stock in what Mrs. Kennedy said.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 2, 2011

Japan's leaders still don't get it — but whither that 'heretical' 1960s spirit?

Upwards of 2,000 demonstrators clash with riot police. Sections of trains are set alight, the fire spreads into the station and trains don't start running until late in the morning. In the middle of the night, some 450 people are arrested.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Oct 2, 2011

Satoshi Kamata: Rebel spirit writ large

Monday, Sept. 19, was Respect for the Aged Day in Japan. But on that sweltering national holiday, it wasn't the heat that that drew tens of thousands of people to Meiji Park in central Tokyo, but their concerns for all the nation's citizens, and others, who may face a threat from nuclear power.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LIGHT GIST
Sep 27, 2011

No-nos for Noda: Japan's top 10 most useless PMs

On Sept. 2, Yoshihiko Noda was appointed the 95th prime minister of Japan, the sixth man (and they have all been men) to hold the job in five years. To mark this occasion and offer lessons to the new Democratic Party of Japan chief on how not to lead the country, the Community Page asked 10 writers to...
Japan Times
JAPAN / POWERING THE FUTURE
Sep 23, 2011

Current nuclear debate to set nation's course for decades

First in a six-part series about major sources of renewable energy in Japan and the prospects for their future use and development
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2011

Where we all should mind our own business

One of the more regressive proposals in this still-young U.S. presidential election season comes not from a candidate but, rather, from a journalist, specifically Bill Keller, the departing executive editor of the New York Times. In a recent column, Keller asserted that candidates should be subjected...
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Sep 20, 2011

Anzan kigan

Dear Alice,
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 15, 2011

Francois Girard and a woman of many letters

"This wonderful project started when my friend, the Lebanese writer Wajdi Mouawad, gave me a book and said I should make a movie out it," Francois Girard explains. "But after I read it I got back to him and said, 'Sorry, I disagree with you. This is really not right for a movie — but it's perfect for...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Sep 13, 2011

The loneliness — or otherwise — of the long-distance foreigner

The Japan Times received a large number of readers' emails in response to Debito Arudou's Just Be Cause column published Aug. 2, headlined "The loneliness of the long-distance foreigner." Here, belatedly, are a selection.
EDITORIALS
Sep 10, 2011

Switzerland wages war

In a move that jolted currency markets, the Swiss National Bank, the European nation's central bank, pledged this week to drive down the value of its currency, the Swiss franc. The move was prompted by the rising value of the franc against the euro, a trend that has pummeled Swiss exporters.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 7, 2011

Is China's economic miracle a mirage?

Doubts are beginning to be heard about how sustainable is China's economic miracle, particularly the relentless emphasis on exports and investment spending by hundreds of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and local governments. Beijing, of course, has its supporters, including banker turned academic Stephen...
COMMENTARY
Sep 6, 2011

Instrument of love in Libya

Somebody (perhaps a Jesuit) once said: "Force is an instrument of love in a world of complexity and chance."
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Sep 5, 2011

MLB scouts doing due diligence on Fighters' Darvish

The press box at QVC Marine Field isn't exactly state-of-the-art. Upfront are three sections of long desks topped with aging, faded wood looking out onto the field from ground level, behind a net and tinted glass. The rear resembles a school cafeteria, with an old television resting on a filing cabinet...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 14, 2011

Blavatsky's Book of the Dead

THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD: A Biography, by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton University Press, 2011, 175 pp., $19.95 (hardcover) In 2005 a journalist telephoned the eminent scholar of Buddhism and Tibetan Studies, Donald S. Lopez, Jr., and asked him whether "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" was the most...

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.