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COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2012

Let grassroots exchange inspire reconstruction

Korean youth culture is all the rage in Southeast Asia. In January, the leading Indonesian newspaper Kompas published a front-page article on Korean culture titled: "Korean Pop Culture Launches Itself on the World."
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 1, 2012

It's just because . . . foreigners know best

You seldom see the sight these days of pairs of crew-cut white males in pressed white shirts and ties pedaling around cities in Japan. The sight is from a bygone age, largely relegated to history: The white man with a burden to educate and enlighten the natives, in this case about the one true religion,...
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Apr 23, 2012

Land grabs raise security issues

A foreign-capital property buying spree that has extended to areas in and around facilities of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces and the American armed forces could pose a threat to Japan's security.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 10, 2012

Rape victim marks 10 years on lonely crusade for justice

It surely isn't very often that elite Japanese bureaucrats hear the words to the national anthem quoted at them — by a foreigner. Earlier this year, Australian national Catherine Fisher says she pulled the words of "Kimigayo" from her head during a frustrating meeting with officials from the ministries...
Reader Mail
Apr 5, 2012

Expressions of religious belief

For a second, I had hoped that Paul Gaysford's April 1 letter, "Sentiment that does not console," was just an April Fool's joke. Gaysford rebukes Megumi Watanabe for saying, in her March 29 letter ("Hope for 3/11 survivors"), that the children who died in the March 11, 2011, disasters are watching us...
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Apr 3, 2012

Revolving-door immigration policy hard-wired to fail: readers' responses

Some responses to Debito Arudou's March 6 Just Be Cause column, "Japan's revolving-door immigration policy hard-wired to fail":
Reader Mail
Mar 15, 2012

Passivity toward negligence

Congratulations to The Japan Times for the editorial insight and courage to print William Pesek's March 10 article, ">Japan's nuclear mobsters don't share tsunami pain." I also want to congratulate Pesek on his analysis and evaluation of the causes and responsibilities for the catastrophe of March 11,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 13, 2012

New Zealander loses legal fight over crippling med addiction

When Wayne Douglas arrived home in New Zealand from Japan in early 2001, his own mother didn't recognize him at the airport.
Reader Mail
Mar 8, 2012

Dictatorship rumors exaggerated

I would call The Washington Post opinion article run in The Japan Times on March 2, "Hungary needs voice of Radio Free Europe," simply ridiculous if it was not so sad and threatening to the worldwide reputation of Hungary.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 4, 2012

Japan's lonely people: Where do they all belong?

In recent weeks, three cases of kodokushi, or "lonely deaths," have been covered extensively in the news. One involved a Saitama Prefecture family of three whose bodies were found in their apartment several months after the electricity and gas were turned off for nonpayment. Police assumed they had starved....
Reader Mail
Mar 1, 2012

Suspicious emergencies provision

The Feb. 26 Jiji article "LDP wants emergencies provision in Constitution" was not reassuring. Whatever the mumbled excuses in the introduction, the final four paragraphs were a give away to where the Liberal Democratic Party and LDP lawmaker Gen Nakatani's panel are really headed.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
Feb 28, 2012

Teacher outfoxes board, exposes bid to fleece JETs

English teachers on the JET program are often faced with the bittersweet moment when they realize their contract is ending and they will soon be returning to their home country.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Feb 28, 2012

Tepco's political tentacles

Just as Tokyo Electric Power Co. is under fire for trying to raise consumers' electricity bills before making sufficient efforts to streamline its management, a series of cases have surfaced in which the company appeared to be trying to strengthen its political influence by sending employees to prefectural...
Reader Mail
Feb 26, 2012

No peace message from mayor

Regarding the Feb. 23 article "Nagoya mayor won't budge on Nanjing remark": It doesn't matter how many people were killed in Nanjing in 1937 by the Imperial Japanese Army. Crimes were done and there's no going back on that. What matters is that the Nagoya mayor denies a fact that Japan's own historians...
COMMENTARY
Feb 24, 2012

An alternative to Putin's way

A "frosty Saturday" Feb. 4 confirmed the deadlocked nature of the situation that has ripened in Russia for more than a decade of Vladimir Putin's rule (as president and senior partner in the infamous "tandem").
Reader Mail
Feb 16, 2012

Health threat from cesium-137

Regarding the Feb. 14 article reprinted from Sentaku magazine, "Put children before politics": Thank you for endorsing this idea. I would like to comment on one aspect of the article regarding cesium-137, which makes up 40 percent of the long-lived radionuclides created by nuclear power plants.
Reader Mail
Feb 16, 2012

A worrisome Facebook future

Regarding Kevin Rafferty's Feb. 11 article, "Facebook moves from the virtual world to the real one": Good article. While Facebook has done some good, such as participating in the Arab Spring and the like, for others it is an addiction whose social value is questionable.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Feb 12, 2012

The idol's mom, the underage boy and the media

The recent arrest of the mother of a Japanese pop idol for sex with a minor raises questions on how the media here handles such high-profile cases.
EDITORIALS
Feb 12, 2012

Japan: failure or success?

A recent spate of articles in The New York Times comparing Japan's overall condition with America's was so welcome in Japan that the gist of the initial article was read out by a questioning lawmaker in the Diet.
Reader Mail
Feb 9, 2012

Clueless on 'Western sensibility'

I wonder if artist Muramasa Kudo is really as boring as Japan Times staff writer Yuhei Wada describes him to be in the Feb. 2 article "Retaining a 'Japaneseness' in Western style art."
Reader Mail
Feb 9, 2012

'Couch-surfing' not for the fearful

What makes the Feb. 5 travel article "Yakushima free-stay takes some fearful turns" so special is that the place is so far from Tokyo that even The Japan Times sends a reporter here only when the trip is sponsored, and apparently has to rely on "freeters" to come up with something out of the ordinary....
Reader Mail
Feb 5, 2012

Higher level of political discourse

Kevin Rafferty's Feb. 1 article, "President Obama's dreams are suffering nightmares," reads like a love letter to Barack Obama, calling him the "young, intelligent, telegenic president."
Reader Mail
Feb 2, 2012

May the spirit of Tsukiji survive

Having worked in the neighborhood of the Tsukiji fish market for almost two decades, I am surprised that the Jan. 29 article "Fish tales of Tsukiji" describes the atmosphere there and fishermen's spirits so well. Tsukiji is talked about a lot lately on TV programs and in the mass media, but the content...
COMMENTARY
Jan 31, 2012

To prepare for nuclear war is to seek the peace of death

The world faces two existential threats: climate change, and nuclear Armageddon. Action on both is required urgently. Tackling the first will impose significant economic costs and lifestyle adjustments, while tackling the second will bring economic benefits without any lifestyle implications.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jan 24, 2012

Japanese must tap their 'inner Israeli': readers' responses

Some readers' thoughts on the Jan. 3 Zeit Gist column by Glenn Newman, headlined "Japanese must tap their 'inner Israeli' ":
Reader Mail
Jan 22, 2012

Deliver us from nuclear waste

I would like to comment on the Jan. 19 front-page article "" Their warnings are surely in line with what people have been telling us for over 20 years. The nuclear lobby will go on telling us that we need its energy and that, if we shut the reactors down, we will be catapulted back into the stone age....
Reader Mail
Dec 22, 2011

What motivates illogical writing?

Regarding Takamitsu Sawa's Dec. 19 article, "Motivation for college study": Did Shiga University President Sawa originally write this piece in Japanese, and then something subsequently got lost in translation, or did a lot of it get cut in order to meet the word count? Or does he just not know how to...
Reader Mail
Dec 15, 2011

Arguments that invite criticism

In his Dec. 8 letter, "Criticism of criticism puzzling," Brett Gross wishes someone would explain the logic behind criticism of unbalanced arguments that one sometimes reads in print, with regard to my Dec. 1 letter "Unbalanced article on immigrants" (which had criticized Hiroaki Sato's Nov. 28 article...

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?