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BUSINESS
Sep 17, 2008

Collapse echoes through Japan

Monday's bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., the fourth-biggest financial institution in the United States, sent shock waves through the global financial industry, and Japan was no exception.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 15, 2008

Euro serves as Europe's anchor of stability

FRANKFURT — At less than 10 years old, the euro is by all measures a young currency. Yet it has become a reality of daily life for almost 320 million people in 15 European countries. In the wake of the euro's performance during this year's global financial crisis, even its strongest critics cannot...
Reader Mail
Sep 14, 2008

Flagging spirit dogged Fukuda

Regarding the Sept. 9 Views From the Street question "What do you make of Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's decision to quit?": Fukuda showed a lack of political spirit. He made an effort domestically to improve the nation's devastating finances and, internationally, to improve the cold relationship with...
Reader Mail
Sep 14, 2008

Women-only train cars shameful

When I stayed in the United States, I realized how advanced public transportation is in Japan. But there is one thing about our train system that I am ashamed of: the women-only passenger car. India also has this system, but Indians adopted it for religious reasons. In Japan, it was adopted because of...
Japan Times
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Sep 14, 2008

Kitanoumi epitomizes all that is wrong with sumo

Every time I hear somebody refer to sumo as "Japan's national sport," I just have to shake my head in amazement.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 14, 2008

Feed, don't fight, Afghanistan

The circumstances surrounding the kidnapping and killing of Japanese aid worker Kazuya Ito in Afghanistan last month remain unclear. In the web journal Japan Focus, Michael Penn conjectures that Ito's death resulted from a "botched effort to abduct him, not . . . premeditated murder." The gunshot wounds...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Sep 14, 2008

'American Graffiti,' Japanese style

First of two parts
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 13, 2008

WWE's U.S.-style rassling brings pay-per-view mat dramas here

Posing proudly for a snapshot with a glittery championship belt, Seigi Nishiyama was among some 600 wrestling fans packed into a Tokyo theater who can't get enough of World Wrestling Entertainment.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 12, 2008

'The Fall'

Director Tarsem Singh has been blessed with a successful career in commercials, but when it comes to the cinema, he's suffered the curse of bad timing. His debut feature, "The Cell" (2000), came out as the serial killer boom was starting to tank. His new film, "The Fall," is told through the eyes of...
Japan Times
JAPAN / LETTERS FROM KOBE
Sep 11, 2008

Theater, stores cheered up locals

Fifth in a series
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2008

Saito set for eighth solo around

Plan A: Sail dead south from Yokohama, turn right past Tasmania, duck under Australia, skirt the Cape of Good Hope, pound farther south, keep the hairy Cape Horn just off to the right, then turn right again and beat a rhumb line northwest back home — all without stopping and alone.
Japan Times
JAPAN / LETTERS FROM KOBE
Sep 10, 2008

Mixed-race babies in lurch

Fourth in a series
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Sep 10, 2008

Sanyo sheds some clean light on subject of renewable energy

Bright energy: Japan is known far and wide as the Land of the Rising Sun, but it desires to be known (again) as the Land of the Solar Charge. Once the world's leader in installed solar power, Japan has since 2005 slipped second behind Germany, which now has about double Japan's capacity. Politicians...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Sep 10, 2008

Dolphin 'crimes' exposed

I love it when animals do things that we don't expect, especially when they do things we might have species- centeredly thought were unique to humans, or when they do something that appears to be "out of character."
EDITORIALS
Sep 9, 2008

On to November

The race is on. With the official selection of Arizona Sen. John McCain as the GOP contender on the November ballot, the campaign to be the next president of the United States gets down to business. With less than two months to go before the election, the two parties' strategy and tactics are clear,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Sep 9, 2008

Tatsuo Asakura

Tatsuo Asakura, 29, is a driver on the Flower Nagai Line, a tiny one-car train in the middle of Yamagata Prefecture's rice and wheat fields. Although it's the only form of transportation for school children and the elderly who live in farmhouses scattered around the valley, the dire financial straits...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 7, 2008

Multiple interpretations of a tale told in many forms

ENVISIONING "THE TALE OF GENJI": Media, Gender, and Cultural Production, edited by Haruo Shirane. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, 400 pp., 11 color plates, 66 b/w illustrations, $32.50 (paper) "The Tale of Genji," Murasaki Shikibu's long monogatari, upwards of a thousand pages in translation,...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 7, 2008

Takashi Hiraide's 'Walnut' is tough nut worth cracking

FOR THE FIGHTING SPIRIT OF THE WALNUT by Takashi Hiraide, translated by Sawako Nakayasu. New York: New Directions, 2008, unpaginated, $17.95 (paper) When a fan of the neglected American genius Guy Davenport wrote to tell him that she admired his ability to express himself, his response was: "Yick!" Davenport's...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Sep 7, 2008

Emperor's 50th wedding anniversary, middle-aged detective dramas, and Japan's first seeing-eye dog

April 10 will mark the 50th wedding anniversary of the Emperor and Empress, and TV Asahi will preview the milestone this week with a two-part overview of the life of the Empress, "Michiko-sama no Hanseiki (Michiko's Half-century)" (Monday and Tuesday, 7 p.m.)
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Sep 6, 2008

Land of the Great Pumpkin

The last time I went to Naoshima was in June of 2001, when it was just an island with a museum, a hotel and some tents. It was called Bunkamura (culture village). The museum was Mr. Fukutake's own private art collection of mostly modern art. In 2004 came Claude, Walter and James (Monet, De Maria, and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 5, 2008

Taking Hitler by the horns

As the son of a Jewish mother who escaped the Holocaust by moving to Switzerland ("at the very last moment!"), Dani Levy has had a lifelong fascination with the Third Reich.
JAPAN
Sep 5, 2008

Monk rids hornets of their temple?

A Buddhist monk trying to rid his temple of a hornet's nest panicked when the wasps attacked him and dropped a torch, burning his temple to the ground, police said Thursday.
BASKETBALL
Sep 4, 2008

Kyoto awarded bj-league's 13th franchise; team to begin play in 2009

The bj-league's 13th franchise will be based in Kyoto, the league announced on Wednesday.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 4, 2008

One-night stand set for hot '90s go-go club

Kumiko Araki has been waiting 14 years for Juliana Tokyo, a dance club that was a sensation in the capital in the early 1990s, to stage a comeback.

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat