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COMMENTARY / World
Jun 23, 2008

The global food crisis: It's time to empower the world's have-nots

HONG KONG, (AP) The Times of London ran a cartoon offering its "solution" to the world food crisis as leaders gathered for their recent Rome summit: It showed Pope Benedict XVI holding a cross in his left hand and a packet of "extra safe" condoms in his right.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jun 23, 2008

The savings exodus and Japan's pursuit of higher financial IQ

On May 20, the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry and the Financial Services Agency jointly submitted a request letter asking the heads of national and private universities across Japan to improve the quality of financial education.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 22, 2008

Fortune-teller detective mystery, manga drama of the business world, Ethiopia trivia special

Misuzu Maruyama (Kumiko Okae) is one of Ginza's most popular street fortunetellers, but she's also an amateur detective. In the two-hour mystery special "Uranaishi Misuzu Jiken wa Unmei no Kanata ni (Fortune Teller Misuzu's Incidents Are Beyond Fate)" (TBS, Monday, 9 p.m.), Misuzu plies her trade in...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 22, 2008

The many different ways Japan spells 'nationalism'

A HISTORY OF NATIONALISM IN MODERN JAPAN: Placing the People, by Kevin M. Doak. Leiden: Brill, 2006, 292 pp., $93 (cloth) There is no shortage of writing about nationalism in modern Japanese history. Nonetheless, the object of investigation has not always been clear, and until recently the term "nationalism"...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 22, 2008

Has Japan's dogged idealism of '68 become truly poodled?

On June 7, The New York Times' op-ed columnist Bob Herbert wrote an intriguing piece about the United States in 1968, recalling the assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy exactly 40 years ago, and also referring to Sen. Barack Obama clinching the 2008 Democratic Party nomination for the presidency....
COMMENTARY
Jun 20, 2008

Tribute to the good sense of a brighter Bush

LOS ANGELES — We in the West are always grateful and utterly relieved when East Asians manage to take significant steps away from the risk of serious conflict.
Japan Times
JAPAN / RETRACING ROUTES
Jun 20, 2008

Immigrants weave tale of triumph

When the Kasato Maru arrived in Brazil with the first Japanese immigrants at Santos port near Sao Paulo on June 18, 1908, a shipload of Okinawans and other Japanese disembarked and headed out to find work on the coffee plantations, seeking a better life.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 20, 2008

'The Magic Hour'

Koki Mitani is the reigning king of comedy in Japan, as the writer and sometimes director of a string of hit stage plays, TV series and three feature films that culminated in 2006 with "The Uchoten Hotel (Suite Dream)." This laugh-packed take-off on the 1932 Greta Garbo classic "Grand Hotel," based on...
Japan Times
SOCCER
Jun 19, 2008

Azzurri send France packing in World Cup final rematch

ZURICH (AP) A big, bright rainbow stretched over the Letizgrund as Italian and French players walked solemnly on the field and sang their national anthems. It was a tantalizing moment, portending perhaps that for one of these soccer powers "the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true."
CULTURE / Art
Jun 19, 2008

'Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Tokyo'

Photo Gallery International, Shibaura, Tokyo
COMMENTARY
Jun 19, 2008

What's Europe's next move?

The Irish have spoiled the party. By decisively voting down in a referendum the proposed Lisbon Treaty on the future organization and governance of the European Union, the Irish have brought the whole process of EU reform to a dead halt.
COMMENTARY
Jun 18, 2008

Is the India and China hype true?

Today it has become commonplace to speak of India and China in the same breadth as two emerging great powers challenging the two-century-old Western domination of the world.
JAPAN
Jun 18, 2008

Serial killer Miyazaki, two others hanged

Serial killer Tsutomu Miyazaki, 45, who abducted, molested and strangled four young girls in Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture in 1988 and 1989, was hanged Tuesday along with two other inmates, Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama said.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Jun 18, 2008

Lakers in tough as Finals return to Boston

LOS ANGELES — Funny, how minor imperfections (and subtle specialties) became pronounced once the Boston Stranglers got their barely breathing opponents in a 3-2 chokehold.
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Jun 18, 2008

A kiss closer to obsolescence

Kiss me: Canon Inc. sparked a revolution in digital photography five years ago when it created the EOS Kiss Digital, justly acclaimed as the first digital SLR camera priced for the average consumer.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 17, 2008

Lawmaker takes 9/11 doubts global

In a September 2003 article for The Guardian newspaper, Michael Meacher, who served as Tony Blair's environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003, shocked the establishment by calling the global war on terrorism "bogus." Even more controversially, he implied that the U.S. government either allowed...
Reader Mail
Jun 15, 2008

Remembering the source of food

The other day I watched an instructive TV program, "Inochi no Kusa no Kabuwake (Multiplying the Roots of Life)" on NHK. Sidama people in the southern part of Ethiopia live on ensete, banana-shaped plants. One ensete plant provides enough food for a family of five for a month. When a Sidama...
EDITORIALS
Jun 15, 2008

From fantasy to nightmare

The nightmare in Akihabara last week, when a knife-wielding man drove a truck into a Sunday crowd, leaped out and started stabbing people at random, has continued to shock the country. As the victims' families grieve, the injured recuperate and witnesses struggle to recover, the attack has become even...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 15, 2008

War and propaganda: a Japanese narrative

CERTAIN VICTORY: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media, by David C. Earhart. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2008, 552 pp., with photographs, maps, illustrations, $74.95 (cloth) One way to induce people to kill other people is to dehumanize "the enemy." And one of the ways to do this is through propaganda....
COMMENTARY
Jun 15, 2008

Dose of humility overcomes a world of hurt

LOS ANGELES — It is precisely during economic and political tension that more frequent and fervent expressions of sincere humility might serve to smooth over some tough spots. After all, being truly humble can serve to downsize egos that otherwise tend to mushroom minor molehills into major mountain...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / WEEK 3
Jun 15, 2008

Get into golf's virtual swing

Considering that people can be prosecuted for driving a car under the influence of alcohol, what about those who go hitting golf balls while imbibing? Perhaps it's just a matter of time before "drink-driving" by golfers becomes the latest buzzword on the greens and fairways in safety-conscious Japan....
CULTURE / Music
Jun 13, 2008

Free Kitten "Inherit"

Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon, former-Pussy Galore guitarist Julie Cafritz, and Osaka's own Yoshimi P-We of Vooredoms and OOIOO fame comprise alt-rock "supergroup" Free Kitten. Absent on their third full-length, "Inherit," is ex-Pavement bassist Mark Ibold, but Dinosaur Jr. frontman J. Mascis adds some extra...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 12, 2008

Actor Nomura brings noh to new audiences

If you've ever napped through a noh performance, you're not alone. But this 600-year-old Japanese theatrical genre is being updated to make it more of a 21st-century entertainment than a Japanophile's endurance test.
BUSINESS / G8 COUNTDOWN
Jun 12, 2008

Soaring prices pose challenge to G8 finance chiefs

Finance chiefs from the Group of Eight countries are expected to discuss Friday in Osaka how their economies can tame the soaring oil and food prices battering businesses and consumers around the world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 12, 2008

The space to act out in Shizuoka

Shizuoka Performing Arts Center is Japan's first so-called European-style public theater. Founded by the Shizuoka prefectural government in 1997, it has its own company (also called SPAC) and an artistic director in residence when the norm is for public theater companies to share venues and for artistic...

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