Search - 2012

 
 
JAPAN
Oct 18, 2013

Job hunt stressing students, making them suicidal: poll

Tormented by the difficulty of landing a position and unfair practices by prospective employers, 1 in 5 college students contemplate suicide during the job-hunting process, a poll of 122 students finds.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Oct 18, 2013

Norma Field, champion of Japan's leftist literature, retires — but not from anti-nuclear activism

A colleague once told me he didn't want to be attached to lost causes,' says academic Norma Field. 'I've never understood thinking like that. The bright spots in human history are so few. We should embrace and magnify them.
EDITORIALS
Oct 16, 2013

Policy speech overlooks key issues

An extraordinary Diet session starts ostensibly to deal with radioactive contamination, reconstruction of disaster-hit areas and world trade, but the prime minister's policy speech misses.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 15, 2013

Behind Washington's firestorm

The story behind the story of the U.S. budget showdown is that prolonged slow growth threatens historic changes to America's political and social order.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Oct 15, 2013

Tax-free account seeks to spur investment

Starting in January, individuals who invest in stocks and investment trusts in a Nippon Individual Savings Account will be eligible for tax exemptions of up to five years on their financial gains. The new instrument is aimed at getting people used to accumulating financial assets via small-scale investments....
BUSINESS / THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Oct 13, 2013

Crumbling keiretsu networks good sign for foreign firms and Japan

For years and decades, foreign observers have cried foul over various barriers — both existing and perceived — to the Japanese economy. Their main target is usually the keiretsu, the closely knit business networks automakers exclusively maintain with groups of 200 to 300 suppliers.
JAPAN
Oct 11, 2013

Medical experts seek to dial back over-prescription for schizophrenia

Doctors in Japan have long prescribed a cocktail of several types of drugs to people with mental illnesses, often leading to various side effects.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LABOR PAINS
Oct 7, 2013

The Special Dismissal Zone: where legal protections no longer apply

The government's Special Employment Zone wheeze has already been dubbed the Special Dismissal Zone, or kaiko tokku, by the media.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 4, 2013

Sony ex-boss seeks to boost start-ups

Nobuyuki Idei once embodied Japan's corporate establishment, the leader of technology giant Sony Corp. Now 75, he's aiming to reinvent himself as a cross between a Silicon Valley venture capitalist and Hollywood mogul.
EDITORIALS
Oct 1, 2013

Attracting 10 million tourists to Japan

The number of foreign tourists visiting Japan, thanks to a cheaper yen and waived visa requirements in some countries, could top a government goal of 10 million this year.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Sep 29, 2013

Politics and pride drive Putin's anti-U.S. shift

First, Vladimir Putin accused Hillary Rodham Clinton of inciting protests against him at the end of 2011. The next fall, the Russian president threw the U.S. Agency for International Development out of his country. Then he decided civic groups that get U.S. financing must be foreign agents.
COMMENTARY / World / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Sep 29, 2013

Air festivals, the costs of flight and budget flak

The U.S. Air Force did not send its acrobatic team to the Misawa Air Festival this year because of budget cuts. Military flying machines can be exorbitantly expensive.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 26, 2013

Mandatory organ donation

It is estimated that 18 people die in the U.S. every day due to a national shortage of organ donations. This crisis could be solved if organ donation were mandatory.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Sep 24, 2013

Lamborghini eyes first SUV since '90s

Lamborghini expects the concept Urus vehicle, its first SUV since the Rambo Lambo of the 1990s, to get cleared for production, the supercar-maker's chief executive officer said.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 22, 2013

Politicians hardly ever mention America's poor

American Republican and Democratic politicians have one thing in common: They hardly mention the poor.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Sep 21, 2013

Upgrading from four wheels to two or three

Careening through the winding streets of Chennai, India, in the back of black and yellow auto-rickshaws, I am always amazed by the drivers' audacity — or perhaps a better term would be "death wish." These are the subcontinent's equivalent of New York's exuberant cabbies, but these drivers are much...
EDITORIALS
Sep 15, 2013

Flawed fight against deflation

The government's fight against deflation will not be successful if prices rise but wages remain stagnant.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 14, 2013

National humiliation: China still vanquishing, suppressing ghosts of past

Sept. 18 is unofficially National Humiliation Day in China, a day when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) commemorates Japanese aggression and atrocities. It is a time for wallowing in the national obsession with a century of indignities inflicted on a weak China until the CCP came to power in 1949. But...
EDITORIALS
Sep 13, 2013

Improving chilly Japan-China ties

Japanese and Chinese leaders must work to prevent the Senkaku issue from harming broader, mutually important interests.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2013

Tanks, not leak, main problem at Fukushima

The radioactive water tainting the sea from the Fukushima No. 1 plant may be generating headlines, but an expert says its storage tanks pose a greater danger.
EDITORIALS
Sep 10, 2013

Home nursing care for the elderly

The central and local governments should begin concrete efforts to build an effective network so the transition from caring for the elderly in special nursing care facilities to caring for them in their own homes will go smoothly.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 3, 2013

China's population time bomb

China's one-child policy, implemented to prevent overpopulation and raise living standards, will likely negatively impact China's future economic growth.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / FOCUS
Sep 3, 2013

Nukes, terrorists, intel gaps: U.S. 'black budget' shows extent of distrust toward Pakistan

The $52.6 billion U.S. intelligence arsenal is aimed mainly at unambiguous adversaries, including al-Qaida, North Korea and Iran. But top-secret budget documents reveal an equally intense focus on one purported ally: Pakistan, which appears at the top of charts listing critical U.S. intelligence gaps.
WORLD
Sep 2, 2013

U.S. in unending hunt for terrorists in spy agencies

The U.S. government suspects that individuals with connections to al-Qaida and other hostile groups have repeatedly sought to obtain jobs in the intelligence community, and it reinvestigates thousands of employees each year to reduce the threat that one of its own may be trying to compromise closely...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 31, 2013

Tepco's follies, reactor restarts and awkward plutonium stockpiles

Tokyo Electric Power Co. (Tepco) is deservedly slagged as the Keystone Cops of nuclear power, and conjures up images of Homer Simpson, the iconic nuclear safety inspector in "The Simpsons." Perhaps it ought to adopt as its mascot Ocnus, the Greek god who personifies futility.

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo