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Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 1, 2019

Is disgust with the status quo now feeding nostalgia for the past?

Bulgarian scholar Ivan Krastev, in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun published in March, compared the restless discontent of the 1960s with that of today. Fifty years ago, he said, disgust with the status quo fed hope for the future. Today it feeds nostalgia for the past.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 13, 2019

Japan searches for remedies at the dawn of the Reiwa Era

Japan's weekly magazines do not consider their primary role to be reporting cheery news. It would be more correct to say their practice is to proceed from a pessimistic perspective and then, after readying readers to rude realities, encourage searches for sustenance and survival, if not salvation.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 6, 2019

New era offers Japan an opportunity to reassess the future

What's in a name? What's in an era? What is an "era"? What's a "new era"? Are we entering one?
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 2, 2019

Tabloid's objectification of women continues to stir controversy

The weekly magazine Spa has apologized for an article it published in December that ranked universities in terms of how easy it is to get their female students into bed. The article generated backlash but the apology was issued in response to a petition that had been drawn up in protest.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 17, 2018

Flamboyant 'host club king' Takeshi Aida given an extravagant sendoff

An extravagant wake and funeral was held earlier this month in memory of host club Ai Honten's flamboyant founder, Takeshi Aida, who passed away on Oct. 25 at the age of 78 after a prolonged illness.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 29, 2018

Few question the death penalty for heinous crimes

Should murderers be put to death? Yes, says Japan. No, says (increasingly) much of the rest of the world. Japan swims against the current.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 4, 2018

There's no easy way to escape from your smartphone

Two decades ago, it was still common to see articles in the media disparaging the lack of manners and self-absorbed behavior of mobile phone users. By around 2003, however, the phones had become so ubiquitous that the erstwhile complainers had most likely become phone addicts themselves.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 2, 2018

Is the feudal era over for Japan's talent agencies?

Japanese show business definitely has a feudal side. Talent agencies control their tarento (talent) much in the way the daimyō (feudal lords) controlled the samurai in their clans, supporting their livelihoods in return for absolute fealty. And just as samurai were expected to stay with one clan their...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 1, 2018

Hide: The musician whose death rocked Japan

On the evening of May 2, 1998, as most of Japan was basking in the annual Golden Week holidays, a few dozen young women had gathered outside an apartment building in Tokyo's Minamiazabu neighborhood.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 28, 2018

Confronting the definition of a 'moral education'

How can people be taught to be good? What does "good" mean? "Moral education," the education ministry explains on its website, "aims to develop a Japanese citizen who will never lose the consistent spirit of respect for his fellow man; who will realize this spirit at home, at school and in other actual...
JAPAN / Society / FOCUS
Apr 22, 2018

Me Too rises in Japan as sexually harassed journalists speak out

Women journalists in Japan join the growing ranks of the Me Too movement following allegations of sexual harassment at high levels.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 21, 2018

Sumo incident in Kyoto rekindles gender debate in the ring

In Japan's ancient Shinto religion, purity comes before morality. Indeed, purity is morality. Women are impure. They menstruate and bear children. The exclusion of women from certain religious and ceremonial functions went unquestioned for millennia. It no longer does — but it is not extinct either....
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 14, 2018

Japan faces up to the prospect of losing a middle-class war

Modern middle-class life, you could reasonably argue, generates more happiness among more people than any other ever conceived. It has been extravagantly derided — as bourgeois, soulless, spiritless, narrow, boring, mindlessly acquisitive and so on. But back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 10, 2018

Japan's impoverished are finding it hard to enjoy freedom

Freedom comes in many forms, as does "unfreedom." You can be a prisoner in prison, a prisoner in a prison-state, a prisoner in your job, a prisoner in your joblessness. Who is freer — a poor person in a free country, or a rich person in an "unfree" country?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 27, 2018

North Koreans express cynicism and enthusiasm over nuclear crisis

The fate of the world hangs on two volatile characters of doubtful sanity.
CULTURE / Music / Sound Off
Dec 28, 2017

Namie Amuro saves 'Kohaku' ... for now

The weekly Shukan Bunshun released a survey in early November highlighting the acts its readers wanted to see perform on NHK's yearend "Kohaku Uta Gassen" music program. They chose Namie Amuro as the artist they wanted to see the most, likely because she announced her plans to retire from the entertainment...
JAPAN / Politics
Sep 7, 2017

Lawmaker Yamao resigns from the DP after alleged extramarital affair deepens opposition party's crisis

Long considered a rising star, Shiori Yamao exits the Democratic Party amid an emerging scandal, dealing a blow to the nascent leadership of the struggling opposition.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 8, 2017

Japan suffers from the grand illusion of prosperity

There are so many reasons to hate your job, if you're lucky enough to have one. The top four, according to Spa! magazine, are: stagnant salaries; a sense of being underappreciated and underevaluated; an overriding, unfocused anxiety; and a lost sense of purpose.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 4, 2017

Japan's magazines get misty-eyed over Showa Era brothels

Commencing with the death of Emperor Taisho on Christmas Day, 1926, the Showa Era ran for 62 years and two weeks, ending with the death of Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Showa) at the age of 87 on Jan. 7, 1989.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 31, 2016

Japan and the world enter a long night of 'post-truth'

In an essay titled "The Future of Mankind," British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) laid out three possibilities: "The end of human life," "a reversion to barbarism" or "unification of the world under a single government." He saw the third as the only alternative to either of the first two....
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 24, 2016

Japan reconsiders and reinterprets the Pearl Harbor attack

In May, U.S. President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to make a historic visit to Hiroshima, the city that became the birthplace of the age of nuclear warfare. It should come as no surprise that Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is scheduled to make a reciprocal gesture of reconciliation...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 17, 2016

Undercover journalist infiltrates Uniqlo

In her Dec. 14 Tokyo Shimbun column, media critic Minako Saito mentioned how the press is excited about the buzzword of the year and the kanji of the year. They are much less interested in another annual prize, the Black Company Award for the firm that most egregiously exploits workers. The nominations...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 26, 2016

Hand over the keys: getting Japan's elderly drivers off the road

On Nov. 12, in the city of Tachikawa in western Tokyo, an 83-year-old female driver — while reaching out her car window to insert a parking ticket into the toll gate machine in a hospital parking lot — accidentally pushed down on the accelerator and lost control of her vehicle. It crossed the road...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 19, 2016

Will Trump join forces with Abe or push him toward Putin?

What do intellectuals know?

Longform

Visitors to Kyoto walk along a street near Kiyomizu Temple in April. A popular tourist spot, Kyoto has seen what locals feel to be an overwhelming amount of tourists in 2024.
Is Japan ready for 60 million tourists?