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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 13, 2009

The northern lights from Italy

In 1966, after graduating from Tokyo's Tama Art University with a degree in interior design and doing a few odd jobs, Hidetoshi Nagasawa got on a bike and cycled out of Japan.
Reader Mail
Nov 12, 2009

U.S. not likely to quit Okinawa

Regarding Naoshi Koriyama's Nov. 1 letter, "Respect the wishes of Okinawans": I can understand the situation that people in Okinawa face. They have been suffering from U.S. military aircraft noise night and day and, at times, from crimes committed by soldiers stationed there. They have appealed to the...
Reader Mail
Nov 12, 2009

Rote learning of English failing

Masayuki Aihara's Oct. 29 letter, "Texts stand some in good stead," I believe, proved a lot of the points that Stewart Tennyson was trying to make in his Oct. 22 letter, "English teachers have work to do." To say that a man once read government-authorized English textbooks aloud 100 times and then got...
COMMENTARY
Nov 12, 2009

Emissions cap-and-trade as policy?

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change held Sept. 22, stated Japan's pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, which is premised on "all the major economies" agreeing on ambitious targets.
EDITORIALS
Nov 11, 2009

Problematic 'pluthermal' era

The 1.18 million-kW No. 3 reactor at Kyushu Electric Power Co.'s Genkai nuclear power plant in Saga Prefecture, which is Japan's first reactor using plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (MOX) as fuel, attained nuclear criticality last Thursday and started trial operations Monday (commerical operations are to...
BUSINESS
Nov 11, 2009

Japanese women still hitting a glass and bamboo ceiling in the boardroom

Japan ranks 31st out of 35 countries in terms of the percentage of female board of directors, falling below Jordan, Oman and Kuwait, a U.S.-based nonprofit group said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Nov 11, 2009

Softbank's new lineup heavy on fast Wi-Fi

Softbank Corp. unveiled 22 new mobile phone models for its winter-spring lineup Tuesday with a special focus on Wi-Fi and a new service that uses the wireless system to access the Internet.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Nov 11, 2009

Sony-Ericsson phone ups its appeal; Bluedot treats the ladies

Going mobile: Sony, in the guise of its partnership with Swedish maker Ericsson, is combining the much-touted Android phone platform from Google with its traditional feature-rich offerings in the form of the Xperia X10. Sporting a larger than normal 4-inch, TFT-capacitive touch screen, the candybar-style...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / Japan Pulse
Nov 10, 2009

Cheap vino continues to flow in Japan

Cheap wine, anyone? 7-11 outlets uncork Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon under the Yosemite Road label, at u00a5600 a bottle.
COMMENTARY
Nov 10, 2009

Enough concessions on Taiwan

For those who are concerned that democratic Taiwan should continue to have the freedom to choose its own future, President Barack Obama's coming visit to Beijing brings back the memory of a regrettable episode during President Bill Clinton's visit to China in June 1998.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 8, 2009

No alternative to a new world architecture

NEW YORK — Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, the world faces another stark choice between two fundamentally different forms of organization: international capitalism and state capitalism.
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 8, 2009

JFW bucks the trend

For six flurried days from Oct. 19, Tokyo's ritzy Midtown complex area hosted a flock of excited fashionistas for the ninth biannual Japan Fashion Week.
LIFE / Style & Design
Nov 8, 2009

Innovation feeds on growing flux in male looks

From their bases on opposite sides of the Pacific, Japanese and American menswear labels have begun to rip up the rule books and reinvent how men think about fashion.
Reader Mail
Nov 8, 2009

Couples' weak pursuit of romance

Regarding Debito Arudou's Nov. 3 article "Demography vs. demagoguery: when politics, science collide": Arudou's comments remind me of . . . . the recent phenomenon of "plant-eating men" — those who prefer a "metro-sexual" lifestyle of fashion and hobbies over pursuit of a girlfriend.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Nov 8, 2009

Brown confident of success in new role as manager of Golden Eagles

Japanese baseball will have at least one American manager for the eighth consecutive year in 2010, as Marty Brown takes over as field boss of the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles after four years managing the Hiroshima Carp.
SOCCER
Nov 7, 2009

Al Ittihad, Pohang aim for continental crown

South Korea's Pohang Steelers will attempt to add another major title to their trophy case when they meet Saudi champions Al Ittihad in Saturday's Asian Champions League final.
BASKETBALL
Nov 7, 2009

Golden Kings roll

Shigeyuki Kinjo scored a team-high 19 points and four teammates scored in double digits as the Ryukyu Golden Kings rolled to an 89-68 road win over the Takamatsu Five Arrows on Friday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 7, 2009

Yoko Ono, forever a force for peace

Even before she married John Lennon, even before she embarked on a career as an avant-garde and conceptual artist, Yoko Ono was under scrutiny, first by her teachers and peers, later by people of a different region as her family fled the fire-bombings of Tokyo.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Nov 6, 2009

Koyano continues to deliver in the clutch

Although he barely missed hitting the .300 mark, Eiichi Koyano was a big part of the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters' pennant-winning run with his MVP-type performance throughout the year.
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Nov 6, 2009

Kinjo coming into own for defending champs

While racking up the bj-league's Most Improved Player honors last season and collecting a championship ring, Ryukyu Golden Kings guard Shigeyuki Kinjo emerged as a genuine hero for countless youngsters in Okinawa.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Nov 6, 2009

Giants one win away after clutch homers

Yoshiyuki Kamei showed everyone why he won this year's new NPB award for dramatic home runs with a shot in the ninth inning of Game 5.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 6, 2009

Soil creates life with 'death jazz'

"The Lounge Lizards and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in a Japanese brothel," is how acclaimed U.K. DJ and record-label owner Gilles Peterson has described funky jazz sextuplet Soil & "Pimp" Sessions.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 6, 2009

Not all smooth at CREAM festival opening

The celebratory mood surrounding Yokohama's new CREAM — Creativity for Arts and Media — festival was disrupted when one of the participating artists, Masaki Fujihata, unexpectedly announced that he would be withdrawing his work.
EDITORIALS
Nov 6, 2009

Confusing approach to goals

Under the slogan "Politics that values humans, not concrete," the Hatoyama administration is taking a different direction from that of the Liberal Democratic Party when it was the ruling party. Symbolic of the change are decisions to stop the Yanba dam project in Gunma Prefecture and to introduce monthly...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 6, 2009

The human rights outlook and new justice minister

Ever since the historic landslide victory of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) in the Lower House elections, we have wondered how the new government will wield its power. In the area of human rights protection, at least, there is cause to expect dramatic change. One of the more startling appointments...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 6, 2009

Cultivating a way for egoless art

Perhaps the strangest experience I've had at an exhibition this year was being led into a small room by a polite museum attendant, shown to a desk with a sheet of paper and some colored pencils, and being asked to draw — just as soon as the lights were switched off!

Longform

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