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WORLD
Mar 22, 2013

U.S. Congress approves temporary spending bill to keep government open

The U.S. Congress approved a short-term funding bill Thursday that ends the possibility of a federal government shutdown next week, but a broader budget battle about taxes and spending for 2013 is only just beginning.
EDITORIALS
Mar 15, 2013

Systematize infrastructure repairs

Japan's central and local governments must systematize their plans to effectively cope with aging national infrastructure such as roads and bridges.
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 11, 2013

Toxic management erodes safety at 'world's safest' nuclear plant

On Jan. 30, 2012, Byron Nuclear Generating Station lost operability to all of its safety-related equipment. At the time, Jim Hazen was the nuclear station operator responsible for the affected reactor, one of two at the Exelon-owned nuclear plant in Byron, Illinois.
JAPAN / Politics
Jan 24, 2013

Ruling bloc airs tax plan, eye on poll

The LDP-led government outlines a list of tax reform goals for fiscal 2013 that raises taxes on the rich, scratches breaks for the poor and curries favor ahead of Upper House poll.
EDITORIALS
Dec 5, 2012

Disaster raises safety concerns

The Sunday collapse of a portion of the ceiling of the Sasago Tunnel on the Chuo Expressway in Yamanashi Prefecture, crushing three vehicles and killing at least nine people, has raised serious and widespread concern about the safety of road tunnels throughout Japan. This accident clearly was caused...
LIFE
Dec 4, 2012

'Were we marines used as guinea pigs on Okinawa?'

Newly discovered documents reveal that 50 years ago this week, the Pentagon dispatched a chemical weapons platoon to Okinawa under the auspices of its infamous Project 112. Described by the U.S. Department of Defense as "biological and chemical warfare vulnerability tests," the highly classified program...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Dec 4, 2012

'Were we marines used as guinea pigs on Okinawa?'

Newly discovered documents reveal that 50 years ago this week, the Pentagon dispatched a chemical weapons platoon to Okinawa under the auspices of its infamous Project 112. Described by the U.S. Department of Defense as "biological and chemical warfare vulnerability tests," the highly classified program...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 16, 2012

Beacons of hope and inspiration light even the darkest pits of despond

The renowned Polish-born film and television director and screenwriter Agnieszka Holland has created a stunning work about life and death in the Lviv ghetto during the closing months of World War II.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 20, 2012

Poverty stalks the land — and its long-term victims will be today's young

Open any Japanese newspaper, listen to the radio, watch television or keep tabs on any other form of media, social or otherwise, and you are bound to find references to this country's "rapidly aging society."
JAPAN
Apr 28, 2012

Softbank shifts to paperless workplace, Apple tools

Internet giant Softbank Corp. will go paperless starting this month by banning employees from printing handouts or distributing paper press releases.
EDITORIALS
Mar 31, 2012

Too soon to restart reactors

Nuclear power once accounted for about 30 percent of Japan's power supply. On March 26, Tokyo Electric Power Co. shut down the last of its 17 reactors — the No. 6 unit at its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant in Niigata Prefecture — for regular inspection and maintenance. Now, of Japan's 54...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 30, 2012

Oil consumption hits four-year high as LNG use peaks to cover reactors

Japan is consuming the most oil in four years as it runs out of capacity to use liquefied natural gas as a stopgap for idled nuclear power plants.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 5, 2012

Nuclear crisis given lightweight treatment

JAPAN'S NUCLEAR CRISIS: The Routes of Responsibility, by Susan Carpenter. Palgrave MacMillan, 2012, 248 pp., $90 (hardcover) Alas, this very important subject gets short shrift in this misleadingly titled, hastily cobbled together assessment of the causes and consequences of the accident at the Fukushima...
EDITORIALS
Dec 23, 2011

Risky catalog purchase of fighter

The government on Tuesday selected Lockheed Martin's F-35 as the Air-Self Defense Force's next-generation fighter over Boeing's F/A-18 and the Eurofighter Typhoon to replace aging F-4 fighters. Japan plans to purchase 42 F-35s, hoping that the first delivery will start in fiscal 2016 (April 2016-March...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Dec 6, 2011

Buck stops with landlord of moldy apartment

Reader G.R. writes: "My apartment has a serious mold problem. The bathtub is built in such a way that there is a space between the tub and the wall and water can easily get underneath and does not drain well.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 12, 2011

Calm at J. Village belies the danger

Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Friday for the first time let reporters into the base camp for thousands of workers striving every day to fix the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, showing off new dining facilities, a dormitory for single workers and the latest radioactivity monitors to check vehicles...
EDITORIALS
Oct 25, 2011

Freedom of information threatened

A government committee headed by Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura on Oct. 7 decided to submit to the Diet in 2012 a bill to mete out severe punishment to people who leak "special secrets" related to diplomacy, national security and public order. The committee says that the purpose of the bill is...
BUSINESS
Oct 18, 2011

Utilities will barely meet power demand this winter: expert

Japan's factories, department stores and households are bracing for a colder-than-normal winter and may have to cut electricity use as more nuclear plants go offline for maintenance amid the Fukushima disaster.
JAPAN / POWERING THE FUTURE
Sep 29, 2011

Small hydropower plants keep it local

Among renewable energy advocates in Japan, one often hears the phrase "chisan chissho," or "local production, local consumption." In the past, it referred the promotion of local-level agriculture. But it's now becoming a call to reduce municipalities' reliance on electricity from fossil fuel and nuclear...
BUSINESS
Jul 1, 2011

Defiant Tepco rallies utilities around future of nuke power

Tokyo Electric Power Co. led utilities in rallying around a nuclear future, defying growing public opposition to atomic energy amid the Fukushima No. 1 plant accident.
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
May 3, 2011

Reality check: Condo repair funds not enough

Condominium owners may be discouraged to learn that the repair fund they pay into once a month won't be enough to fix their broken buildings.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Apr 26, 2011

Disaster darkens fisheries' decline

The wreckage of a 379-ton tuna boat blocks the road to the deserted fish market in Kesennuma, once Japan's largest port for bonito and swordfish. Even after the debris from last month's tsunami have been cleared away, the industry may never recover.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 24, 2011

Building hospital ships for disaster response

An earthquake of unprecedented magnitude, followed by a terrible tsunami, devastated the northeast coast of Japan on March 11, setting off a nuclear emergency that is having global effects.The combination of these calamities has also plunged Japan into a kind of national depression that I have never...
EDITORIALS
Feb 21, 2011

Another DPJ metamorphosis

Japan and the United States signed an agreement last month on a five-year extension of Japan's host-nation financial support to help cover part of the costs of stationing U.S. forces in Japan under the bilateral security arrangement.

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan