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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Sep 11, 2007

Toru Otsuka

Toru Otsuka, 67, is the president of Live Coffee, a coffee importer and roaster known for selling the best beans for the least dough. Otsuka is a treasure hunter: he handpicks only the highest quality from small growers around the globe, and considers his best finds the people who work with him. His...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Aug 29, 2007

Let's (try to) get serious about silliness

August is known as the "silly season" in the media in the United States and the United Kingdom, as newspaper editors faced with legislators all gone on holiday struggle in vain to fill their pages and resort to, well, silly stories.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 23, 2007

Behind the mask

Noh is Japan's most inscrutable performing art. A tremendous influence on kabuki and bunraku puppet theater, it is a household name across the nation, yet relatively few Japanese have ever been to a show. Culture vultures marvel at the elaborate costumes and the esoteric, chantlike music; the plays are...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 4, 2007

Speech contest aims to pull nation together

Up until a few years ago, Tom Gerrard was an entrepreneur with an eye to mainstream business. He then underwent a radical shift of attitude and interest, changing the name of his company in 2004 from Comm Pro (Communication Professionals) to Global Learning.
JAPAN
Aug 1, 2007

Fault near nuke plant seen causing March quake

A recent seabed study has confirmed that an active seismic fault more than 18 km long and running near a nuclear power plant was the cause of the magnitude-6.9 earthquake that jolted the Noto Peninsula and its vicinity in March, according to the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 31, 2007

'Eikaiwa' vets look beyond Big Four

Globalization, the Internet and increased mobility have made the planet a smaller place. The world is now often referred to as a global community, and its lingua franca is undoubtedly English. It is the official language of air traffic control and the de facto language of both international business...
EDITORIALS
Jul 11, 2007

Premature plan for devolution

A study group within the Liberal Democratic Party has submitted an interim report on introducing the "doshu" system of regional governments to the Abe administration. The crux of the idea is to divide the nation into nine to 13 regional blocs and give them greater autonomy than they have now.
EDITORIALS
Jun 20, 2007

Assuaging fears of being a judge

Within two years, the lay judge system will be introduced in Japan. Citizens will be able to have their opinions directly reflected in initial, lower-court trials for heinous crimes. But the system will impose new civic duties and burdens on citizens. It is imperative that the courts, the bar and the...
JAPAN
Jun 20, 2007

LDP lawmakers claim Nanjing Massacre death toll only 20,000

A group of about 100 lawmakers from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party said Tuesday that after a monthlong review they have determined the number of people killed by Japanese troops during the Nanjing Massacre of 1937 has been grossly inflated.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jun 17, 2007

Japan's master of an ancient Muslim art

For Kouichi Honda, writing a beautiful line is what life is about. Getting every detail right — the subtle curves, the varying thicknesses and the density of the ink — matters to him as much as life itself.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 17, 2007

Stand by your language — but not as a nationalist icon

Last month, on May 21 to be exact, something caught my eye in the English-language IHT/Asahi Shimbun newspaper. In an article headlined "Holistic patriotic education still missing," Professor Nobukatsu Fujioka of Takushoku University in Tokyo made an impassioned plea for Japanese children to be imbued...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 17, 2007

First woman was the sun, then there came man

IN THE BEGINNING, WOMAN WAS THE SUN: The Autobiography of a Japanese Feminist — Hiratsuka Raicho, translated with an introduction and notes by Teruko Craig. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 432 pp., $35 (cloth) One of the earliest among those who battled to reform the social and legal position...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 10, 2007

Japan and Germany: worlds apart and yet so similar

CULTURE AND POWER IN GERMANY AND JAPAN: The Spirit of Renewal, by Nils-Johan Jorgensen. Global Oriental, 318 pp., 2006, £50 (cloth) The author of this interesting and thought-provoking study was a Norwegian diplomat who served in both Germany and Japan. He acquired a good knowledge of both countries...
JAPAN
Jun 7, 2007

Competing foreign-worker plans face off

OSAKA — If the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) have their way, it's possible you'll see this help-wanted ad in your English-language newspaper:
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 22, 2007

Seeing from the Korean side

In February this year over 300 people attended the performing arts festival at a junior high school in Okayama. It was much the same as any other arts festival at any other junior high school in Japan; the students sang, danced, played music and performed skits for an audience made up of family and friends....
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
May 15, 2007

Who's paying for those free cell phones?

No longer just a simple device for placing calls, the mobile phone is now a must-have item for most people. To promote market penetration, many of these multimedia, high-tech handsets are sold at a discount, or sometimes even given away.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 29, 2007

Who will defend Japan's Constitution?

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced at the beginning of April that the government was establishing a "panel of experts" to examine the question of whether to "revise the current interpretation of the Constitution," in order to permit Japan to engage in collective self-defense activities.
Japan Times
LIFE
Apr 29, 2007

Japan's love affairs with sex

Michael Hoffman delves deep into the carnal history of these islands from the Age of the Gods to the lovelands and soaplands of today
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 27, 2007

'Shindo'

How do you portray genius on the screen, if all you have to work with are gifted, but ordinary, humans? If the genius is a real person -- a Mozart, Beethoven or John "A Beautiful Mind" Nash -- the job becomes fairly straightforward: Cast an actor who can suggest the original subject physically and emotionally....
Japan Times
LIFE
Apr 1, 2007

Drawing on experience

Cartoonists in Japan are as abundant as the cherry blossoms at this time of year -- but Rieko Saibara is probably the only one who has both a lyrical and rebellious side to her work -- along with an astonishing power and what has been called a "lethal poison.''
JAPAN
Mar 21, 2007

No common history view with China

Historians from China and Japan have given up cowriting a single history of Sino-Japanese relations in a joint study project sponsored by the two governments because of the apparent huge gaps in their views and time constraints, Japanese participants said Tuesday.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 18, 2007

From profession to prostitution

Selling Songs and Smiles: The Sex Trade in Heian and Kamakura Japan, by Janet R. Goodwin. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2007, 208 pp. with maps, $48 (cloth) Prince Genji was apparently among the few to resist the charms of those bands of young women who made a living by offering themselves....
COMMENTARY
Mar 16, 2007

Apologies of dubious quality

HONG KONG -- The recent verbal gymnastics of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe show why, more than 60 years after the end of World War II, Japan's wartime behavior remains a sensitive issue around the region and why the country's apologies are regarded as insincere.

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