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COMMENTARY
Sep 8, 2011

How to drive away friends and lose influence

In the 19th century, Japan, unlike China, responded to Western pressure to open up to trade not by fighting back but by transforming itself so that, while still geographically in Asia, it became in effect a European country.
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Sep 6, 2011

'Sexlessness' wrecks marriages, threatens nation's future

In its cover story last month, The Economist newsmagazine looked at the issue of "Asia's lonely hearts: Why Asian women are rejecting marriage and what that means." It offered many reasons — including economics, education level, changes in family structures and gender roles, divorce difficulties, and...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 31, 2011

Once Gadhafi is finally gone

A relatively successful transition from the Gadhafi regime to a united, stable, more open and democratic Libya would be seen in the region, and more widely, as a credit to the NATO-led intervention. It would enable Libya to resume its oil and gas exports, demonstrate international community capacity...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LIGHT GIST
Aug 30, 2011

Mascots on a mission to explain the mundane

It is often said that the Japanese have a unique attitude towards law. Many explanations have been offered for why this is so, and in what circumstances:
EDITORIALS
Aug 27, 2011

Ending famine in East Africa

Acorollary of Murphy's law states, "Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse." Unfortunately, that statement aptly sums up the situation in East Africa — and in particular southern Somalia — which is caught in the clutches of a deadly famine.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 23, 2011

Last chance for a fix of '90s 'Alien Humor'

The newly released "Alien Humor" (Treasure Productions, 140 pages, soft cover, ¥1,400) is a collection of many of the pieces that Neil Garscadden wrote while editor of the humor section of The Alien magazine. Features that readers might remember include "Why It's Hard to Explain Life in Japan," "Inventions...
EDITORIALS
Aug 22, 2011

China's dream boat

China's first aircraft carrier left Dalian port in northeastern Liaoning Province on Aug. 10 and started its first sea trial. There is a speculation that if everything goes smoothly, it will be commissioned on Oct. 1, 2012, China's national founding day.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 16, 2011

Volunteers feel for Tohoku, but their duties lie in Nepal

In the physiotherapy ward at Katmandu's Bir Hospital, a middle-aged woman lay in bed, her back strapped to a big mechanical device. Rukmini Roka, 56, who suffers from chronic backache, struggled to stretch her legs as required by the special therapy machine.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 12, 2011

Ireland excoriates Vatican over new reports of abuse

In my first few days as editor of The Universe, the leading English-language Catholic newspaper, I had a long conversation with the monsignor who was a member of the board, an adviser to the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, and who wrote a religious "Agony Aunt" column for us.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2011

Are sanctions helping to build Iran's bomb?

For years it was assumed that economic sanctions and diplomacy would produce a pliable negotiating partner in Iran. But Iran's truculence has effectively undermined the once-popular notion, while a degree of confusion and consternation has gripped the international community. The often-unstated hope...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Aug 7, 2011

Tadanori Yokoo: An artist by design

In conversation, Tadanori Yokoo jumps nimbly between the past and the present. One moment he's watching the sky glow red as bombs rain down on Kobe during World War II. The next he's riding in a taxi with Yukio Mishima. And then he's back in the present, here at his studio in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward, discussing...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 2, 2011

Drop a line, win a fix of '90s 'Alien Humor'

The newly released "Alien Humor" (Treasure Productions, 140 pages, soft cover, ¥1,400) is a collection of many of the pieces that Neil Garscadden wrote while editor of the humor section of The Alien magazine. Features that readers might remember include "Why It's Hard to Explain Life in Japan," "Inventions...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 29, 2011

Local galleries move to fore at Art Fair Tokyo

On the Japanese cultural calendar, visual-art events tend to take place in the more pleasant seasons of spring and autumn. Classical music and ballet have winter sewn up, with dozens of performances of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 or "The Nutcracker" being held over the Christmas-New Year period,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 16, 2011

Key players got nuclear ball rolling

How did earthquake-prone Japan, where two atomic bombs were dropped at the end of World War II creating a strong antinuclear weapons culture, come to embrace nuclear power just a few decades later?
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Jul 11, 2011

Realists and idealists on the cost of adopting renewable energy

If the Renewable Energy Act passes, what will it mean to your electricity bill?
Reader Mail
Jul 10, 2011

The talent to help prevent suicide

Tokyo English Life Line suggests that journalists and anyone writing about suicide please read the readily available "Guidelines on Reporting Suicide in the Media" (www.who.int/mental_health/media/en/426.pdf).
EDITORIALS
Jul 7, 2011

Matters of concern with China

Foreign Minister Takeaki Matsumoto met with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi in Beijing on Monday. The meeting took place at a time when China is causing friction with neighboring countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines because of its activities in the South China Sea.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 2, 2011

Aid-givers sending used bikes to disaster zone

Among the numerous nongovernmental and nonprofit organizations that delivered basic necessities like food and clothes to tsunami-devastated areas in the Tohoku region, the NPO Bikes for Japan did its part by delivering refurbished bicycles to survivors living in shelters.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 2, 2011

U.S. volunteer group earns tragedy-hit Iwate's respect

Since its formation in the wake of the 2004 Sumatra tsunami, American nonprofit organization All Hands has dispatched more than 6,000 volunteers to the scenes of more than a dozen disasters across the globe. While these teams are accustomed to encountering tough conditions — including torrential rain...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 28, 2011

The courage to rebuild

"The journey of life is not smooth and unimpeded, but may be fraught with difficulties exceeding our worst nightmares," observed Kan' ichi Asakawa (1873-1948), a historian and peace advocate originally from Fukushima Prefecture.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 28, 2011

Global drug industry announces action plan against threats of noncommunicable disease

Behind the scenes the past 10 years, the pharmaceutical industry has been going through some important changes in how it responds to the need for medicines and vaccines in developing countries.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jun 28, 2011

Does Japan need an education in dealing with difference?

The Community Page received a large number of emails in response to Gerry McLellan's May 24 Hotline to Nagatacho column "Japanese adults need an education in dealing with difference." The following is a selection of readers' views.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 26, 2011

Red Cross: More Libya aid needed

Four months since a violent uprising swept Libya and split the nation in a civil war, fighting continues between forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and the opposition seeking to drive him from power.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 26, 2011

The other day of infamy

A TRAGEDY OF DEMOCRACY: Japanese Confinement in North America, by Greg Robinson, Columbia University Press, 371 pp., $29.95 (hardcover) The facts are well known. In the spring of 1942, shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, some 112,000 Japanese American citizens living on the Pacific...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 21, 2011

Media grasp for words to sum up post-3/11 grit

The disaster was "divine retribution (tembatsu)," proclaimed Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara just days after the Tohoku earthquake. "The Japanese have become a selfish (gayoku) people. We need to use the tsunami to wash away this egoism."
COMMENTARY
Jun 17, 2011

Triple disaster proves need for an industrial revolution

Some three months since the colossal earthquake and tsunami in eastern Japan, stricken areas are getting on track for recovery with local industrial production capacity having been restored to as much as 90 percent of pre-disaster levels.

Longform

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