Search - long form

 
 
LIFE / Language / WELL SAID
Sep 2, 2019

Learning how to express speed, haste and simply being in a rush

By using 'mamonaku' and 'sugu,' you can learn how to express a feeling of time moving quickly, be it on the train or in the office.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 23, 2019

Dancer Kaiji Moriyama celebrates ninja in his latest work

A creative yet shy child fascinated with origami and crafts, Kaiji Moriyama discovered dance late, at the age of 21 while a university student. He has certainly made up for the lost time, though. Just seven years since first studying the art form, he performed to rave reviews at the 2001 Edinburgh Festival...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 25, 2019

Ice diving in Hokkaido: All adrift beneath a frozen sea

Hokkaido's Shiretoko Peninsula is a treasure trove of forests, wild animals and birds. But from early February to early March it is the home of ice diving, scuba diving beneath the drift ice that blows south from the Sea of Okhotsk.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Nov 25, 2018

School rules in Japan offer harsh lessons in mindless assimilation

"You may not put more than three pencils in your pencil box/ If you wish to speak in class, raise your hand forward at a 70-degree angle/ No going to the toilet in groups/ You must finish using the toilet within seven minutes/ Use no more than 30 cm of toilet paper each time/ Even if parents or siblings,...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / INSIDER REPORT
Oct 29, 2018

Sōgō shōsha: Thriving through adversity in postwar Japan

This is the fourth part of a new series of reports written by industry specialists. The first 12 articles are about Japanese general trading companies, or sōgō shōsha.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 13, 2018

Politics and cinema intermingle at Busan International Film Festival

The 23rd edition of the Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) opened Oct. 4 as Typhoon Kong-rey approached the South Korean port city. When the storm peaked on Saturday morning, some public events were cancelled, but the screenings continued and were still packed with press, industry people and, most...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / WELL SAID
May 14, 2018

Give your Japanese verbs wings using 'agaru' and 'ageru'

Introduce the basic meanings and uses of compound verb structures Vu4e0a(u3042)u304cu308b and Vu4e0a(u3042)u3052u308b.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Mar 12, 2018

Abe's route to revising Article 9 crosses minefield of legalese

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party is now entering a critical phase of debate on what has been one of the most contentious political issues throughout the postwar years: whether and how the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution should be revised.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 1, 2018

Living and breathing history, through noh

Noh performer Hisa Uzawa has spent her life devoted to an art form that — with its slow and steady movements, sparse staging and ancient chanting — may at first seem staid. In her hands, however, the 650-year-old tradition becomes relentlessly contemporary.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 6, 2018

Kazufusa Hosho: 'Noh is necessary in times of social unrest'

The challenge facing Kazufusa Hosho is one that many guardians of traditional Japanese art forms know well: ensuring the survival of a centuries-old culture by attracting new and younger audiences.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / WELL SAID
Aug 21, 2017

Introducing auxiliary verb patterns that connote change

How do you say 'The wind has become much cooler' in Japanese?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
May 29, 2017

The hidden side of the Japanese-Russian summit

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's approach to Russia is looking increasingly risky.
LIFE / Travel
May 26, 2017

Looking for 'omotenashi' in Cuba's southeast

Though half a world apart in geography, history, language and just about anything else you could name, Cuba and Japan are not entirely without similarities.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 1, 2017

Trump's first address to joint session of U.S. Congress

Remarks as prepared for delivery and released by the White House.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Dec 24, 2016

Industry divided on government's casino gamble

In its zeal to ramrod some bills into law before the New Years holiday, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party finally legalized casino gambling, a matter that has been in legislative limbo for a number of years. However, the problems that always prevented the bills from advancing in the past have not gone...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 23, 2016

Is the eel industry on the slippery slope to extinction?

Dwindling domestic population threatens a centuries-old tradition.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Jul 3, 2016

Western media cherry-pick facts and phalli to fit the 'no vagina' narrative in Japan

In Western media coverage of Megumi Igarashi's case, a commonly expressed view has been that Japanese society suppresses vaginal art while celebrating all that is penile. This view is untenable.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 1, 2016

Bureaucratic blockage in Japanese society

Japan has kept the external appearances of social dialogue, but politicians and managers have failed to adapt institutions to the new social realities.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 20, 2015

How alliances of convenience spur deadly terrorist attacks

Western powers must reconsider their regional strategies, which have long depended on allies of convenience ranging from despotic Islamist rulers, as in the Persian Gulf, to Islamist militias.
JAPAN / Politics
Sep 26, 2015

As dust from security bills fight settles, Japan opposition — not Abe — facing crisis

Despite putting up a strong united front, it is the opposition that are struggling even though polls showed a majority of voters opposed the controversial security legislation.
Japan Times
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Sep 25, 2015

Outlook for Rodgers, McClaren not very promising

The noose is tightening round the neck of Brendan Rodgers. How long the Boston-based Fenway Sports Group, which owns Liverpool, will stay loyal to its manager remains to be seen, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to put up a valid argument that Rodgers can take Liverpool forward.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Dec 10, 2014

Electoral dysfunction leaves Japan's voters feeling impotent

This Sunday's poll could well prove a high-water mark of pointlessness even for Japan: an election campaign waged against the unelected.
JAPAN / ADVANCES IN PROGRESS
Oct 12, 2014

Japan rises to challenge of becoming 'hydrogen society'

Since the 2011 onset of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan has had to drastically revise an energy policy that had long heralded atomic power as its main source of energy.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 9, 2014

Sun-dazed on a distant archipelago

It didn't take long for a seasoned group of truck drivers to stake their claim to the best seats in the house or, in this case, ferry. They positioned themselves on tiny plastic seats at the rear of the open deck as the ferry left Tomari Port in Naha City, Okinawa, bound for the island of Kumejima. More...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Mar 26, 2014

Japan's Constitution: never amended but all too often undermined

If Japan's unwritten constitution is already so flexible, why are Abe and his party so bent on amending the written one?
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 23, 2013

How the Federal Reserve was created

A century ago this week, Congress passed the Federal Reserve Act, creating a central bank for a nation that was only beginning its economic ascendance. This is the story of how it came to be, from a nearly catastrophic financial panic to secret meetings of plutocrats on the Georgia coast to the pitched...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Oct 7, 2013

Getting a dodgy divorce is easy; annulling the decision is anything but

Annulling a divorce in Japan achieved through forgery can mean court mediation and possibly litigation, making it much more difficult than getting a divorce fraudulently in the first place.
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Sep 30, 2013

While Hakuho chalks up another victory, Harumafuji's future grows less certain

And then there were 27 — little replicas of the Emperor's Cup atop the yokozuna's mantelpiece that is.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Aug 31, 2013

Naoto Kan speaks out

Naoto Kan took his first steps in the world of politics around 40 years ago as a pugnacious citizen-activist, admonishing those with power as only those without it can. He likes to say he's the same man now, but of course there's an irony in that. After all, in the intervening years he acquired about...

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.