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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / BLACK EYE
May 15, 2016

Laid-back baker finds luck and love in Tokyo

Once shunned by his in-laws because of his race, father of four hopes to change minds in Japan, little by little.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 15, 2016

Xi Jinping — a son of the Cultural Revolution

Power is Xi Jinping's lodestar, and he appears willing to go to any length to secure it. In this effort, he has one key advantage: Mao Zedong's legacy.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 15, 2016

Austria's crisis is a dire warning to Merkel

Angela Merkel needs to be mindful that inconsistency on matters of principle can be costly.
WORLD / Science & Health
May 15, 2016

Regrown Latin American forests are called key for protecting climate and land rights

Forests regrown on lands that had been cleared for agriculture in Latin America could play a key role in trapping carbon from the atmosphere and mitigating climate change if they are managed properly, researchers said in a study published on Friday.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
May 14, 2016

Has pacifism always been doomed to fail in Japan?

Japan had a pacifist "constitution" long before 1947, when the current one went into effect. It was issued in the year 604, its author so esteemed, in his own time and since, as to merit the posthumous name Shotoku Taishi (Crown Prince Sage-Virtue). His lifetime (574-622) spanned an early phase of Japan's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 13, 2016

World was a stage for acclaimed theater director Yukio Ninagawa

Acclaimed stage director Yukio Ninagawa was a titan of global theater but his hand felt astonishingly fragile when I shook it in delight in 2012 after the world premiere of "Trojan Women," which brought together a remarkable ensemble of Japanese, Arab-Israeli and Jewish-Israeli actors.
COMMENTARY / World
May 13, 2016

Lessons from Asia's drought

Asia's water crisis highlights an urgent need for better management of this life-sustaining resource.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 13, 2016

Sex versus gender in the U.S. bathroom case

North Carolina and the federal government have sharply different ideas about the acceptance of transgender people. But what about the legal stakes?
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 12, 2016

Hillary to Bernie supporters: don't vote for me

Confident that she has the Democratic nomination locked down, Hillary Clinton's surrogates are targeting Bernie Sanders devotees with a low-key sales pitch.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2016

Five powerful forces are driving inequality

Income inequality is driven by both political and economic forces and it waxes and wanes over time.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
May 10, 2016

Coaches find that patience no longer a virtue for teams

How does that saying go about better to rent than buy?
COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2016

Trumpism suffers a loss in London

Trumpism, or the politics of hate and fear, suffered a major defeat last week with the election of a Muslim as mayor of London.
COMMENTARY / Japan
May 9, 2016

Abe's questionable handling of the Kumamoto quakes

The Abe administration is making a shameful attempt to use the Kumamoto earthquakes to further and unrelated political agenda.
COMMENTARY / World
May 9, 2016

The U.S. president never has to say he's sorry

U.S. President Barack Obama should be held accountable for the deadly mistakes made by his administration.
COMMENTARY / World
May 9, 2016

Crimea after two years: time to drop sanctions

Rather than reflexively continue sanctions over the annexation of Crimea, the Western states should rethink their policy toward Russia.
COMMENTARY / World
May 9, 2016

Putin strikes a defiant note with concert in Syria

Vladimir Putin is signaling to the world that his forces have not really withdrawn from Syria and that any peace will be made on Russian terms.
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
May 8, 2016

Does the Japanese Constitution mean anything?

If the Liberal Democratic Party gets its way, the current charter, full of rights that are barely known, would be replaced with a constitution that's more about duties.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
May 8, 2016

Trump won the GOP's stand-up competition

Donald Trump's remarkable run, however it ends, could be a harbinger of things to come, and future races may well be won by the person with the best stand-up routine.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 7, 2016

Domestic violence: 'Abuse was all I knew'

There's an almost dispassionate matter-of-factness in the way Risa Tanaka describes how she was tortured by her husband.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 7, 2016

Diabetes emerges as Japan's hidden scourge

Reading a review of British writer Bee Wilson's "First Bite: How We Learn to Eat" in the London Review of Books, I stumbled on an astonishing figure: 4 million people in the U.K. have diabetes. An unhealthy diet and increasingly sedentary lifestyle have taken their toll, causing a 65 percent surge in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
May 7, 2016

'San'ya Blues' uncovers the holes in Japanese society

Sanya, Tokyo's day-laborer quarter, hardly exists in the official geography of the city — it has been excised in an act of symbolic expulsion. Maps are designed in such a way that the area remains blotted out. The district, as "San'ya Blues" author Edward Fowler observes, "might just as well be considered...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
May 7, 2016

Weird ancient hammerhead creature ate algae

It was a creature so outlandish that scientists say it reminds them of the fanciful beasts conjured up by Dr. Seuss. But would the famous children's book author have thought up a marine reptile with a hammerhead snout it used to snack on algae?
COMMENTARY / World
May 4, 2016

China key to India's future

Is China's success clearing the way for India to take flight?
COMMENTARY / World
May 4, 2016

Trump is riding on a warped 1980s nostalgia

There's no DeLorean time machine to take Americans to the Reagan '80s, and if it existed, it would take them elsewhere. It's time to move on.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy
May 4, 2016

Water crunch could sink economies, especially in Mideast, by midcentury: World Bank

Economies across large swaths of the globe could shrink dramatically by midcentury as fresh water grows scarce due to climate change, the World Bank reported on Tuesday.
COMMENTARY / World
May 3, 2016

Islamic State eradicating religious minorities

The slaughter of Middle Eastern Christians and other persecuted faiths is one of the great tragedies of our age.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 2, 2016

Stalking the elusive subtleties of Japan's political humor

Certain Japanese publications are rife with political word play, and deciphering these puns and riddles can be a fun challenge for language learners.
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2016

China's water hegemony

China's control of several international rivers, through its huge number of dams, gives it power over the nations downstream.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 30, 2016

Black Illumination: the abyss of Keiji Nishitani

I've always felt there are basically two kinds of philosophers: those who begin in wonder and those who begin in despair. Though the philosopher Keiji Nishitani (1900-90) was arguably the latter kind, he struggled throughout his life to see the world with wonder.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 30, 2016

'Barbed Wire Baseball' brings the story of Kenichi Zenimura to life

"Barbed Wire Baseball" is an informative and imaginative retelling of the true story of Kenichi "Zeni" Zenimura (1900-68), the father of Japanese-American baseball.

Longform

A man offers prayers at Hebikubo Shrine in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. The shrine is one of several across the country dedicated to the snake.
Shed your skin and reinvent yourself in the Year of the Snake