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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 20, 2013

Murky backstory of 'Gatsby'

What is it about 'The Great Gatsby'? The dark star of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unquiet masterpiece draws writers, critics and filmmakers into its force field, drives them a little mad, and hurls them back into the darkness. The book and its author add up to a mystery whose fascination never fades.
Reader Mail
Jul 20, 2013

'Cool Japan' meme a nonstarter

The Chubu Connection article published in The Japan Times on July 12, titled "Students dealt real-life problems to broaden outlook," describes Tatsuo Hirase, head of the business promotion office of the Chubu branch of Mitsui and Co., leading a two-day marketing seminar at Aichi Prefectural University....
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jul 19, 2013

The weird and wonderful world of the naked mole rat

Doctor Chris Faulkes, who has been working with them almost every day for the last 25 years, has long since learned to love naked mole rats, but, as he concedes, since they are "pretty much blind and live underground in the dark, they are not necessarily naturally selecting on good looks."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 18, 2013

'Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises)'

Whenever Hayao Miyazaki, now 72, makes a film, fans and critics weigh it against this anime master's past triumphs — and often find it wanting. Japanese critics, especially, fondly recall the films that Miyazaki directed at the start of his long career as peaks. That is, 1979's "Lupin Sansei: Cagliostro...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 17, 2013

Japan's population of ghouls keeps coming back to haunt us

Caught up in the rush of modernity, it is sometimes easy to forget just what a unique and unusual country Japan is. An exhibition such as "Yokai: Demons, Folklore Creatures and GeGeGe no Kitaro" serves to remind us, by peeling back the surface of everyday life and showing us the "collective subconsciousness"...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 17, 2013

Silver shoplifters steal food as Abe cuts welfare to trim debt

Fumio Kageyama was 67 when he first turned to crime, making an unsuccessful attempt to rob a drunken passenger on a train in March 2008.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 17, 2013

Pluralism Japan's answer: immigration expert

Japan's leaders need to confront the reality of the rapidly thinning labor force and acknowledge that a more ethnically pluralistic society can help ward off the looming demographic crisis, a British expert on immigration policy says.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 16, 2013

Of spies and whistleblowers

Edward Snowden, a former contractor to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, has been trapped in the transit lounge of Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow for the past two weeks, while the United States government strives mightily to get him back in its clutches. Recently it even arranged for the plane flying...
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jul 14, 2013

Imminent birth puts spotlight on monarch

Aging monarchs in the Netherlands and Belgium stepped down this year to make room for the next generation of Europe's crowned heads. But in Britain, the impending birth of a royal baby will have heirs stacking up like planes at London's super-clogged Heathrow Airport.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Jul 10, 2013

Kimo-kawaii: a chronology in 13 steps

If it's hard to look at but harder to look away, it's kimo-kawaii.
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jul 6, 2013

Fugitive in limbo: It's a familiar story in music, movies, television

He fled the United States for Hong Kong, then left Hong Kong for Russia. Now he's withdrawn his request for political asylum there without having received a guarantee of safe harbor anywhere else. All of which leaves NSA leaker Edward Snowden sitting in a Moscow airport in a kind of legal limbo, with...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 6, 2013

Pity the generation that can't retire before 80

"What if my wife and I die? What if we get dementia? How will our son live?"
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 6, 2013

Firm floats alternative to TOEFL

While Japan looks to make a passing score on the Test of English as a Foreign Language mandatory for university entrance, it should also consider alternative exams that might work better, said John de Jong, senior vice president at Pearson English, a division of Pearson PLC.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 5, 2013

'Wind farms are not the answer to our problems'

Why do you think scientists and politicians have been slow and reluctant to confront population growth? It might be useful to first distinguish between growth and behavior. The problem is less the current number of us in itself (yet) but more the way the majority of the 7 billion of us live and consume....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 4, 2013

Tsuchiya questions what it means to be human

I first met Yutaka Tsuchiya in 1999 when I interviewed him on the release of "Atarashii Kamisama (The New God)," his documentary centering on a rightist punk band and its charismatic lead singer, Karin Amamiya. Despite his left-leaning politics, Tsuchiya was anything but the rigid ideologue; in fact,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jul 2, 2013

The LDP constitution, article by article: a preview of things to come?

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing for constitutional change. Yet he is playing the political huckster by proposing to first only fiddle with the amendment procedure in Article 96, lowering the threshold for the process to move forward from the approval of two-thirds of both houses of the Diet, as...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Jun 30, 2013

Brown imparting wisdom to Japan squad

Larry Brown, the Basketball Hall of Fame coach, has never been accused of embracing job stability. So maybe it's not surprising that his older brother, Herb, also a basketball lifer, has had a nomadic existence in the coaching business, too.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 30, 2013

Complete translation of 'Kafu's first masterpiece'

The English reader has in this volume a complete translation of works of fiction, interspersed with thinly disguised autobiography and essay-like passages, composed by a young Japanese man who was to go on to become one of the finest Japanese writers of the 20th century, Nagai Kafu (1879-1959).
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 29, 2013

Voyager 1 finds solar system's final frontier is fuzzier than once thought

The edge of the solar system has no edge, it turns out. It has a fuzzy transitional area that is not quite part of our solar system and not quite interstellar space.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 28, 2013

'Kon-Tiki'

It's hard to resist the retro charms of this old-fashioned adventure/thriller. Step aside, Indiana Jones — you got some fierce competition going on in "Kon-Tiki," the true-to-life tale of Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and his epic, 8,000-km sea voyage from the Peruvian Coast to Polynesia.
EDITORIALS
Jun 23, 2013

Epidemic of dementia

Japan needs to address its dementia crisis. A recent survey found that 4.62 million people suffer from it, nearly 1.6 million more than last year's estimate.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 23, 2013

Modern science needs to reject 'fairy tales,' get a grip on reality

At an interdisciplinary gathering of academics discussing the concept of time, I once heard a scientist tell the assembled humanities scholars that physics can now replace all their woolly notions of time with one that is unique, precise and true. Such scientism is rightly undermined by theoretical physicist...
WORLD
Jun 22, 2013

Fighting the poachers on Africa's thin green line

Esnart Paundi rarely smiled for the camera. One old photo shows her wearing her ranger's camouflage fatigues and a pensive expression as she crouches beside a mound of bushmeat and three despondent poachers, one handcuffed. In another she is in a black leather jacket at her sister's home, leaning against...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Jun 18, 2013

Finnish diplomat pushes child-rearing for dads

For Finnish diplomat Mikko Koivumaa, being an ikumen (men who take an active role in ikuji, or child rearing) comes naturally.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 14, 2013

'The Great Gatsby'

Baz Luhrmann does justice to F. Scott Fitzgerald's most intriguing creation: Jay Gatsby, the man referred to in the book title as "The Great." As far as adaptations go, Luhrmann's version beats the 1974 version that starred Robert Redford and Mia Farrow hands down. That was a sorrowful, soulful tale...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 13, 2013

The collector who saw the fine print

The Nezu Museum is currently showing "Ceramics and Ukiyo-e Masterpieces from the Hagi Uragami Museum," an exhibition of outstanding artworks collected over the years by the entrepreneur Toshiro Uragami, who donated them to the Hagi Uragami Museum in Yamaguchi Prefecture in 1996.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 9, 2013

Scrutinizing identity through one's family

Lucky great-grandfather Julius. This first member of the Helm family to settle in Japan was "as rooted in his German identity as an old oak tree." For his mixed-race descendants, life would not be so simple.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jun 8, 2013

How did Germany become the new champion of Europe?

Sitting in his brightly lit office overlooking the green hills of rural Westphalia, surrounded by photographs of aluminium and titanium castings, Phillip Schack has drawn a blue triangle on a piece of paper. Pointing to a small shaded section at its apex, he says: "Look. If that's your market, up at...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 8, 2013

Why do identical twins lead such different lives?

Barbara Oliver has had an intriguing relationship with her identical twin sister, Christine, over the decades. Throughout their childhoods, they were effectively treated as two versions of the one person: they were dressed in exactly the same manner and were given the same hairstyles. "Our parents did...

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