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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 26, 2009

A re-imagining of Osaka's riverfront

"Tadao Ando Exhibition 2009: The City of Water/Osaka vs. Venice" seems like a fixed fight. Many would even balk at the idea of the match-up.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 26, 2009

TsuShiMaMiRe "A, Umi da"

"You're pretty stinky, aren't you? Well, I'm gonna love you anyway," sings TsuShiMaMiRe's guitarist/vocalist Mari on "Mike Smell Kunkun." It takes a brief moment to realize that she's talking to her microphone, not some hygienically challenged boyfriend.
BUSINESS
Jun 26, 2009

Sharp violating Samsung patent: ITC

Some Sharp Corp. liquid crystal display televisions and computer monitors should be banned from the United States because they infringe on a patent owned by Samsung Electronics Co., the U.S. International Trade Commission said Wednesday.
BUSINESS
Jun 23, 2009

Corporate confidence heads up

Business confidence improved for the first time in three quarters and demand for services rose, adding to signs the recession is easing.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Jun 22, 2009

Unions give athletes solidarity, provide more protection

Second in a two-part series
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 20, 2009

Public out of the loop on SDF dispatch

The ramming of the beefed-up antipiracy bill Friday through the Diet left the impression that deploying the Self-Defense Forces overseas is no longer a cause for public debate.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 19, 2009

Miwa Yanagi makes the personal public

Born in 1967, Kyoto-based photographer Miwa Yanagi burst onto the Japanese art scene in 1994 with "Elevator Girl" (1994-98), her photo series depicting groups of uniformed women languidly posing in empty shopping arcades. Since then, much of her work has reflected a theatrical aesthetic. For "My Grandmothers"...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Jun 19, 2009

Pair seek POW apology from Aso

For the first time since the end of the war, Australian Joseph Coombs stepped onto Japanese soil, bringing back bitter memories of his days as a prisoner of war forced to work for the mining company run by Prime Minister Taro Aso's family in Fukuoka Prefecture.
BUSINESS
Jun 18, 2009

Citi settles Nikko Cordial accounting lawsuits

Citigroup Inc. said Wednesday it has settled a lawsuit against three former executives of subsidiary Nikko Cordial Corp., ending a two-year court battle stemming from an accounting scandal at the firm.
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jun 16, 2009

The all-powerful voice of corporate Japan

Since its founding, the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) has been the nation's most powerful business lobby and its head is often called "the prime minister of the business world."
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Jun 16, 2009

Will another Mongolian yokozuna come out of the Nagoya Basho?

The Nagoya Basho 2009 is just around the corner. Several rikishi in makunouchi, notably Kakuryu of Mongolia and Aran of Russia, will be fighting at career-high ranks, yet the majority of eyes will be on one of the lightest men in the division as he strives for yokozuna promotion. That man is Harumafuji...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 16, 2009

Koizumi reforms hurting public: Rengo boss

The head of the nation's biggest union group urged the government to abandon policies introduced by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, saying they have made life harder for average Japanese.
JAPAN
Jun 15, 2009

Welfare ministry official arrested over postal fraud

OSAKA (Kyodo) Prosecutors arrested a senior Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry official on Sunday over a case of postal system abuse involving a fabricated ministry document.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 14, 2009

To make an Israeli omelet is it necessary to break so many eggs?

"Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg. . . . Bombers and tanks and rockets and white phosphorus shells are that high, solid wall. The eggs are the unarmed civilians who are crushed and burned and shot by them. . . . Think of it this...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 14, 2009

New university library puts focus on the fans

Perhaps no single cultural product is held more dear in Japan than manga. It was a dominant form of pulp entertainment in the early post-World War II period, a forum for social dissent in the 1960s, then for female creativity in the '70s. By the '80s, manga was at the center of a mass market that outstripped...
BUSINESS
Jun 13, 2009

JAL set to extend unpaid leave

Japan Airlines Corp., Asia's largest airline by sales, is extending unpaid leave to cabin attendants and other staff until September as the biggest drop in overseas travel since 2003 pushes it to a second straight annual loss.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 12, 2009

Sonic after three decades of Youth

There's an old punk maxim that you should never trust anyone over 30. And yet as Sonic Youth rapidly approach the big three-oh, their music is on an upward curve.
BUSINESS
Jun 12, 2009

Tokyo office vacancies climbing

Tokyo's office vacancy rate rose to a four-year high in May as companies in the capital slashed spending and jobs.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 7, 2009

Kang Sang Jung: Born but not Bred

Kang Sang Jung is one of the most influential ethnically Korean residents of Japan (zainichi). A political science professor at the University of Tokyo, he also gives lectures around the country, is a regular television commentator and has a column in the prestigious weekly current affairs magazine Aera....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 7, 2009

Apichatpong Weerasethakul: No ordinary Joe

Perhaps no Asian film director since Akira Kurosawa has received the critical attention bestowed on 39 year-old Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul. His "Blissfully Yours" won a major Cannes Festival prize in 2002; "Tropical Malady," took the 2004 Jury Prize and the Tokyo FilmEx first prize; and...
COMMENTARY
Jun 6, 2009

Dodging a CO2 hangover

Officials from Japan and other parts of the world are meeting in Bonn, Germany, until June 12 for more negotiations on a new set of global arrangements to prevent runaway climate change. The deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012, is supposed to be clinched at a climate summit convened...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jun 6, 2009

Ancelotti unlikely to last long with Chelsea

LONDON — How wonderful to have been a fly on the wall when Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich discussed with his advisers (whoever they might be) who should succeed Guus Hiddink as manager.
EDITORIALS
Jun 5, 2009

Reviving the travel bug

Two years ago the government started to promote tourism, partly to increase domestic demand and to raise the No. 2 world economy's claim on tourism revenues (No. 26 in the world in 2007).

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