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COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2013

Ellsberg: Leaker Snowden made the right call

Edward Snowden made the right call in fleeing the United States after leaking classified documents about NSA surveillance. So says the 1971 leaker of the 'Pentagon Papers.'
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 8, 2013

Propaganda: artifice by design

The word "propaganda" derives its modern use from the name of a 17th-century Roman Catholic institution, the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, or Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Established during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648, a sectarian conflict that devastated Europe following...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Jul 7, 2013

Strict rules help U.S. access data traffic on undersea cables

The U.S. government had a problem: Spying in the digital age required access to the fiber-optic cables traversing the world's oceans, carrying torrents of data at the speed of light. And one of the biggest operators of those cables was being sold to an Asian firm, which might complicate American surveillance...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 7, 2013

Long history of untruthiness by U.S. intelligence

America's chief intelligence officers have a half-century-long history of untruthiness — testifying falsely and fearlessly to provide convenient cover stories.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 7, 2013

Egyptian military coup sets back democracy and constitutionalism

You might think that replacing an unpopular Islamist leader with a secular judge is a victory for democracy in Egypt. It isn't. And don't expect elections soon.
Japan Times
WORLD / Society / FOCUS
Jul 7, 2013

'Winning' noises from slot machines spur gamblers

Whether you're in Las Vegas or the small-town casino down the street, slot machines sound more or less the same: jangly music, the whir of spinning reels, accompanied by loud beeps and chimes.
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 Now he's withdrawn his request for political asylum there without having received a guarantee of safe harbor anywhere else.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 Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 6, 2013

Letting opportunity slip away

So why hasn't March 11, 2011, been the game-changer that many anticipated? Richard Samuels' masterful account of Japan's policy responses to its greatest crisis since World War II explains why continuity has trumped change. But maybe, just maybe, it hasn't, as he also reminds us that the consequences are still unfolding.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / DARK SIDE OF THE RISING SUN
Jul 6, 2013

Equal-opportunity infidelity comes to Japan

As a Japanese saying puts it: Suezen kuwanu wa otoko no haji (It is shame for a man not to eat a feast placed before him).
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 6, 2013

America's revolutionary declaration of dissent

One cause of the growing American fury in this political age is that a large, distant federal establishment is not terribly well-suited to give ear to ordinary dissent.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 6, 2013

Loss of innocence in war for a youth looking for some meaning

Koji Obata, the protagonist of Hiroyuki Agawa's novel, tends not to feel strongly about things. He is, however, convinced that this detachment is an aspect of his character that he'd like to change. Early in the novel he decides that "he [is] looking for something he could confront openly, something...
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 5, 2013

Graca Machel: the impressive face of a new Africa

Shakespeare, in one of Nelson Mandela's favorite lines, now strangely apposite, says that "the valiant never taste of death but once." As the world waits for Mandela to make his final rendezvous with history, one woman — his third wife — who has been at his bedside throughout his illness, and now...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 3, 2013

Egypt liberals make more noise, wield less power

The winds should have been favorable for new President Mohamed Morsi after the 'last pharaoh' was deposed a year ago. Instead, Egypt is socially divided.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 3, 2013

U.S. power defined by 'rise of the rest'

The question of American power in the 21st century is not one of a poorly specified 'decline' or of being eclipsed by China but, rather, the 'rise of the rest.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jul 1, 2013

Voting for idols is bigger than politics

Elsewhere in the world, the kind of sōsenkyo (総選挙, general election) that fires up public interest and garners media attention is one where political parties compete for national office. In Japan, however, the sōsenkyo of aidoru gurūpu (アイドルグループ, idol group) AKB48 tends to grab...
WORLD / Science & Health
Jul 1, 2013

Study tracks couples' emotional interplay in conflicts

Picture this scenario: You are on a road trip with your partner, trying to find your hotel, lost in an unfamiliar area and driving in circles.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2013

Beef all you want, Helicopter Ben was dropping hints since May

Shoulda, woulda, coulda. It's been a week since Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke "surprised" financial markets by telling them exactly what they expected, yet the whining is still going strong.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Jun 30, 2013

Blazing a woodland trail through Shin Kiba

Even if you can't read the kanji for Shin Kiba, you'll sniff out its meaning of "new wood place" the moment you arrive. The Yurakucho subway line's terminus there in eastern Tokyo smells like a cedar closet. Inside the station, a display of Japanese carpentry — including beams featuring dovetail, mitered...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 30, 2013

Preaching Endo's theme of a maternal divinity

Endo Shusaku has helped Japanese Christians to assimilate their painful past and has weaned them away from narrow concerns with dogma or sexual guilt to project instead a broad and humane vision of the faith, sensitively attuned to the Japanese context.
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).
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 30, 2013

A defeat for DOMA, and the end of the 'ick' factor

Future generations will shake their heads at how fearful Americans sounded today debating same-sex marriage. At least most of the Supreme Court justices get it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 30, 2013

Charting U.S. decline, without anger

One of the odd things about American news programs is how little American news they feature. Typhoons and hurricanes, crazies and lone gunmen, Barack Obama staging a press conference, 10 seconds about the Middle East, a famous actor doing something scandalous, back to the weather: All this giddy fragmentation...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 30, 2013

Smartphones are killing the art of conversation

If our age is rich in anything, it is, one would think (wrongly), rich in things to talk about. How can anyone nowadays be at a loss for words? What excuse is there for awkward silence? The merest glance at a newspaper furnishes conversational fodder for a lifetime — reminding us, if anyone is in danger...
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Jun 29, 2013

Global protest grows as citizens lose faith in politics

The demonstrations in Brazil began after a small rise in bus fares triggered mass protests. Within days this had become a nationwide movement whose concerns had spread far beyond fares: more than a million people were on the streets shouting about everything from corruption to the cost of living to the...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / JAPANESE KITCHEN
Jun 28, 2013

Watch your summer food pairings

I'll never forget that day during the summer when I was 14. I'd been away in the Yatsugatake Mountains of Honshu with my schoolmates for a rinkan gakkō (a multi-day school trip to the countryside), and on the way back we'd stopped for lunch at a large roadside diner. On the menu was tempura, followed...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jun 27, 2013

Snowden's stay in H.K. filled with intrigue

The message was blunt and was delivered Friday night by a shadowy emissary who didn't identify himself but knew enough to locate Edward Snowden's secret caretaker: The 30-year-old American accused of leaking some of his country's most sensitive secrets should leave Hong Kong, the messenger said, and...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jun 27, 2013

Abe's fixations threaten newfound unified approach on North Korea

Just as U.S. President Barack Obama seeks a united front to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe threatens to go rogue.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 27, 2013

Five myths about the National Security Agency

One common denominator of NSA whistleblowers is that they feel ignored when attempting to bring illegal or unethical operations to the attention of higher-ups.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 27, 2013

Saudi Arabia backsliding on women's rights

The trumped-up case in which two leading Saudi activists for women's rights were sentenced to prison is a symptom of the kingdom's regression on human rights.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 26, 2013

Turkey's turn to fight over future

The protests in Turkey now involve an extraordinary diverse group. They are said to pit secularists against Islamists and authoritarians against democrats.

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan