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Reader Mail
Apr 11, 2013

Aversion to blue-collar work

Regarding The Washington Post feature article that ran in The Japan Times April 8 under the headline "India students' aspirations, job market don't match": The writer has perhaps made a sincere attempt at bringing up a serious problem. But how novel is this problem? Many graduates are known to have gone...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Apr 10, 2013

North Korea's U.S. diplomatic channel fades

Han Song Ryol, the North Korean diplomat who serves as his country's principal liaison with the United States, has spent the better part of the past two decades exploring the prospects for a normalized bilateral relationship with Washington.
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Apr 10, 2013

Pop tourism gains traction

Pre-flight shopping at Narita airport a couple of weeks ago, I passed a mannequin sporting a light-blue necktie and a turquoise wig with pig tails dangling down to its mini skirt. The vision spoke volumes: It was Hatsune Miku, of course, Japan's holographic, animated virtual pop star, beloved fashion...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Apr 9, 2013

Ramirez possibly top foreign-born player ever in NPB

Alex Ramirez thanked God before he reached first base. He continued along and touched the other bags as a light, constant rain fell on Jingu Stadium and the sparse crowd — 11,069 to be exact, though Ramirez would later say the place felt packed — that braved the promise of a Saturday downpour and...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 9, 2013

Comparing tobacco fight to the Opium Wars

The struggle against tobacco is not being won. It is being relocated from industrialized countries to the developing world.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Apr 9, 2013

Culprit in heart disease goes beyond meat's fat

The fat and cholesterol found in a steak may not be the only components bad for the heart, according to researchers who have found another substance in red meat that can clog the arteries.
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 9, 2013

'Natch' gets ghostly on stage

"If I thought too much about my future plans, I would kind of get stuck," says Natsumi Abe. "So I just try to concentrate on the next day's work and do it as well as I can."
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / FOCUS
Apr 8, 2013

India students' aspirations, job market don't match

As India's economy grows, cities expand and new industries arise, officials and policy analysts are grappling with a key question: Will Indians have the skills to build the new India?
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 8, 2013

China gets Apple's 'iKowtow'

Leading computer maker Apple has responded to weeks of remorseless criticism in China's official media with 'iKowtow' — aka a groveling apology.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 8, 2013

When Supreme silence is golden in America

As the recent U.S. Supreme Court arguments over same-sex marriage attest, silence plays a role in constitutional law just as it does in ordinary life.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 7, 2013

A portrait of the poet as a child

This remarkable book is an autobiography of childhood, written by the poet Mutsuo Takahashi (born 1937) when he was 32, and issued in 1970, although its separate chapters had appeared as a series of essays in a magazine the year before.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 7, 2013

Processing the bitter to a durable, beautiful form

KICKING THE BLACK MAMBA: Life, Alcohol and Death, by Robert Anthony Welch. Darton, Longman and Todd, 2012, 240 pp., £12.99 (paperback)
JAPAN / Media / DARK SIDE OF THE RISING SUN
Apr 7, 2013

What's with the police purge on dance clubs?

If you're ever minded to dance the night away to trance music, or even old-fashioned rock, you may have a tough time finding a venue in Japan these days. In fact, you may end up waltzing away hours inside a police station, peeing into a cup after being rounded up in a raid. Yes, indeed, a War on Dance...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 7, 2013

Appi's snowy joys await seekers of late-season thrills

With degrees in fine arts, Akiyoshi Osumi used his creative talents to coin a perfect slogan for the Appi Kogen Snow Resort: "Be Happy in Appi."
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 4, 2013

China's Xi looks to Katy Perry for national dream

No other phrase has been given comparable attention in China's state media of late than 'Chinese Dream,' invoked by Xi Jinping as he became president.
BUSINESS / Companies
Apr 4, 2013

Marubeni taps geothermal power as nuclear alternative

Marubeni Corp. is working on how to jump-start the geothermal industry and tap the heat that powers volcanoes as an alternative to nuclear reactors.
BASKETBALL / NBA REPORT
Apr 3, 2013

Frustration brings out LeBron's passion

And we thought the Chicago Bulls last Wednesday breaking the Miami Heat's 27-game winning streak, the second longest in NBA history, was the big news.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Apr 3, 2013

Moleskines are shaping virtual notebooks

Australian author Bruce Chatwin has a lot to answer for. Specifically, he's responsible for a forthcoming initial public offering (IPO) on the Italian stock market. It all goes back to something he wrote in his 1986 book 'The Songlines.'
Japan Times
WORLD
Apr 1, 2013

Historian seeks to have Jefferson speak for himself

Thomas Jefferson died 186 years ago. But J. Jefferson Looney still wants the nation's third president to speak for himself.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Mar 31, 2013

Men with 'yellow fever' get a taste of their own medicine

There's no need for serious digging; just scrape the surface of history and there are plenty of examples of Caucasian men who showed the symptoms of a phenomenon known as 'yellow fever.'
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 31, 2013

An account of POWs 'in hell'

CAPTURED: The Forgotten Men of Guam, by Roger Mansell. Edited by Linda Goetz Holmes. Naval Institute Press, 2012, 288 pp., $33.95 (hardcover)
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 31, 2013

Last post: Japan's outdated model is dead; long live the emerging vision

As of today, Roger Pulvers takes leave of Counterpoint, for which he has written weekly since its inception on April 3, 2005. In his final three columns, he set out to consider in turn Japan in the past, present and future. This is the concluding part of that trilogy.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 30, 2013

Resource issues threaten Asia's continued rise

Asia's re-emergence on the global stage after a two-century decline is accompanied by an insatiable appetite for natural resources that it doesn't have.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 29, 2013

'Daijobu 3kumi (Nobody's Perfect)'

Teaching kids is usually not thought of as a physically taxing job, but take it from one who has done it: It is, especially in Japanese schools, where one teacher may have to deal with 40 bundles of not-always-well-behaved energy. I spent much of my class time at a Tokyo boys' high school in the 1980s...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 29, 2013

A post-Assad Syria can't grab the attention of Capitol Hill

As Capitol Hill fields calls for U.S. military intervention in Syria, it fails to consider whether a post-Assad Syria would pose tougher problems than Iraq.
LIFE / Digital
Mar 27, 2013

Technology that works for prose is still a curse for verse

Washington poet and literary activist E. Ethelbert Miller insists there is a difference between his poem "Before Hip Hop" when it is shown like this:
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2013

ECB head Mario Draghi's opiate of the markets

From the standpoint of EU economic stability, the division of Italy's parliament into three mutually incompatible political forces is a terrible outcome.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 27, 2013

Reasons why Beijing won't push Pyongyang

One reason Beijing is loath to squeeze Pyongyang is that a nuclear North Korea is seen as complicating U.S. security calculations more than China's.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 23, 2013

Bizarre ideology of fringe Republican convention

Gene Wisdom, a 55-year-old conservative from Nashville, Tennessee, was no fan of Barack Obama. Clutching a book called "The Communist," he was waiting eagerly to meet the book's author, Paul Kengor, so that he could sign it. The book, which detailed the life of black American journalist and labor activist...

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