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Reader Mail
Feb 28, 2013

No meat to vegetarian story

I consider the headline for Philip Brasor's Feb. 24 Media Mix article, "Japan's vegetarians stay in the closet," misleading. Most of the story is not about the vegetarian situation in Japan, but rather a discussion of animal rights. I have no idea what the author really wanted to say with regard to vegetarians...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Feb 27, 2013

Seniors forced to go it alone as ranks swell, housing eludes

Itoko Uchida, 82, was counting on the nephew she raised to support her in old age. He refused, forcing her to pay for a sponsor to join the 420,000-long line of Japanese waiting for a nursing home bed.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Feb 27, 2013

Top currency official eyed for ADB presidency

The administration is considering Vice Finance Minister for International Affairs Takehiko Nakao, the nation's top currency official, as a candidate to lead the Asian Development Bank under the assumption that current ADB head Haruhiko Kuroda becomes the next Bank of Japan governor, Finance Minister...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 27, 2013

Afghanistan's partition might be unpreventable

Is Afghanistan in store for an Iraq-style 'soft partition,' with protracted strife eventually creating a 'hard partition,' after U.S. military forces go home.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 27, 2013

Five myths about picking a pope

Misconceptions abound about how 117 cardinals, gathering from across the globe inside the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, will elect a new pope next month.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Feb 26, 2013

Everything you wanted to know about Western women (but were afraid to ask): No-holds-barred guide targets Japanese men

Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 24, 2013

Osaka: Japan's latterday second city forever breaks the national mold

They're funny, finicky and feisty, not to mention being full of wicked mischief, with their own way of talking, too. Outside of Japan, think of Liverpool, not London; or Munich, not Berlin; or Mumbai, not Delhi. I'm talking about the people of Osaka.
Japan Times
LIFE
Feb 24, 2013

Sharing films with a master critic

Donald Richie was my friend and mentor for more than 20 years and my inspiration before that. When I was preparing to come to Japan for the first time in 1975, I read many books about the place, but Donald's masterpiece "The Inland Sea" was the one that entranced me. My first long trip after my arrival...
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 23, 2013

Keep it clean: World watches Iceland lead the way toward ban on Web porn

Small, volcanic, with a proud Viking heritage and run by an openly gay prime minister, Iceland is now considering becoming the first democracy in the Western world to try to ban online pornography.
WORLD / Society
Feb 23, 2013

25% of U.S. teens harassed online by partner

In another mark of the increasingly digital life of teenagers, more than 25 percent of those who dated said their love interests threatened or harassed them online or using texts, according to a new study that is touted as the most comprehensive look at the phenomenon.
COMMENTARY
Feb 23, 2013

Wrestling with the corruption of the Olympics

It has been scarcely a week since the International Olympic Committee announced its intention to exclude wrestling from the 2020 Summer Games, and the campaign to "Save Wrestling" is in full swing.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / JAPANESE KITCHEN
Feb 22, 2013

Ready for spring's fresh bounty

After an unusually cold winter, the sight of spring produce is particularly welcome, especially the bright yellow-green of nanohana.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 22, 2013

Mexican police, soldiers tied to disappearances

Describing what it called "the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades," the U.S. organization Human Rights Watch issued a new report Wednesday with grim implications for the thousands of Mexican civilians who have gone missing in the country's shadowy drug fight.
Reader Mail
Feb 21, 2013

Celebrate Japan's diverse look

Regarding the Feb. 28, 2008, article "Why's Japan grown so ugly?": I was struck by how amazingly naive this article seems; this approach to town planning is part of why I fled Britain.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 20, 2013

Five myths about manufacturing jobs

Despite claims of lost jobs, the U.S. is still a world leader in manufacturing, a sector that will remain essential to its economic and technological future.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Feb 20, 2013

Buss' contributions to NBA won't be forgotten

Dr. Jerry Buss, the legendary Basketball Hall of Fame owner of the Los Angeles Lakers who died Monday, was by vocation a chemist, the Dr. before his name for his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Southern California at age 24.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 20, 2013

China's greater water wall

The Chinese government's recent decision to build an array of new dams on rivers flowing to other nations is set to roil inter-riparian relations in Asia.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 18, 2013

The rise and decline of press freedom in Turkey

If Europe and the U.S. do their part, Turkey's prime minister may be persuaded to resume an earlier push for human rights reform and press freedom.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / BASEBALL BULLET-IN,WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC
Feb 17, 2013

Upcoming WBC sparks excitment for Japanese baseball enthusiasts

It's time once again to gear up for the World Baseball Classic.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 17, 2013

Nuclear dispute shapes fight over future of fading town

This superbly told tale about the waxing and waning fortunes of Kaminoseki town over the past four centuries presents some interesting local counterpoints to the more familiar national narrative.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 17, 2013

Remarkably original debut thriller shines light on Glasgow's underworld

THE NECESSARY DEATH OF LEWIS WINTER, by Malcolm Mackay. Mantle, 2013, 256 pp., £14.99 (hardcover)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 17, 2013

Kanai's provocative, textured 'girls' fiction' wistfully surprises

INDIAN SUMMER, by Mieko Kanai, translated by Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley. Cornell East Asia Series, 2012, 149 pp., $24 (paperback)
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 17, 2013

Hiding from strangers in the global village

In his 1993 novel "Hanauzumi," Junichi Watanabe pictures a prosperous farming village in Saitama. The year is 1868. The Meiji Restoration has just occurred. The shogun has been overthrown. The teenage Emperor Meiji has been conveyed from the ancient imperial capital of Kyoto and installed in Tokyo. Great...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Feb 16, 2013

War on the seabed: the Hebridean shellfishing battle

The problem with bottom-trawling is that it lacks discrimination. The gear plows through the seabed, taking or breaking nearly everything in its path.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 16, 2013

Debate rages over effect of nursing on mother and child

Is breast-feeding far and away the best thing? Or have we done women a disservice by overstating its benefits?
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2013

Mr. Obama, did you or did you not kill Anwar al-Awlaki?

The big problem with U.S. drone policy is that it lets the government kill its citizens in secret and then refuse to acknowledge later that it has done so.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Feb 15, 2013

Tips for springtime on the Shikoku pilgrimage route

Setsubun is over and it is officially springtime in Japan. So what if it's still cold — happy spring! And spring means cherry blossoms, a new school year and, of course, pilgrimaging! This spring, many people will set out on the pilgrimage of a lifetime as they walk, bicycle, bus or drive the Shikoku...
JAPAN
Feb 15, 2013

U.S. report to deny Agent Orange in Okinawa

A Pentagon probe into the presence of Agent Orange in Okinawa is set to support veterans' allegations of the clandestine burial of harmful chemicals — but deny the defoliant was among them.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Feb 15, 2013

India's doctors using illegal sex-selection in own families

Some doctors' families in India are having more sons than daughters, a new study in the U.S. journal Demography claims, implying that they, too, may be using illegal sex-selective practices that are thought to be widespread in the country.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2013

'Zero Dark Thirty'

'Money shot' is a term that originally came from the pornographic-movie industry, referring to, ahem, a male actor fulfilling his contractual obligations.

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