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Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Jan 31, 2010

Rags and riches by the Myoshoji

Few writers have been able to evoke the bare beams of poverty or the lambent lives of those who endure it with more dignity than Fumiko Hayashi (1903-1951).
BASEBALL
Jan 31, 2010

Resentment of Valentine's power factored in downfall

Third in a four-part series
COMMENTARY
Jan 28, 2010

It's better to help arm Taiwan than defend it

The Obama administration is preparing a new arms package for Taiwan. Ironically, selling weapons to Taipei may be the best way for Washington to get out from the middle of one of the world's potentially most volatile relationships, between China and Taiwan. Relations between China and Taiwan are improving....
EDITORIALS
Jan 28, 2010

The reconstruction of Haiti

As the horrific death toll in Haiti has so tragically demonstrated, the primary defense against earthquakes is to have buildings strong enough to withstand their destructive force. It is estimated that at least 150,000 Haitians perished in the magnitude-7.0 temblor and aftershocks that flattened much...
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2010

Bluefin ban could put Japan in bind

Seafood-loving Japan — having faced years of international pressure to stop whaling — finds itself with a potentially bigger fight over a highly prized type of tuna that conservation groups say is being fished to extinction.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 24, 2010

Eschewing the cheerlessness of modern-market memoirs

Those who have read Donald Keene's 1996 memoir "On Familiar Terms" may wonder whether it was necessary for him to bring out another that covers much the same ground. One suspects that Keene published "Chronicles of My Life" simply because he had been asked to write a series of columns about his life...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 22, 2010

Theater star brings new tricks to the stage

In the summer of 2008, a shockwave hit the world of Japanese theater when Keishi Nagatsuka announced he was taking a yearlong break from the stage to take a government-sponsored sabbatical in London.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 21, 2010

Anxiety fuels the rise of European nativists

PARIS — A referendum in Switzerland forbids the construction of new minarets. Racial violence explodes in the southern Italian region of Calabria. An intense and controversial debate takes place in France on the issue of national identity. These events have little in common, yet they all point to a...
COMMENTARY
Jan 20, 2010

Swords crossed in Sri Lanka

Two celebrated heroes who, as president and army chief, helped end Sri Lanka's long and brutal civil war against the Tamil Tigers are now crossing political swords. Whichever candidate wins Sri Lanka's Jan. 26 presidential election will have to lead that small but strategically important island-nation...
JAPAN
Jan 19, 2010

Treaty withstands strains of time, politics

OSAKA — A half century after it was signed, the 1960 Japan-U.S. security treaty remains the foundation for bilateral cooperation, even as the world it was forged in has changed drastically.
COMMENTARY
Jan 19, 2010

Military spending — for what?

WASHINGTON — The United States dominates the globe militarily. The threats facing America pale compared to its capabilities. Why, then, is Washington spending so much on the military?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 19, 2010

Resolve to get involved this new year

It's that time of year when a lot of us make resolutions — many of which last only a few days. 2010 offers you the opportunity to do something new and get more involved in the community.
COMMENTARY
Jan 17, 2010

Will the Tiger find a way out of the Woods?

LOS ANGELES — Buddhism is one of the historic religions of Asia, and today its influence remains strongly felt throughout the world. One has only to scratch the surface of this religion that originated in India in the fifth or sixth century B.C. to know that it has much to say about suffering.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jan 17, 2010

'Tigers' and naturalists of many stripes

I enter the forest and soon the rhythmic swish-swish of my skis over the snow mesmerizes me. This is my first foray of the new year in Hokkaido, making tracks in the lowland forest of Nopporo close to home just east of Sapporo.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Jan 16, 2010

Whiting to examine Valentine era with Marines

Best-selling author Robert Whiting, who wrote "You Gotta Have Wa," "The Meaning of Ichiro," and "The Chrysanthemum and the Bat," returns to top form in an exhaustively researched exclusive four-part expose on Bobby Valentine's rise and fall with the Chiba Lotte Marines.
JAPAN
Jan 15, 2010

Tokyo library reaching out to foreign community

Whether to read a Pulitzer Prize-winning author in English, flick through global editions of Vogue magazine or delve into foreign encyclopedias, the Tokyo Metropolitan Library wants more foreigners to visit and take advantage of its free multilingual resources.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 15, 2010

Exhibit on the Orient Express

Hakone's Lalique Museum is showing Rene Lalique's glass works in an interesting gallery — the famed Orient Express.
COMMENTARY
Jan 13, 2010

Asia's changing dynamics

With Asia in transition and the specter of a power imbalance looming large, it has become imperative to invest in institutionalized cooperation to reinforce the region's strategic stability. After all, not only is Asia becoming the pivot of global geopolitical change, but Asian challenges are also playing...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 10, 2010

Expecting an unbound generation of leaders

SYDNEY — The appointment of five provincial-level Chinese Communist Party chiefs in early December is a reminder that the ascension of China's next generation of leaders, who will take power in 2012, may be the most significant development in Chinese politics since the reign of Deng Xiaoping began...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 7, 2010

Keys to keeping your New Year's resolutions

MELBOURNE — Did you make any New Year's resolutions? Perhaps you resolved to get fit, to lose weight, to save more money or to drink less alcohol. Or your resolution may have been more altruistic: to help those in need, or to reduce your carbon footprint. But are you keeping your resolution?
JAPAN
Jan 6, 2010

Writer: Juvenile killer not a 'devil'

It all began with a letter from a condemned killer.
COMMENTARY
Jan 6, 2010

China wants it both ways

China is a schizophrenic power, a developing country on select international issues but a rising superpower that sees itself in the same league as the United States in other matters, with its new muscular confidence on open display. At the recent Copenhagen climate-change summit meeting, China was the...
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jan 5, 2010

Minors in own category but never above the law

Jan. 11 marks Coming of Age Day, an annual holiday to celebrate people who have reached legal adulthood.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jan 3, 2010

Jake Adelstein: Insider reaching out

Author Joshua "Jake" Adelstein supposes that if he'd stayed home in rural Missouri and had never come to Japan, he'd probably have become a small-town lawyer or a very happy detective on the local police force.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 27, 2009

First glimpses of a new world

THE LURE OF CHINA: Writers From Marco Polo to J.G. Ballard, by Frances Wood. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009, 283 pp., £19.99 (hardcover) Not many readers follow the adventures of Robinson Crusoe as far as China, or even realize he went there. But the first volume of the famous story...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 26, 2009

The day that Romania's 'bears' fought back

NEW YORK — The late Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu liked to hunt bear. With his retinue, he would retreat to a lodge in Transylvania and sally forth, locked and loaded. He was accustomed to good fortune, for his huntsmen took precautions. They would chain some poor beast to a tree, drug it to...
COMMENTARY
Dec 22, 2009

Travails of a 'young war criminal'

LONDON — Alan Watkins is my favorite British journalist. Well into his 70s now, each week he still produces an elegant and knowing column, usually about British politics. And with a casual understatement that you might easily mistake for irony, he has for the past six years regularly referred to former...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 22, 2009

Famed tale a perennial favorite

. The shogunate ordered Asano to commit ritual suicide over the breach in acceptable behavior. On Dec. 14, 1702, 47 samurai followers of Asano took revenge on Kira and killed him. They then subsequently dispatched themselves.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 22, 2009

Recognizing confident India as indispensable

PARIS — "Do not forget India." That warning made sense 10 or 15 years ago; not any longer. India is now impossible to ignore, much less forget, owing not only to its rapid economic growth but also to the country's increasing geopolitical stature.

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