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COMMENTARY
May 17, 2009

California dream-makers in the driver's seat

LOS ANGELES — Sometimes it's not that easy living in Los Angeles. Despite splendid weather, sprawling beaches and gorgeous mountain ranges — not to mention the well-tanned Hollywood stars — you face the unrelenting, withering scorn of smug colleagues long established in New York and Washington....
LIFE / Style & Design / WEEK 3
May 17, 2009

Capital's new rail map is on the right lines

We all depend on them, especially when we are new to a place, but how many subway users realize that their trusty transit maps are the subject of a tug-of-war between the forces of geographical accuracy and graphical distortion in the interests of ease of use?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 15, 2009

'Angels & Demons'

How much work can you get done in five hours? That's the crucial question in "Angels & Demons," the sequel to the 2006 global megahit "The Da Vinci Code."
CULTURE / Film
May 15, 2009

'Donju'

Kankuro Kudo was once hailed as the boy wonder of Japanese show business, first as a scriptwriter for hit TV shows ("Ikebukuro West Gate Park" in 2000, and "Kisarazu Cats Eye" in 2002) and then hit films ("Go," "Ping Pong," "Zebraman"). In 2005, he released his first film as a director: "Mayonaka no...
COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2009

Petty torture rules played on sense of duty

PARIS — The top-secret memorandums released by the Obama administration concerning torture practices in CIA prisons shed new light on a fundamental question: How is it that people acting in the name of the United States government could so easily accept the idea of torturing detainees in their charge?...
LIFE
May 10, 2009

Toilet trend gets political correctness down to a 'p'

Nothing reflects the balance of power between the sexes quite like toilet politics.
JAPAN
May 10, 2009

Activists to lobby for improved child care

A new activist group campaigning for better child care policies in Japan said at its inaugural event Saturday that it intends to put direct pressure on the government by highlighting Japan's shortcomings compared with other countries.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 9, 2009

Educator wants credit given where credit is due

Dr. Kazuyuki Matsuo has a dream. He dreams of a different kind of education in Japan, where students receive credit for real-life experience, be it helping Indonesians rebuild primary schools, or digging wells in Tanzania. Matsuo dreams of a system where students are allowed to find their own places,...
COMMENTARY
May 6, 2009

China and Taiwan try a practical approach

LOS ANGELES — On the surface of things, it might not seem like such a big deal. Taiwan is to get recognition as an observer at an important world health meeting in Geneva to be held later this month. But in the context of Asian diplomatic history, it is a big deal.
JAPAN
May 4, 2009

Edwin McClellan, noted scholar of Japanese literature, dies

Edwin McClellan, a Yale professor of Japanese literature whose translation of Natsume Soseki's "Kokoro" helped make its author known in the West, died of lung cancer in Hamden, Conn., on April 27, according to his son. He was 83.
CULTURE / Books
May 3, 2009

Beijing: history of a forbidding city

Reviewed by Stephen Mansfield Ancient Chinese history is as inseparable from myth as today's official retelling of the past is indivisible from propaganda. In "Beijing: The Biography of a City," Jonathan Clements makes an admirable job of disentangling truth from elaboration, finding historical foundations...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
May 3, 2009

Manabu Miyazaki: Outsider looking in

Born the son of a yakuza boss in Kyoto, Manabu Miyazaki is now a best-selling author. His life may read like fiction, but he raises social, political and media facts in a manner that's as frank as it is hard-hitting
JAPAN
May 2, 2009

American missing on volcanic island is award-winning poet, assistant professor

The missing American man last seen Monday on Kuchinoerabu Island, Kagoshima Prefecture, is an award-winning poet and assistant professor at a U.S. university, according to his family and the school.
COMMENTARY
May 2, 2009

Jackie Chan wears a political jester's hat, too

LOS ANGELES — You might have already known that kung fu comic and actor Jackie Chan was crazy, but is he certifiably insane? Just the other day this legendary does-his- own-stunts man asserted that the Chinese people do not need Western-style freedom and democracy.
JAPAN
May 2, 2009

Power struggle rages in North over Kim's heir

As succession speculation abounds amid reports of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's deteriorating health, a recently obtained confidential report has shed new light on a power struggle taking place in the reclusive state.
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
May 1, 2009

Playoff tiebreaker in bj-league becomes point of contention

Every sports league has a right to create its own set of rules. And it's only natural for a new league to face greater scrutiny for the way it operates than a league with a long established tradition, a way of doing things that won't change very easily.
Reader Mail
Apr 30, 2009

Vote-buying is the problem

Regarding the April 22 article "A violent warning for Thailand's urban elites": I would like the author to do more research on the opinion of the rich and the poor, the urbanites and the rural residents. The problem is not that the elites are looking down on the poor but that the poor and politically...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Apr 26, 2009

Ignorance of 'sustainability' is not an option

Judging from the last month's headlines, it's clear we are collectively still not getting it — despite how much we know about the environment. In fact, it seems the more we know, the less we learn.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 26, 2009

Hell: A very personal and eternal nightmare

Characters who re-live their mistakes, their cruelties, and their sexual indiscretions populate Yasutaka Tsutsui's hell, a netherworld built in ever-decreasing circles of guilt, memory, and desire. If, as Jean-Paul Sartre claims, "Hell is other people," then it is the reflection of one's self in the...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 26, 2009

North Korea: Even facts read like fiction

During the shooting of the 1946 Humphrey Bogart film "The Big Sleep" — a noir movie notorious for its convoluted plot — director Howard Hawks cabled Raymond Chandler, author of the book on which the screenplay was based, to ask if Owen Taylor, the chauffeur, was murdered or committed suicide. "Dammit...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 24, 2009

New revolt of the masses

PARIS — Is the current economic crisis uniting the democratic world in anger as much as in fear? In France, with many factories closing, a wave of executive hostage-taking — "boss-napping," as this newfangled crime is called — is agitating board rooms and police. In the United States, big bonuses...
COMMENTARY
Apr 22, 2009

A violent warning for Thailand's urban elites

Until recently (before all the rioting, violence and assassination plotting) Thailand would not have appeared to be a deeply troubled society. Generally speaking, Thais were, as endlessly advertised, scintillatingly smiley, and the country as a whole — vast rolling expanses of poverty notwithstanding...
Reader Mail
Apr 19, 2009

Kids can acquire the four skills

Tim Chambers ("The younger, the better," April 12) is correct in suggesting children's brains at the elementary level are like sponges. This period prior to the onset of puberty when children's brains are capable of easily absorbing quite a lot is known in second language acquisition theory as the "critical...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 19, 2009

A rip and a burp and the land is ours

It's that time of year when Japan's media are meticulously monitoring the iconic cherry-blossom front as it passes up through the archipelago in a wave of warming temperatures and bursting buds.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Apr 17, 2009

Celebrating the work of artist Dick Bruna

Illustrations by Dick Bruna, creator of picture books featuring the rabbit Miffy, and other animals, are now on show at the Museum of Modern Art in Saitama. As a firm family favorite, this exhibition is sure to be popular with parents during Golden Week.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Apr 17, 2009

Celebrating the work of artist Dick Bruna

Illustrations by Dick Bruna, creator of picture books featuring the rabbit Miffy, and other animals, are now on show at the Museum of Modern Art in Saitama. As a firm family favorite, this exhibition is sure to be popular with parents during Golden Week.
Reader Mail
Apr 12, 2009

Less work, more people

If the author of the article "Women, know your place" is being extremely sarcastic, then fine, but if she is being serious, she must be kidding. Japan faces a huge dilemma, with its aging and declining population and its low birthrate. If Japan does not act now, then the country as we know it will cease...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 12, 2009

Dark thoughts and macabre tales

As a boy, Edogawa Rampo was, as he relates in one of the essays included in this collection, a devotee of popular fiction. Entering the fantastic twists and turns of his stories we are soon lost in them just as, when boys and girls ourselves, we became the characters in the romances and adventures we...
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Apr 10, 2009

Age knows no boundaries for flutist

He celebrated his 80th birthday in January, but Swiss flutist Peter- Lukas Graf — who is still active as a performer, conductor and teacher — is touring Japan.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Apr 10, 2009

Age knows no boundaries for flutist

He celebrated his 80th birthday in January, but Swiss flutist Peter- Lukas Graf — who is still active as a performer, conductor and teacher — is touring Japan.

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