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SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Aug 16, 2008

Heavyweights poised to dominate again

LONDON — Predicting the top four clubs at the end of the 2008-09 Premier League season is relatively easy.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 16, 2008

Cash still flows for weddings

Consumers are being forced to tighten their belts by soaring food and oil prices and the expanding economic slowdown triggered last year by the subprime-loan crisis in the United States.
COMMENTARY
Aug 14, 2008

China's slow march toward a normal society

In the months leading up to the Beijing Olympics, there was much talk about the state of human rights in China. Some declared that human rights continued to deteriorate while others insisted that the situation had been improving for the last 30 years. Still others asserted that both sides are right and...
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 10, 2008

China remembers John Rabe, its own local Schindler

John Rabe (1882-1950), known as the Oscar Schindler of China, was an employee of Siemens and a Nazi party member when he helped establish the International Safety Zone (ISZ) toward the end of 1937 to provide a refuge for Nanjing's noncombatants.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 8, 2008

Atami's Kiunkaku ryokan: The art of a great garden

You enter Kiunkaku through a beautiful, tile-roofed wooden gate flanked by tall trees, reminiscent of some temple gates, which gives a hint of the purpose:historical grandeur you will find within.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 7, 2008

Stop criticizing China, it has come so far

BEIJING — When I was at school, sports lessons included an exercise where we threw hand grenades (made from wood topped with metal to resemble the real thing) against a wall over which a red slogan had been stretched offering the reason for such a militaristic pastime: "Exercise our bodies and protect...
COMMENTARY
Aug 7, 2008

Say no to 'NPT' of climate change

Climate change has been correctly identified as a threat multiplier. Yet it has already become a divisive issue internationally before a plan for a low-carbon future has emerged.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 6, 2008

Triumph of the totalitarian will in Beijing

MOSCOW — When the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympic Games begins this week, viewers will be presented with a minutely choreographed spectacle swathed in nationalist kitsch. Of course, images that recall German leader Adolf Hitler's goose-stepping storm troopers are the last thing that China's...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 5, 2008

Correcting outlaw America

PRAGUE — Is it possible to fall out of love with your own country? For two years, I, like many Americans, have been focused intently on documenting, exposing and alerting the nation to the Bush administration's criminality and its assault on the Constitution and the rule of law — a story often marginalized...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 5, 2008

Three Olympic events to characterize China

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — In reality, the Summer Olympics that open Friday create three different categories of events. It's important to understand this.
Reader Mail
Aug 3, 2008

Katakana stigmatizes conditions

In his July 22 article, "Katakana makes Japanese trendy and accessible," Roger Pulvers notes that "Sometimes a foreign katakana word or phrase enters Japanese to replace a perfectly good native equivalent. This makes something appear more attractive and trendy than it normally would."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Aug 3, 2008

Jiang Rong: Writing in a world of wolves

Jiang Rong (pen name of Lu Jiamin), who is now 62, was born in Jiangsu Province, China, and educated in Beijing. In 1967, at age 21, he volunteered to go and work in Inner Mongolia, where he'd heard about the practice of people there paying homage to "wolf totems" erected in the rolling grasslands that...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 30, 2008

Is the NPT still effective?

LOS ANGELES — Forty years ago this month, more than 50 nations gathered in the East Room of the White House to sign the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). In his memoirs, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson called it "the most significant step we had yet taken to reduce the possibility...
COMMENTARY
Jul 30, 2008

Radovan Karadzic falls victim to soft power

Radovan Karadzic's disguise was elaborate, but he didn't spend the past 13 years hiding from the Serbian authorities. They knew where he was all along. Only 10 days after the government changed, the police plucked him off the bus that he rode to work every day and started the process of extraditing him...
LIFE
Jul 27, 2008

Japan's sea view through the ages, in poetry, prose and plain speaking

At Tafushi Cape / Those gracious men of the court / gather seaweed. — "Manyoshu" (7th century)
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 27, 2008

Was the 'Japanese Renaissance' lost at sea?

Last week, Japan celebrated Umi no Hi (Marine Day). First observed as a national holiday in 1996, Marine Day marks the anniversary of the return of Emperor Meiji from a boat trip to Japan's northernmost island of Hokkaido on July 20, 1876.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 25, 2008

Do images of scarcity drive prices higher?

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Could the television image of the Greenland ice cap crumbling into the ocean because of global warming — indirectly and psychologically — be partly responsible for high oil and other commodity prices? The usual explanation of today's scarcity and high prices focuses on explosive...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 25, 2008

Explore every girl's world of fantasy

The manga "La Rose de Versailles," also known as "Berubara," (a Japanese short form of "Versailles rose") has been a fan favorite since the shojo manga (young girls' comic) was serialized in the magazine Shukan Margaret in 1972. The manga depicts fictional events based around historical characters such...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 24, 2008

Julian Opie: Great rooms, blank faces

Julian Opie's work is about signals. In his portraits, a pair of dots signals the eyes, a single line signals the mouth — his imagery is a distillation of reality that presents you only with the essential elements needed for your brain to fill in the rest.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2008

Rights of rational beings who are not human

MELBOURNE — On June 25, in a historic vote, the Spanish parliament's Commission for the Environment, Agriculture and Fisheries declared its support for The Great Ape Project, a proposal to grant rights to life, liberty and protection from torture to our closest nonhuman relatives: chimpanzees, bonobos,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2008

Progress in making criminal leaders pay

PRAGUE — It has been only a little more than 15 years since the first of the contemporary international courts was created to prosecute those who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. Yet there is already a persistent theme in criticism of such tribunals: In their effort to do justice,...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 22, 2008

Scorched-manager policy

MONTREAL — Signs of the American economy's perilous condition are everywhere — from yawning fiscal and current-account deficits to plummeting home prices and a feeble dollar.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jul 22, 2008

Professor Kunihiko Takeda

JUDIT KAWAGUCHI Professor Kunihiko Takeda, Ph.D., is vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University and one of the world's leading authorities on both uranium enrichment and recycling. The 65-year-old is also a bestselling author of books with titles such as “We...
BASEBALL / MLB
Jul 20, 2008

Ex-teammates, foes praise hurler Nomo for impact

Hideo Nomo was a trailblazer and an inspiration to Japanese players who dreamed of playing in the U.S. major leagues, former teammates and opponents said a day after the pitcher retired.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 20, 2008

Lemon-picking prof prompts reflection on strange twists of fate

Lately I have been thinking about some wonderful teachers I was blessed with at university. Three, in particular, shaped my life. Had I not encountered them, I doubt that I myself would have become an author of fiction, a translator and a teacher.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 18, 2008

Raul Castro seeks alternatives to Venezuela

BRASILIA — Raul Castro has begun a gradual process of changing Cuba's economy and international relations. Within Cuba, he hopes to legitimize his government by improving standards of living. Outside of Cuba, he does not want to be held captive by Cuba's one international supporter: Venezuelan President...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 16, 2008

Al Gore and the green inquisition

COPENHAGEN — When it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping 6 meters of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world.

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