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EDITORIALS
Mar 12, 2013

Approach trade talks cautiously

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should carefully consider whether Japan's interests will be served in the negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2013

Protesters rail against Abe, reactors

More than 10,000 demonstrators take to the streets of Tokyo, calling for an immediate phaseout of atomic energy and railing against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's pronuclear stance.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 11, 2013

How Great Recession turned middle-class jobs into low-wage jobs

The U.S. job market is slowly improving, and most economists expect that gradual recovery to continue this year. Yet one of the most disturbing trends of the Great Recession is still very far from being reversed. America's middle-class jobs have been decimated since 2007, replaced largely by low-wage...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 11, 2013

Once upon a time, Washington was even darker

A book by the late Robert Bork, Richard Nixon's solicitor general, reminds us of Washington days that were darker than most people today can imagine.
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 11, 2013

A personal invitation to the I-hate-cherry-blossoms club

It's that time of year when the Japanese turn their thoughts to what I call the 3-S's: sakura (桜, cherry blossoms), sakamori (酒盛り, drinking parties) and shuran (酒乱, getting raucously drunk).
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 11, 2013

Growing world-beating communication skills

Japanese business people's inability to compete on the world stage because of poor communication skills is spurring debate over how English is taught.
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Mar 10, 2013

Will this be the basho in which Kisenosato claims his first yusho?

When the basho opens today, few rikishi will be as ill-prepared as the two yokozuna: Hakuho and Harumafuji.
JAPAN / Media
Mar 10, 2013

Meals on memory lane; "For That Inevitable Day"; CM of the week: Chunichi Shimbun

Fuji TV's Sunday lunchtime show, "Uchi Kuru!" ("Home Visit"), is the king of peripatetic eating programs. Hosts Shoko Nakagawa and Hideyuki Nakayama accompany the week's celebrity guest on a tour of eateries and watering holes from his or her past, dredging up memories while consuming to excess.
WORLD
Mar 10, 2013

Victim helped make rape a war crime

Prijedor Bosnia-Herzegovina AP
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 10, 2013

Providing lessons on nuclear policy

FALLOUT FROM FUKUSHIMA, by Richard Broinowski. Scribe Publications, 2012, 273 pp., A$27.95 (paperback)
Reader Mail
Mar 10, 2013

Compassion for real people

Regarding Michael Hoffman's March 3 article, "Solution to bullying lies in 'resetting' culprits": The views of the Catholic novelist and thinker Ayako Sono, which are cited in the article, are a classic example of the kind of anti-human thinking that seem all too common in the devout the world over....
Reader Mail
Mar 10, 2013

Cover welfare with military cuts

The Feb. 25 column by Hugh Cortazzi, "Reining in the welfare costs," was of interest. The costs involved in welfare are useful to society in general. Welfare helps keep people off the streets, it helps deliver medical care to everyone, and all of it is money that circulates and creates work for someone....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 10, 2013

Two wide-ranging, informed compilations scrutinize the March 11 disasters

NATURAL DISASTER AND NUCLEAR CRISIS IN JAPAN, edited by Jeff Kingston. Routledge, 2012, 304 pp., £28.99 (paperback)
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 10, 2013

If you do like to be beside the seaside, try Kamogawa

Chiba is a large prefecture, something you notice while traveling from Tokyo to the southern seaside resort of Kamogawa. The journey takes a good two hours — and this by express train.
Japan Times
JAPAN / TOHOKU TRAPPED IN TIME
Mar 9, 2013

Water is both the savior and the bane at Fukushima No. 1

Those who were at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant two years ago probably remember their fears after towering tsunami knocked out the reactor cooling systems, triggering three core meltdowns.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 9, 2013

Asia's dammed water hegemon

China's announcement of three new dam projects on the Brahmaputra underscores the emergence of water as a new divide in Sino-Indian relations.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 9, 2013

America can't afford the Amtrak train fantasy

The fact that a program as wasteful of taxpayers' money as Amtrak has so many defenders is more evidence why the U.S. budget debates are stuck.
Events
Mar 9, 2013

Free information on residence status offered

Foreign residents are invited to attend a free counseling session with licensed administrative scriveners about their residence status from 1 to 4 p.m. on March 17 in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 8, 2013

EU proposals on bankers' pay miss the point

Anger in Europe over executive pay is finding its way into legislation. The European Parliament, backed by almost all of the EU's finance ministers, plans to cap bankers' bonuses, and 68 percent of Swiss voters endorsed a referendum initiative to ban "golden parachutes" and put other curbs on bosses'...
JAPAN
Mar 8, 2013

Ceremony to mark '52 return to sovereignty

An official ceremony commemorating the 61st anniversary of the date the San Francisco Peace Treaty, officially ending World War II, came into force will be held on April 28, government officials said Thursday.
JAPAN / TOHOKU TRAPPED IN TIME
Mar 8, 2013

A quick blow, then lingering death for devastated towns

One of the defining images from the Great East Japan Earthquake is of a tsunami-hit tourist bus stranded on the roof of the two-story community center in the Pacific coastal district of Ogatsu, Miyagi Prefecture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 8, 2013

'The Messenger'

It's a scene we've seen in so many other movies: Two soldiers, in full dress uniform, arrive on some leafy suburban street and knock on a door. "We regret to inform you ma'am" is usually about how far they get into their message before the dead soldier's loved ones collapse into sobbing heaps. "The Messenger"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 8, 2013

'Arekara (Since Then)'

It's rare indeed that I ever wished a new Japanese film were longer — and I am not the only one. "This could be shorter by (name your number) minutes" is such a cliche of Japanese film reviewing and commentary that I inwardly groan every time I read or hear it; and yet more often than not, it's right....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 8, 2013

Plotting director Sam Raimi's unlikely path to Oz

There's a moment in "Oz the Great and Powerful," Disney's much-anticipated prequel to the 1939 MGM classic "The Wizard of Oz," where a character falls to the floor, in the midst of a witchy transmogrification into something evil. Off-screen she remains until suddenly, with a heart-stopping smack, a huge...
EDITORIALS
Mar 7, 2013

Mr. Kuroda's high hopes

Bank of Japan presidential nominee Haruhiko Kuroda tells confirmation lawmakers that he will do anything he can to push Japan off its deflation path.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 7, 2013

Such sweet strokes of the Impressionists

A horde of Renoirs and other works from the high-water mark of Impressionism have descended on Tokyo — rampaging in their quiet, colorful way through the labyrinthine exhibition spaces of Tokyo's Mitsubishi Ichigokan.

Longform

Tokyo Koon stands at the forefront of tackling the so-called 2025 issue, also known as the “Magnetic Tape Alert.”
The race to save 20th-century history