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COMMENTARY
Aug 24, 2011

America's databook is far too valuable to kill

If you want to know something about America, there are few better places to start than the "Statistical Abstract of the United States." Published annually by the Census Bureau, the Stat Abstract assembles about 1,400 tables describing our national condition. What share of children are immunized against...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Aug 23, 2011

Ondagumi president Chuya Onda

Chuya Onda, 68, is the president of Ondagumi, one of Japan's biggest hikiya companies. Hikiya specialize in deconstructing, rebuilding and moving buildings. They are also experts at lifting up houses in order to make them earthquake-proof with special high-tech materials. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake...
BASKETBALL
Aug 23, 2011

Talented guard Gardener reunites with Nakamura

The Akita Northern Happinets have secured the services of explosive lead guard Michael Gardener for the 2011-12 season. The bj-league club made the announcement on Monday.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 22, 2011

Whose fault is the rise and fall of the Japanese ojisan?

The Japanese ojisan (おじさん, middle-aged and older male) hasn't been too genki (元気, full of cheer) or assertive lately. Just the other day, I witnessed a company nomikai (飲み会, drinking party) at a beer garden where the only persons swilling nama (ナマ, draft beer) by the tankload, pulling...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 21, 2011

Should wartime and peace allow such different attitudes to murder?

It is now nearly a month since the July 22 attacks on innocent Norwegians by the rightwing anti-Muslim terrorist Anders Behring Breivik, and aftershocks from those mass murders are still reverberating around the world. Yet massacres of innocents are everyday occurrences in wartime.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 21, 2011

Modernity on the move

Movement is central to modernity. Baudelaire's flaneur, a walker drifting through city streets, "a perfect idler, ... a passionate observer," who is a part of the urban throng even as he remains apart from it, is paradigmatic.
Japan Times
SOCCER / J. League
Aug 20, 2011

Strong play has Kofu's Havenaar out of father's shadow

Ventforet Kofu might be struggling to keep their heads above water this season, but striker Mike Havenaar is making a big splash in the J. League's first division.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 19, 2011

"Kusama's Body Festival in '60s"

Yayoi Kusama, the internationally famous Japanese artist, has drawn attention over her career with her avant-garde works and performances. However, in looking back on her career of more than 50 years it is clear the 1960's was a particularly stimulating period for her.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 19, 2011

Pitt, Penn heap praise on Malick's 'real world'

Terrence Malick kicks off his new film, "The Tree of Life," with a bang. The Big Bang, actually. Over the next 138 minutes, the viewer witnesses a journey through history that ends up in a small town in Texas. Critics seem to agree that you'll either love it or hate it.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 18, 2011

Fall of Berlin Wall wasn't the end of barriers

Fifty years ago, on Aug. 13, under the cover of darkness, East Germany broke ground on the construction of the Berlin Wall, which became one of the most iconic symbols of violence and exclusion the world has ever known.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Aug 16, 2011

Katmandu: What's the best thing to do in Nepal?

Sampada MallaFilmmaker, 24 (Nepalese)The best things are the nature and Nepal's beautiful places. The fact that it is a very diverse and culturally rich society is great, too. And there is also a lot to explore around the country.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Aug 14, 2011

Japan's unsung role in India's struggle for independence

Nestled in the upmarket Wada district of Tokyo's Suginami Ward, Renkoji Temple is a model of gentility. On weekday mornings, pensioners sit and sketch its prayer hall while housewives chat quietly in the shade of its well-tended trees. Given this setting, it would be easy to mistake the bust of a bespectacled...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 14, 2011

A heady witches' brew of midsummer nightmares

Aside from the Summer High School Baseball Tournament at Koshien Stadium and NHK documentaries reminiscing about World War II, mid-August tends to be a quiet time and most of Japan's weekly magazines skip an issue.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Aug 14, 2011

Film mines rich seams of history

Hiroko Kumagai will never forget the day in 1998 when she first stepped inside the red-brick building at the entrance to the closed and shuttered Miyahara shaft in the Miike coal mine in Omuta, Fukuoka Prefecture.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 13, 2011

Young dancers reap fruits of choreographer's expertise

Kimiho Hulbert danced before she could talk. Crawling backstage between dressing rooms of her Japanese mother and British father, both professional dancers in Belgium where she was born, Hulbert even disdained her first official ballet class at 2 years old as "too babyish."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 12, 2011

"Summer Museum For Kids and Grown-ups: Traversing the Times, Places and Attributes Of People Described in Art"

One of the most intriguing themes or motifs in art throughout the ages has been "human beings." In the collection of the Osaka City Museum of Modern Art, there are many works covering this familiar, and universal subject.
Reader Mail
Aug 11, 2011

Location of radioactive emitters

I must take exception to Scott Hards' Aug. 4 letter, "The irrational fears of radiation." Hards is not an expert in radiation biology, or he would have drawn a distinction between external and internal radioactive emitters. There is not much of a case for any great danger from external emitters, except...
BUSINESS
Aug 9, 2011

Orix to invest $1 billion in China for water, renewable energy quest

Orix Corp., a provider of financial services ranging from leasing to insurance, plans to invest as much as ¥80 billion ($1 billion) in China over two years in water, machinery and renewable energy.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 7, 2011

Norway's horrors betray a bigoted ignorance of nationality's meaning

First of two parts
CULTURE / Books
Aug 7, 2011

Ultimate guide to boozing in Japan

DRINKING JAPAN: A Guide to Japan's Best Drinks and Drinking Establishments, by Chris Bunting, Tuttle Publishing, 2011, 272 pp., $24.95 (paper) I don't recall who wrote the line "If Venice is built on water, Tokyo is built on alcohol," but the author was spot on. Its not only the capital, but the entire...
EDITORIALS
Aug 6, 2011

Old and new nuclear perils

Aug. 6 and 9 are the days on which Japanese pray for the souls of those who died due to the U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and renew our resolve to seek a world without nuclear weapons.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Aug 5, 2011

B-kyu boom: The magnificence of the mediocre

There's a B-kyu (class) for everything, which doesn't make it any less important.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 4, 2011

Rising noh star on mission to broaden audience

Noh, the 600-year-old performing art featuring drummers, chorus singers and masked actors, has survived in the modern world to this day thanks to its loyal, though aging, fan base. But as with many other traditional art forms, it is in dire need of new talent.

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat