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COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 9, 2011

Upcoming legal reforms: a plus for children or plus ca change?

Those focused on the government's stumbling efforts to protect the children of Fukushima from radioactive contamination may find this hard to believe, but Japanese family law just got more child-friendly — maybe. If Japan finally signs the Hague Convention on child abduction, as it appears it will,...
Reader Mail
Aug 7, 2011

Borderline junk food nation

As the Aug. 3 Kyodo article "High price of watermelons may put favorite fruit beyond reach" rightly points out, very few people can afford to buy watermelons in Japan. But what I'd like to know is, what happens to the watermelons when it becomes clear no one is going to buy them? Do stores wait until...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 7, 2011

Fabricated public opinion is the norm

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry's energy agency recently contracted with an outside advertising company to monitor "inaccurate" online information regarding nuclear energy. In response, the media cried "censorship," but as pointed out in last week's issue of Aera, the agency has employed...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Aug 6, 2011

Temp staffer wins maternity leave, via union

When female nonregular workers become pregnant, employers often refuse to renew their contracts. However, a Japanese-Brazilian woman in the Tokai region stood up and joined a local labor union to protest the practice.
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Aug 5, 2011

Upmarket and themed karaoke spaces

Who says singing karaoke room has to be a low-rent affair?
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2011

Italian reporter caught in media glare

Pio d'Emilia, an Italian journalist and long-term Tokyo resident who has been Prime Minister Naoto Kan's friend for about 20 years, has suddenly been put in the spotlight of the Japanese media for reportedly influencing Kan's position on nuclear power and his remote connection with an extreme leftist...
Reader Mail
Aug 4, 2011

Situation in the Horn of Africa

The Aug. 1 AP article "Hungry Eritreans suffer in silence" is a deliberate distorted tutorial prepared on the prevailing situation in the Horn of Africa. It is important to set the record straight.
Reader Mail
Aug 4, 2011

Parents don't need alarmists

In the July 31 article "Fukushima teacher muzzled over radiation," Chris Busby, a professor who visited Fukushima recently, is quoted as saying, "When you bring out the (Geiger) machines, you can see everything is sparkling and everyone is being bitten by invisible snakes that will eventually kill them."...
Reader Mail
Aug 4, 2011

Japan's road to justice for all

I was interested in The Japan Times' publication of the news article "Lay judges convict 99%" and the editorial "Reform of prosecution" in the same edition, Aug. 2.
Reader Mail
Aug 4, 2011

Lazy turn of phrase overplayed

The July 28 article "Fukushima towns won't let summer go by without a bang" contains the phrase "radiation spewing" to describe the damaged nuclear power plants. This seemed familiar, so I searched The Japan Times website; three pages of results were returned. Is it editorial policy that this exaggerated...
Reader Mail
Aug 4, 2011

The irrational fears of radiation

Regarding the July 31 Bloomberg article " Fukushima teacher muzzled over radiation": As happened at Chernobyl, the absurd over-reaction to tiny amounts of radiation by the government and by fearful, ignorant teachers like Toshinori Shishido is proving a far greater harm to Japan than the actual radiation....
Reader Mail
Jul 31, 2011

Kan's escape from nuclear reality

Regarding the July 25 Kyodo article "70% back Kan's nuclear tack, ditto seek his exit": At a time when pragmatic statesmanship and hard-nosed realism are needed, it is extremely disappointing to read that Prime Minister Naoto Kan has decided to promote the unattainable ideal — at least in the foreseeable...
Reader Mail
Jul 31, 2011

Avoid meat and feed more people

The July 21 article "What it takes to banish starvation," by former European commissioner for agriculture Franz Fischler, repeats all the silly ideas that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has been promoting for years, and that has led directly to the development of gene-modified food and seeds....
Reader Mail
Jul 31, 2011

Suspicious life expectancy figures

According to the July 28 Kyodo article "Men's life expectancy rises, but women's falls," there has been a slight dip in female life expectancy, though not enough to relinquish top spot, while male life expectancy hit a new high for the fifth straight year.
Reader Mail
Jul 31, 2011

Uprisings focus on food and jobs

Regarding the July 28 article "Winning the transition to democracy": Author Sri Mulyani Indrawati (a former finance minister of Indonesia) is living under the illusion that all the uprisings in recent memory are about democracy.
Reader Mail
Jul 31, 2011

Intimidating message to China

Regarding Ralph Cossa's July 27 article, "U.S. nukes to South Korea?": Cossa reports that some South Koreans are calling for the reintroduction of American nuclear weapons because they want to "send a message to China." The message that China is likely to take from such an action is that the die is cast:...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 31, 2011

Most unlikely bedfellows

"How wonderful! How marvelous! From here to the southeast is what the Westerners call the Pacific Ocean and the American states! They must be very close!" — Watanabe Kazan, artist and samurai, in a diary recording a sojourn in Enoshima, an island off Kamakura in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture,...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jul 30, 2011

Nagoya's short-term office rentals brisk

In the wake of the March 11 twin disasters, businesses in Tokyo, including foreign companies, fled the metropolis out of fear of radiation escaping the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, boosting the high-end office rental business in Nagoya.
Reader Mail
Jul 28, 2011

Portrayal of a leftist journalist

Unlike those in the mob gleefully calling for Rupert Murdoch's blood, Gregory Clark, in his July 20 article, "Murdoch's moral rise and fall," is thoughtful, even compassionate. Murdoch is, it would seem, a tragic figure, lured by ambition and greed into becoming a tool of the usual suspects: rightwing...
Reader Mail
Jul 28, 2011

The true costs of nuclear power

I have two comments about the July 24 Timeout article "Powering Japan's future." First, author Winifred Bird writes that the accuracy of the respective kilowatt-hour costs of generating electricity from coal, nuclear reactors, solar panels and wind — as estimated in 2010 by the Agency for Natural Resources...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 27, 2011

Left-behind parents waiting

Ever since Christopher Savoie was arrested in 2009 after a failed attempt to retrieve his abducted children, Japan has been overwhelmed by international pressure to resolve its ever-increasing number of abduction cases. After years of demarches and public pleas by foreign governments, Japan has finally...
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Jul 25, 2011

Tepco's fight for distribution

The regional monopoly enjoyed by the electric power industry in Japan has come under unprecedented criticism since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami damaged the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station, causing radioactive leaks and creating a highly political issue of how to compensate victims.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 25, 2011

Links between Pakistan and post-3/11 Japan

During my tenure there, Pakistan went through the heightening of tension resulting from the Islamist resistance to the U.S.-led military action in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, and the near-war with India in May 2002.
Reader Mail
Jul 24, 2011

Life in the 'middle-income trap'

Regarding the July 20 opinion article "Navigating the road to riches": I am not an economist by practice, and my credentials do not come anywhere close to those of writer Otaviano Canuto, the World Bank vice president for poverty reduction. As a historical economics hobbyist, my impression is that the...
Reader Mail
Jul 24, 2011

Education or indoctrination?

In early June, Japan's Supreme Court ruled that it is constitutional for a school principal to order teachers to stand and sing the national anthem "Kimigayo," echoing a May 30 ruling by the court for a similar edict issued by the Tokyo Board of Education.
Reader Mail
Jul 24, 2011

Regret for a generation's faults

Regarding Roger Pulvers' July 3 article, "Murakami puts a bomb under his compatriots' atomic complacency": In his acceptance of the International Catalunya Prize, author Haruki Murakami came down on not only on Tokyo Electric Power Co. but also on those Japanese who are apathetic toward politics and...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 24, 2011

Unraveling the evolution of modern Japan

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF JAPANESE CULTURE AND SOCIETY. Edited by Victoria and Theodore Bestor with Akiko Yamagata. Routledge, 2011, 325 pp. (hardcover) This is a tremendous book and should jump the queue of all those books on contemporary Japan you have been intending to read. The editors deserve kudos...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 24, 2011

Powering Japan's future

Last year, Japan produced close to one quadrillion watt-hours of electricity — that's 1 followed by 15 zeros. The vast majority of that — which translates into one billion megawatt hours (MWh) — came from coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants operated by 10 utilities that, only a few months...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jul 23, 2011

Zoos, aquariums weigh power cut, animal safety

While the Tokai region strives to cut electricity use this summer following the shutdown of the Hamaoka nuclear plant in May, local aquariums and zoos must continue to maintain a suitable environment for their fish and animals regardless of the circumstances.
Reader Mail
Jul 21, 2011

Strange decision on a foundation

The July 12 article "Fukushima plant site originally was a hill safe from tsunami," although unpleasant to read, is welcome as it explains in some detail how the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant came to be constructed against what I personally saw as unfavorable geological conditions.

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?