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CULTURE / Music
Jun 5, 2009

Fermenting dregs of rock 'n' roll for the masses

"I just had a connection with the sound of the words," says singer and bass player Natsuko Miyamoto when she answers my question about the name of her band, Mass of the Fermenting Dregs. Before I can pursue the question further: about the words, about where and when she first put them together, about...
COMMENTARY
May 12, 2009

Northern Territories dispute lives on self-righteous deadlock

Visits to Japan by Soviet and Russian leaders over the years have done little to break the Northern Territories deadlock — Moscow's refusal of Tokyo's demand for two large islands at the southern end of the Kuril Island chain occupied by Soviet troops in 1945, as a condition for a peace treaty with...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Apr 26, 2009

Locating the Navitime Navigator on the map

Before actor Ian Moore gets on any train in Tokyo, he's careful to peek inside and check the carriage. Chances are his face is plastered on an advertisement in there somewhere, not quite sufficiently hidden behind the mustache and green-and- white helmet that for the last six years have transformed him...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 5, 2009

Dead ends, about turns abound in the politics of roads

About a year ago, the government was all in a lather about extending the gasoline tax. Local governments and the ruling coalition, not to mention interested bureaucracies, wanted to continue the tax because they said the revenues were necessary to build more roads. Opposition parties were against the...
BUSINESS
Mar 27, 2009

Toyota: Reluctant savior of faltering U.S. carmakers?

Ever since U.S. auto giants General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC began contemplating bankruptcy last year, industry specialists have been asking one question: Will Toyota rescue them?
JAPAN
Feb 14, 2009

Trial interpreters urge certification

As the courts prepare to let citizens join with judges in trying accused criminals, legal experts are calling for improving the training and status of court interpreters.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 12, 2009

Japan as the catalyst for improving global public health

What place should Japan occupy in the world? This existential question has troubled Japan's leaders for the past two decades. Military leadership is restricted by the Constitution. Economic might has lost its glimmer. Cultural influence, epitomized by "cool Japan," has yet to take center stage.
COMMENTARY
Feb 4, 2009

Will Afghanistan turn into Obama's Vietnam?

You aren't really the U.S. president until you've ordered an airstrike on somebody, so Barack Obama is certainly president now: two in his first week in office. But now that he has been bloodied, can we talk a little about this expanded war he's planning to fight in Afghanistan?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 20, 2009

Breaking the silence on burakumin

For those who don't know — and you would be forgiven considering the lack of coverage the issue receives — a buraku is the term used to describe an area where some, but not all, of the residents have ancestral ties to the people placed at the bottom of feudal society in the Edo Period. These people...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 17, 2008

If America fades, who will lead the world?

SINGAPORE — Barack Obama's election comes at a moment when a new bit of conventional wisdom is congealing. It concerns the end of America's global dominance.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Oct 27, 2008

Democratic pretension vs. airs of entitlement

NEW YORK — "I was honestly dumfounded," Akira Ueda recently wrote, "when I learned that the gold medalist judoka Satoshi Ishii told the Emperor, 'I fought for you, Your Majesty.' " Ishii made that statement when Olympic medalists and others were invited to tea at the Imperial Palace by the Emperor...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 19, 2008

Is anyone watching over Japan's official food-quality watchdogs?

A policeman named Bakichi suspects that a farmer has been selling tainted meat and visits his farm. He discovers that the farmer has, against the law, recently sold flesh from a cow that died of tuberculosis. But Bakichi returns to the police station and falsely reports that the farmer buried the cow's...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Jul 6, 2008

Noguchi strives to be 1st female to win Olympic marathon twice

Mizuki Noguchi is chasing history.
COMMENTARY
Jun 21, 2008

Baptism by fire for Taiwan's President Ma

The success of the first round of talks between Taiwan and the China mainland is a feather in the cap of Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou, who made improved relations with Beijing the central theme of his campaign platform. But he has yet to display his acumen where foreign policy is concerned.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 17, 2008

Lawmaker takes 9/11 doubts global

In a September 2003 article for The Guardian newspaper, Michael Meacher, who served as Tony Blair's environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003, shocked the establishment by calling the global war on terrorism "bogus." Even more controversially, he implied that the U.S. government either allowed...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 15, 2008

Stopping North Korea going nuclear

THE PENINSULA QUESTION: A Chronicle of the Second Korean Nuclear Crisis, by Yoichi Funabashi. Washington: Brookings Institution, 2007, 592 pp., $36.95 (cloth) NORTH KOREA ON THE BRINK: Struggle for Survival, by Glyn Ford with Soyoung Kwon. London: Pluto Press, 2008, 249 pp., £18.99 (cloth)
COMMENTARY
May 14, 2008

Why Burma has been trashed for 46 years

LONDON — The Burmese regime is not to blame for the powerful cyclone that struck the Irrawaddy Delta and Yangon early this month, killing up to a hundred thousand people. But it certainly will be to blame for the next wave of deaths if aid does not soon reach the survivors.
COMMENTARY / World
May 5, 2008

Spurious link between education, economy

LOS ANGELES — When Japan's Central Council for Education recently announced its plan to move the nation's schools away from yutori kyoiku, the "more relaxed education" policy adopted in the 1990s, its decision was largely based on the belief that effective schools are responsible for a robust economy....
COMMENTARY / World
May 3, 2008

Rule of law comes under fire

The government's reactions to the Nagoya High Court's April 17 decision that Japanese operations in Iraq are unconstitutional, raise profoundly disturbing questions about the rule of law and the democratic separation of powers in Japan.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 15, 2008

Method in the madness?

In November, Japan became only the second country in the world (after the United States) to introduce mandatory fingerprinting and photo-taking at all international entry points, as part of beefed-up "antiterrorism" measures by the Ministry of Justice.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 24, 2008

Asian art for art's sake

WHAT'S THE USE OF ART? — Asian Visual and Material Culture in Context, edited by Jan Mrazek and Morgan Pitelka. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008, 314 pp., with illustrations, $58 (cloth) The question is rhetorical, that is, uttered for effect, to make a statement rather than to obtain an...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jan 28, 2008

Nightmare becomes reality: Classic credit crunch leaves policymakers floundering

In this column last month, I talked about the nightmarish possibility of a global financial crash. Well, a month is a long time in economics, and the nightmare has well and truly become reality.
COMMENTARY
Dec 31, 2007

Censorship serves to flag our own limits

LOS ANGELES — It appears that many mainland Chinese moviegoers are traipsing over to Hong Kong in droves to view the uncensored version of Ang Lee's latest blockbuster, "Lust, Caution." With their feet, in effect, they are voting for lust — and as if wishing for official Beijing caution to be gone...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 23, 2007

Europe remiss in dealing with Russia

BRUSSELS — Friend or foe, or something uneasily in between? That's the question Europe is asking about Russia, and Russia about a newly aggressive Europe. President Vladimir Putin's choice of Dmitri Medvedev, Chairman of Gazprom, the gas company with an emerging stranglehold on European energy supplies,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 21, 2007

Inspired by repression

I am a very private person," says Marjane Satrapi, author of "Persepolis" and co-director of the new film based on her graphic novels. It's a curious statement coming from someone who's poured her own life into an autobiographical novel, but as she repeatedly pointed out to The Japan Times, it's not...
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Dec 18, 2007

Mistletoe

Dear Alice,
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 11, 2007

Should we study race-intelligence links?

PRINCETON, New Jersey — The intersection of genetics and intelligence is an intellectual minefield. Harvard's former President Larry Summers touched off one explosion in 2005 when he tentatively suggested a genetic explanation for the difficulty his university had in recruiting female professors in...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 23, 2007

Human rights survey stinks

On Aug. 25, the Japanese government released findings from a Cabinet poll conducted every four years. Called the "Public Survey on the Defense of Human Rights" ( www8.cao.go.jp/survey/h19/h19-jinken ), it sparked media attention with some apparently good news.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2007

Japan's Antiterrorism Special Measures Law and confusion over U.N. authority

Once again there is political debate over military-related legislation under the shadow of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, and once again it has revealed confusion over the international law and constitutional issues involved. The debate is over the extension of the Antiterrorism Special Measures...
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2007

Ozawa dances around the U.S. alliance

Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) president Ichiro Ozawa's success in orchestrating the downfall of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is a major victory for his party. It is also arguably the first time since the resignation of Abe's grandfather, Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke in 1960, that a prime minister has...

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Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.