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Reader Mail
Aug 20, 2009

Pacifist tolerance is unrealistic

Regarding the Aug. 16 article "Aso expresses war remorse; 'never again'": Such naivete is fascinating to watch. Japan will never wage war? What if Japan is attacked? Are all the pacifists just going to sit back? Is that the solution? Lasting world peace? A foolish idea. Oh, it sounds great, but how?...
Reader Mail
Aug 20, 2009

A mad future for expressways

Regarding the Aug. 14 article "Party vows to nationalize expressways if it wins": The scrapping of tollway fees will turn Japan's highways into parking areas as traffic comes to a standstill. It is environmental madness. More gasoline will be consumed and more carbon dioxide will be pumped into the...
Reader Mail
Aug 20, 2009

Police intervention welcomed

The Aug. 12 article "Seven global lessons from a teachable event," by Ramesh Thakur, was beautifully written by a man whose academic credentials could easily place him working in a Harvard University classroom teaching political science — right next door to professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Reader Mail
Aug 20, 2009

Arrogance as a usual suspect

I thought that Ramesh Thakur's statement in his article "Seven global lessons from a teachable event" was excellent — clear, unbiased, valuable for all to read. I've followed the Gates case carefully because I once lived in Cambridge, Mass., know the area of the arrest, and am retired from Harvard...
Reader Mail
Aug 20, 2009

Left keeps trying to disgrace Japan

Regarding the Aug. 15 editorial "Dangerous revisionist sentiment": Little did I imagine that I would come across such an odious article. I totally agree with Toshio Tamogami, who has been bravely trying his best to convince the mentally retarded aliens who read The Japan Times that Japan was not at all...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Aug 18, 2009

Got those rental blacklist blues

It's a buyers market in Japan but “yachin hosho kaisha” (rental guarantee companies) tried to flex their muscle by attempting to blacklist of rent scofflaws.
COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Aug 18, 2009

Weighing the nuclear option

In his 2008 New Year's speech, Japanese political doyen and former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone warned that without a clear-cut national vision and objective, Japan might tread a path toward ruin like the ancient city-state of Carthage, which was defeated and destroyed by Rome in 146 B.C.
COMMENTARY
Aug 18, 2009

Corporate greed versus Americans' health

NEW YORK — The health care discussion in the United States increasingly has revealed evidence of how corporations and politicians hinder the provision of adequate health care to the majority of Americans. The result is that the U.S. has one of the worst health care systems among industrialized nations....
Reader Mail
Aug 16, 2009

India won't outsource its defense

Regarding the Aug. 9 article "Many in India hail its nukes": Yes, this is perhaps true. Indian people are nationalistic, but more than that, a majority of us do not believe that America alone is the world's true friend.
Reader Mail
Aug 16, 2009

Voters expect more in return

Regarding the Aug. 5 article "DPJ will say anything to win": Keiichiro Asao (who quit the Democratic Party of Japan to run in the Aug. 30 Lower House elections as an independent) is right to say it will take more than a change of administration to solve current problems. Before changes can be effected,...
Reader Mail
Aug 16, 2009

Good education feeds dreams

Regarding Michael Hoffman's Aug. 5 article, "Heisei kids: a generation that struggles to dream": I am 31 and have thought about this subject for a long time. Why are so many kids today, who have access to so many fancy gadgets, have so few or such hazy dreams? What inspires one to dream?
Reader Mail
Aug 16, 2009

Developing a global perspective

Regarding David Howell's Aug. 8 article, "Disaster in Afghanistan": The problems of terrorist extremism, escalating civil wars, human rights abuse on a genocidal scale and the proliferation of nuclear weapons cannot be solved by incumbent policymakers in the developed countries but only by the general...
Reader Mail
Aug 16, 2009

Pakistan's role in disarmament

The Aug. 12 Reuters article, "Pakistan blocking nuclear disarmament talks," does not reflect Pakistan's factual position. Pakistan subscribes to the goals of nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation. To promote this objective in an equitable and nondiscriminatory manner, Pakistan has always played an...
Japan Times
JAPAN / WITNESS TO WAR
Aug 14, 2009

For vet, Soviet labor camp as bad as war

24th in a series
Reader Mail
Aug 13, 2009

Just more celebrity make-believe

Correct me if I am wrong, but it is possession of narcotic drugs, stimulants and proscribed substances that is illegal in Japan, not the use of them. Reading the news carefully, we learn that the sumo wrestlers who recently fell afoul of Japanese drug laws, plus singer Noriko Sakai and her surfer husband...
Reader Mail
Aug 13, 2009

Bigger than the financial failure

Regarding the Aug. 7 article "U.S. nuclear umbrella crucial: Aso": I have spent the past 10-plus years of my life working to prevent nuclear proliferation. This matter is one of the most serious and consequential that the world is faced with today. It is equally linked to terrorism, and is a much bigger...
Reader Mail
Aug 13, 2009

So much ado over use of drugs

Regarding the Aug. 10 article "Sakai blames her husband": Japan seems to have the same puritanical views about drug use that Americans have about sex. The Noriko Sakai scandal is the latest evidence of this.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 9, 2009

Enter a fantasy world of Zen-like bedroom gymnastics

A few weeks ago, BBC News ran a report on how love hotels were one of the few business sectors in Japan doing well in the current recession. The report stressed the unique trappings of these hotels and actually raised more questions than it answered about their socioeconomic significance.
Reader Mail
Aug 9, 2009

Never shorted on medical care

Regarding Jenny Uechi's July 28 Zeit Gist article, "New law: no dues, no visa": It seems more than a little unethical that some employers have skipped getting insurance for their workers, considering how expensive medical care can be. My husband and I have been here two years, and as soon as we were...
Reader Mail
Aug 9, 2009

Competing costs of two U.S. wars

Robert J. Samuelson writes about "the long-standing liberal grail of universal insurance" in his July 30 article, "Obama's misleading medicine," as if such insurance is a pie-in-the-sky pursuit. Other countries have had the grail for years while the United States continues to haggle over the feasibility...
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 9, 2009

Under a cloud: Lessons and legacies of the atomic bombings

Global fashion icon Issey Miyake recently made headlines by divulging in a New York Times article he penned on July 13 that he is a hibakusha, a survivor of the atomic bombings of Japan.
Reader Mail
Aug 9, 2009

Quit patronizing the lay judges

Regarding the Aug. 4 article "Language in court to be simple" (about the start of the first trial in Japan under the new lay judge system): I heard similar statements on television several times on Monday, the day of the first trial — "We'll be careful so that the 'people' can understand what we are...
Reader Mail
Aug 9, 2009

Security options worth pursuing

In his Aug. 3 article, "Angst over opposition rule," Robert Dujarric presents four choices for Japan with regard to its defense security: (1) pursuing unarmed pacifism, (2) switching sides from being a U.S. ally to a Chinese junior partner, (3) tripling or quadrupling its defense budget by ridding itself...
JAPAN / ELECTION 2009
Aug 8, 2009

DPJ shows stress fractures under pressure of leadership

Third in a series
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 7, 2009

Crowe gunslings his way into Japan

"People think of Westerns as being quintessentially American," says New Zealand-born actor Russell Crowe. "But they're quintessentially frontier stories. They're integral to anywhere with a frontier. Like Australia. I think the Westerns I've done could just as easily have happened in Australia."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 7, 2009

'Transporter 3'

Luc Besson has taken it upon himself to build a little empire smack in the heart of the French film industry. It's a close approximation to a French Hollywood, specifically an action-genre Hollywood — and its getting bigger everyday. For mindless, gratuitous violence, nonsensical plots and endless...
Reader Mail
Aug 6, 2009

Hounding smokers into the alleys

Regarding the July 26 article "Smoker-only cafes stoke ire of health advocates": I don't understand why there is so much objection to a perfectly reasonable accommodation. Being mean to smokers will not cause us to quit. We will quit, or not, for our own reasons. Missionary zeal and a desire to punish...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 6, 2009

Purpose of remembering

ARCATA, Calif. — The time again has come to remember the use of atomic power on Japanese civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Each year at this time, newspapers, books and a variety of media services spend time remembering the events of Aug. 6 and 9, 1945. But why do we remember these...

Longform

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