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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 6, 2014

The Journey

On most lists of great 20th-century Japanese writers, Jiro Osaragi's name does not figure. He was popular and respected in his own day (1898-1973), mostly as a writer of historical fiction, but literary immortality has eluded him. So?
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 5, 2014

Families fear hundreds left out of abductee debate

Feb. 7, 1976, should have been just another Saturday for Susumu Fujita.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Sep 5, 2014

A Scottish 'yes' vote may not be such a big change for the queen

Scotland's vote on independence this month means Queen Elizabeth II faces a division in her kingdom not seen since the days of her namesake, Elizabeth I, at the start of the 17th century.
JAPAN / Politics
Sep 3, 2014

Abe issues policy priority list, with Tohoku and women at the forefront

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe released a basic policy paper for his new Cabinet members Wednesday, saying acceleration of recovery in the disaster-hit Tohoku region and promotion of women's status in society are among his administration's top priority issues.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 30, 2014

Inside author David Mitchell's metaphysical mind

Outside the vista windows of the Hotel New Otani's Garden Lounge cafe in Tokyo, it's snowing, in March, and it suddenly feels like the spring flowers in the Japanese garden below may have popped too soon. David Mitchell wonders aloud what kind of flowers they are, before returning to our discussion....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 30, 2014

The Makioka Sisters

Junichiro Tanizaki may be best known for novels featuring protagonists with odd obsessions, but his masterpiece, family epic "The Makioka Sisters," has been hailed by many as Japan's greatest modern novel.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 27, 2014

The Finishers (Great Days! Yume ni Idonda Chichi to Ko)

Boys can be creatures of sheer wonder. That's the takeaway conviction after watching "Des Toutes Nos Forces (released in English as "The Finishers"). By boys, I mean young (or young at heart) men with pure minds and high ideals, willing to push themselves to the utmost limits to reach a goal that has...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Aug 27, 2014

DeNA and Yahoo Japan turn to DNA analysis

Genomics has been progressing at an impressive pace in recent years, inspiring expectations that it will someday become an essential part of medical care.
EDITORIALS
Aug 26, 2014

Military courts unconstitutional

The recent Cabinet decision to let Japan take part in 'collective self-defense' raises the question of whether a courts-martial system, and what would likely be a more severe standard for punishing violators of Self-Defense Forces law, should be introduced.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Aug 24, 2014

Constructivist 'Pied Piper' of English education rebuilds after hitting rock bottom

David Paul lost almost everything when his Hiroshima-based company, David English House, tumbled like a house of cards in 2010.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 23, 2014

Former drug addict relieved to be alive

You won't find an air conditioner in any inmate wings at Fuchu Prison, no matter how hot it is outside. And on this sweltering, cloudless day in August, it is certainly hot. Two members from Drug Addiction Rehabilitation Center (DARC) are preparing to hold a session with a group of repeat drug offenders...
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 21, 2014

No letup in attacks on Iraq militants fter U.S. journalist's beheading, Obama says

President Barack Obama said the beheading of a U.S. journalist by Islamic radicals won't deter him from a bombing campaign aimed at driving them back.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2014

Orphan Black

Language: English
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 20, 2014

'Babel' dance speaks volumes

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Damien Jalet have lots in common.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 19, 2014

The Islamic extremist threat

The U.S. and Britain are understandably reluctant to get sucked into a Mideast war involving Sunnis against Shiites. But can we stand back and watch the Islamic State carry out genocide?
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 18, 2014

Nonprofit group aims to help female students meet their potential

Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Hanalabs is offering female college students in Japan a chance to advance their careers by devising solutions to social problems affecting communities in need of revitalization.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Aug 18, 2014

Challenges can't compare to the rewards of cross-cultural adoption in Japan

Five years ago, my Japanese husband and I adopted a 3-year-old boy who had been placed in an orphanage when he was a month old. His birth mother, too young to care for him, had likely decided that giving him up was his only chance for a better life. After we first took him home, he would barely acknowledge...
Japan Times
WORLD / ANALYSIS
Aug 18, 2014

Europe struggles with cost of caring for its elderly nuclear plants

Europe's aging nuclear plants will undergo more prolonged outages over the next few years, reducing the reliability of power supply and costing operators many billions of dollars.
Japan Times
JAPAN / ASHIDA'S WAR DIARY
Aug 17, 2014

The realist behind the idealist Constitution

A mystery surrounding late Prime Minister Hitoshi Ashida was his postwar call for Japan to re-militarize despite constitutional limits imposed by war-renouncing Article 9.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 17, 2014

Small-minded leaders flirt with a 'sunlit picture of Hell'

One hundred years later, we Americans, Australians, British, Chinese, Europeans, Indians, Japanese, Koreans and Russians still have leaders with the same narrow chauvinist mind-set that sparked World War I, supposedly the war to end all wars.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 16, 2014

Chasing the ghost of Musashi in Kyushu

In the spring of 1645 a man lay dying in Kumamoto, on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu. He sensed that his time was near, asked for someone to help him into a seated position and tucked his short sword into his belt. This way he could greet death with dignity. The dying man was the celebrated swordsman...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 16, 2014

Grisly Sasebo murder defies explanation

Homicides involving dismemberment, referred to in Japanese as bara-bara jiken (scattered incidents), fall into a wider category known as ryōki hanzai (bizarre crimes) — written with kanji meaning "hunting the strange." Typically when minors were involved in such cases they tended to be victims, not...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 16, 2014

Punk author Kou Machida on his offbeat samurai story

You wouldn't expect a punk musician to write decent novels, any more than you'd expect a boxer to be good at darning. The talents prized by the former vocation — restlessness, insouciance, hard-wired disregard for authority — don't lend themselves to the rigors of the author's life: all those long,...
Japan Times
JAPAN / ASHIDA'S WAR DIARY
Aug 14, 2014

Diary spurs rethink of prewar anti-militarist, postwar prime minister

The anti-military stance of the editor of The Japan Times got him blacklisted during the war but helped him become prime minister three years after it ended.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2014

How Japan's art inspired the West

In the decades after Japan was forcibly opened to large-scale international trade in the early 1850s, a fever spread across Europe for items from the exotic country: its textiles, ceramics, paper fans, woodblock prints and more. Meanwhile, the term "Japonism" was coined to describe works made in Europe...
EDITORIALS
Aug 13, 2014

Convictions, not justice, in Cambodia

A show trial of former Khmer Rouge members may offer some fleeting relief in Cambodia, but the crimes committed there some four decades ago demand more.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 13, 2014

Clowning gets serious in Slava's show

"Slava's Snowshow" feels like a dream — and occasionally a nightmare. Its surreal scenarios play out one after another on a stage set with seemingly oversized, fluffy blankets that give the audience a sense of being tucked inside a child's bed. There's no real narrative — but as in dreams, there...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Markets
Aug 13, 2014

Homebuyers in Japan seen at risk on floating-rate loan rush

Homebuyers are piling into floating-rate mortgages, stirring debate over whether they are too complacent as Bank of Japan stimulus revives inflation.

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