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COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 17, 2014

Conservatives' insular mindset doesn't fit today's global reality

Japan has moved well beyond its islands, but in many respects, it has retained elements of an island mentality that is no longer compatible with its modern reality.
JAPAN / FUKUSHIMA FILE
Mar 16, 2014

New and improved radiation detectors headed for Fukushima

Starting in April, Fukushima Prefecture will introduce easy to use radiation detectors for food produce at municipalities so that residents will no longer have to cut up items into small pieces to check cesium levels.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 14, 2014

Fossil of ancient whale sheds light on how cetacean sonar developed

The deadly threat posed by German submarines during World War I helped spur scientists to develop sonar, using underwater sound signals to locate objects like subs.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 14, 2014

Culture of safety can make or break nuclear power plants

On the third anniversary of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and its devastating impact on Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima nuclear power plants, we need to understand why Tohoku Electric Power Co.'s Onagawa Nuclear Power Station — which was even closer to the quake epicenter — had a drastically different fate.
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Mar 12, 2014

Osaka's Bell takes pride in winning mindset, work ethic

The Japan Times features periodic interviews with players in the bj-league. D'Andre Bell of the Osaka Evessa is the subject of this week's profile.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 12, 2014

Jaczko recalls chaos of Fukushima early days

The central government and Tokyo Electric Power Co. fell into chaos when the triple meltdown crisis started at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission also faced a tough crisis-management situation characterized by limited information and mounting pressure to act,...
EDITORIALS
Mar 12, 2014

Was breakthrough premature?

Questions and suspicions have challenged the validity of a Japanese scientific paper that reported in January on a method for reprogramming body tissue cells into stem cells by simply exposing them to acidic liquids.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 12, 2014

Taihen actors put bodies on the line

Observing rehearsals by the physical-theater company Taihen for their upcoming "Over the Rainbow" show at ABC Hall in Osaka was in many ways a free-jazz experience.
CULTURE / Music / JAZZ NOTES
Mar 11, 2014

New acts see good results off the beaten path

Jazz is a form of music that was born out of live performance, and fans in Japan are certainly spoiled for choice when it comes to places to see jazz gigs.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 11, 2014

Reactors still feared despite new rules

The cost of restarting Japan's nuclear power plants: ¥1.3 trillion and counting.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Mar 10, 2014

There is a giant serving of culture in one bowl of rice

Rice. A bland, white carbohydrate? Staple food that forms the nourishing core of every meal? A crop that has molded culture and society? Or primal sustenance imbued with mystic life force of the gods?
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 10, 2014

'Ethical' gold mines tried in South America

Tucked between two desert ridges in southern Peru, Relave looks like any of the hundreds of ramshackle mining towns that blight the landscape in the world's sixth-largest gold exporter.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Mar 9, 2014

Are nation's oligarchs a necessary evil in the quest for stability?

After losing control of Crimea, the embattled new Ukrainian government in Kiev has turned to the nation's oligarchs in a bid to calm secessionist sentiment in the pro-Russian east. But the appointment of oligarchs to positions of political power has not been welcomed in all quarters, and certainly not...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Mar 8, 2014

Noisy bulbuls change with the seasons

On cold winter mornings the bulbuls come squawking their full-throated calls as they swoop onto bird-feeders, their white-tipped gray breast feathers appearing frosted by the chill.
EDITORIALS
Mar 8, 2014

Sixty years since Bikini's sacrifice

It has been 60 years since the U.S. tested a hydrogen bomb — a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima — in the Bikini Atoll, destroying an island and exposing thousands of people to deadly radiation.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 7, 2014

Job market set to overheat with labor shortage

Kazufumi Yamamoto is having such a hard time finding waiters and sushi chefs to fill jobs at Ganko Food Service Co. that he's going to boost wages for the first time in more than a decade.
Japan Times
JAPAN / THREE YEARS AFTER 3/11
Mar 6, 2014

Solving Fukushima water problem a long, hard slog

Three years after it was devastated by monster tsunami, the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant continues to be plagued by numerous problems as it lurches through the decades-long process toward decommissioning.
EDITORIALS
Mar 6, 2014

Trimming U.S. military spending

The headline-grabbing cuts in America's 2015 fiscal budget, unveiled by President Barack Obama this week, involve the downsizing of the U.S. military. The plans are controversial in light of recent events on the Crimean Peninsula and the so-called rebalance of U.S. forces to the Asia-Pacific region.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Mar 6, 2014

Butterfly mimics found to use just a single gene

The masquerade party never ends for these ladies.
EDITORIALS
Mar 5, 2014

Move cautiously in TPP talks

Ministers from Japan, the U.S. and 10 other Pacific-Rim countries again have failed to reach broad agreement on terms of their Trans-Pacific Partnership, but that's no reason for Japan to become less cautious about the talks, which have the potential to change the very fabric of Japanese society.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 5, 2014

Nomura's 'Don Quixote' enlists comedy to counter today's real foes

"Whenever I am creating a new play here at Setagaya Public Theatre, I aim for something that's as universal as all those kyōgen (traditional comic theater) or noh classics that are as vivid now as when they were first staged 600 years ago. If it isn't like that, it won't reach an international audience,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 5, 2014

'Field Reflection'

For this show, "field" is not simply a geographical space; here it refers to a delicate composition of nature, weather and people.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 4, 2014

Crunch's debut mini-album aims for a 'sense of minority'

In a music scene where the border between underground and mainstream can be incredibly difficult to traverse, it's not surprising that many bands trapped in the indie-sphere bemoan their lot.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 3, 2014

China fights dragon of credit-allocation reform

China needs to reforming the credit-allocation mechanism to provide more capital to well-performing projects and enforce hard budget constraints on poor-performing borrowers.
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 2, 2014

Xi orders terrorism crackdown after deadly rail station attack

China's President Xi Jinping ordered a crackdown on "violent terrorist activities" after 33 people died when knife-wielding assailants rampaged through a train station in a southwestern city Saturday.
EDITORIALS
Mar 2, 2014

Storing Fukushima's radioactive waste

The plan to build interim facilities to store contaminated soil and other radioactive waste from the cleanup work in Fukushima Prefecture finally appears to be moving forward now that authorities have singled out two local areas for storage sites.
COMMENTARY
Feb 28, 2014

China uses Ukraine unrest as argument for stability

China's Communist Party-controlled media appear to be using the unrest in Ukraine as a teaching moment to point out the pitfalls of clamoring for more rapid reforms in a large, multi-ethnic society — one like China's.

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