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CULTURE / Music / JAZZ NOTES
Jul 10, 2013

Nothing beats a Hammond B3

This month started with a trip to Cotton Club in Tokyo's Marunouchi district to see the trio Aquapit play a gig to promote their new album "Orange."
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 5, 2013

Graca Machel: the impressive face of a new Africa

Shakespeare, in one of Nelson Mandela's favorite lines, now strangely apposite, says that "the valiant never taste of death but once." As the world waits for Mandela to make his final rendezvous with history, one woman — his third wife — who has been at his bedside throughout his illness, and now...
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Jul 5, 2013

Children of the 1960s will pay a higher price

To some, it must have been a very long time coming but here it is at last. That smug, gold-plated, bloated slice of the population, whose main preoccupation appears to be, on the one hand, continually bragging about their unique birthright of rock 'n' roll, flower power, feminism and the sexual revolution...
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Jul 5, 2013

Hate pornography, sure, but be wary of banning it

Prosecutions for the possession of the filthiest pornography confirm foreigners' suspicions that the British care more for animals than people. Between 2008 and 2011, the English and Welsh authorities charged 1,922 men for having images of bestiality about their person. By contrast, they brought only...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jul 5, 2013

Hard-charging foreigners inspire Nagoya University sumo team

With the 2013 July Grand Sumo Tournament in Nagoya set to kick off Sunday, Osunaarashi of Egypt is grabbing the media spotlight as the first pro sumo wrestler from Africa.
Japan Times
SOCCER / J. League
Jul 5, 2013

Novakovic relishing surprise title challenge with Ardija

Few preseason predictions would have tipped Omiya Ardija to lead the J. League at the start of July, but as play resumes Saturday after a six-week international break, striker Milivoje Novakovic is happy to keep confounding expectations.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 4, 2013

'New' Royal Ballet spans the frontiers of dance

For the first time in three years, one of the world's most esteemed ballet companies is bringing its talent to one of the world's most appreciative audiences, as part of a tour that explores the parameters of dance.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 4, 2013

'Thallium Shojo no Dokusatsu Nikki (GFP Bunny)'

Every once in awhile a movie sees around the corner to where the culture is heading. Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) was released when baby boomers were still baking granola and dreaming of communal peace and love, but its dystopian vision of ultra violence being visited on random strangers...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 3, 2013

The 'floating world' that drifted to the West

The main pleasure of any extensive ukiyo-e (woodblock print) exhibition, like the "Floating World" show now on at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, is the evocation of the unique civilization that underlies this particular slab of global modernity.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics / MAKING THEIR CASE
Jul 3, 2013

Your Party stands against tax hike, nuclear plants

Your Party will stress its call to freeze the upcoming consumption tax hike and promise to abolish all nuclear power plants by 2030 when the campaign for the Upper House officially starts Thursday, party leader Yoshimi Watanabe said.
Reader Mail
Jul 3, 2013

Great tool for political discourse

Regarding Ted Rall's June 29 article, "End of editorial cartooning": I was surprised to learn that there is an annual conference of political cartoonists in America where "partisan divisions fall away." Hardline leftist Rall writes that "one of my dearest friends is a conservative cartoonist." What a...
Japan Times
WORLD / FOCUS
Jul 3, 2013

Mandela family battles over ailing icon's legacy

A convoy of cars and buses decked with balloons streamed into Qunu on Saturday as the childhood home of Nelson Mandela hosted a wedding and enjoyed a moment of respite from the deep uncertainty caused by the health of its most celebrated son.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 3, 2013

Egypt liberals make more noise, wield less power

The winds should have been favorable for new President Mohamed Morsi after the 'last pharaoh' was deposed a year ago. Instead, Egypt is socially divided.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 3, 2013

U.S. power defined by 'rise of the rest'

The question of American power in the 21st century is not one of a poorly specified 'decline' or of being eclipsed by China but, rather, the 'rise of the rest.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jul 2, 2013

The LDP constitution, article by article: a preview of things to come?

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing for constitutional change. Yet he is playing the political huckster by proposing to first only fiddle with the amendment procedure in Article 96, lowering the threshold for the process to move forward from the approval of two-thirds of both houses of the Diet, as...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 1, 2013

U.S. plans first tribal national park to protect buffaloes

Buffalo stroll undisturbed, pausing occasionally to wallow in the grass and caked dirt, while prairie dogs yip intermittently as they dive into their holes and pop out again to survey the landscape. This northern stretch of Badlands National Park, known as Sage Creek Wilderness, is what the northern...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2013

Hezbollah leader nears sundown

Recent victories by Hezbollah militiamen in Syria will not save the regime of Bashar Assad. They could presage the political sunset for Hezbollah's leader.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 30, 2013

Constitutional revision: Proposed Abe-rights look to be all wrong

After the Upper House elections on July 21, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may try to revise the Constitution. This longstanding agenda is now within reach because the Liberal Democratic Party he heads might be able to rally the necessary two-thirds of votes in both chambers of the Diet.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Jun 29, 2013

Opposition slams ruling bloc on jobs deregulation

Major party leaders held their first online debate Friday ahead of the July 21 Upper House election, with opposition chiefs voicing concern that ruling bloc-proposed employment deregulation may further worsen the working conditions of younger generations.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 29, 2013

Abe wants to gut public protections: expert

If the Liberal Democratic Party succeeds in rewriting the Constitution, it would severely scale back fundamental human rights and strip the public of various civil liberties, a prominent constitutional scholar warns.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 29, 2013

Multimedia artist finds community in Odawara nurtures her creativity

Sunlight streams in through large windows that look out on a sweeping Pacific Ocean vista. Artworks stand waiting in various stages of creation, while mobiles twist and dance in the sea breeze. This space, known as Atelier Hayakawa, is where Canadian multimedia artist Kirsten Woest comes to dream, to...
EDITORIALS
Jun 29, 2013

Judo head should resign now

As long as Haruki Uemura clings to his chairmanship of the All Japan Judo Federation stays, Japanese judo will continue to suffer from a tainted image.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jun 27, 2013

Gifu man, 71, sues NHK for distress over its excess use of foreign words

A Gifu Prefecture man is suing NHK for mental distress allegedly caused by the broadcaster's excessive use of foreign words.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 27, 2013

Sincerity is the new ecstasy in Funkot's 'Summer of Love'

At the end of the 1980s, British DJs imported a potent new style of house music from the Spanish party island Ibiza in what came to be known as the ecstasy-fueled "Second Summer of Love." Inspired by this trade route two decades later, Katsumi Takano, aka Mandokoro or DJ Jet Baron, hopes to launch a...
BUSINESS
Jun 27, 2013

Probe launched after Anglo Irish execs' calls leaked

A former executive at Anglo Irish Bank Corp. said it would be "fantastic" if the state took over the lender, as "we'd all get to keep our jobs" and sang "Deutschland uber alles" as the bank won German deposits, according to tapes of 2008 conversations released last Wednesday.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 25, 2013

Asia demand making ginseng in U.S. scarce

The long tradition of ginseng hunting in the U.S. can be traced from Daniel Boone, the folk hero frontiersman, to Glenn Miller, a retired concrete inspector.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jun 25, 2013

'Yellow fever' and the fantasy of the Asian female

Here is a dumb thing you should never do: watch the 007 caper "You Only Live Twice" with your feminist American girlfriend — a woman of color to boot. In a series renowned for its sexism, the Japan entry takes the biscuit.

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