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CULTURE / Books
Sep 23, 2012

Timely fictional war scenarios that play out in Asian waters

Tiger's Claw, by Dale Brown. William Morrow, 2012, 432 pp., $26.99 (hardcover) Red Cell, by Mark Henshaw. Touchstone, 2012, 336 pp., $24.99 (hardcover) Future war fiction — also known as alternate history or military science fiction — has been around a long time. Occasionally such books have proved...
Japan Times
OLYMPICS / ANALYSIS
Sep 12, 2012

Island disputes could cost Tokyo 2020 Olympics

With the vote to determine the host of the 2020 Summer Olympic Games less than one year away, Tokyo's chances of landing the global extravaganza could slip away in the wake of Japan's ongoing involvement in island disputes with South Korea, China, Russia and Taiwan.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 9, 2012

Insights by a veteran diplomat

IN THE VALLEY BETWEEN WAR AND PEACE: Personalities I Met, by Yasushi Akashi. European Center for Peace and Development, 2012, 119 pp., (hardcover)
CULTURE / Books
Sep 2, 2012

Filipinas in Japan's 'water trade'

Illicit Flirtations: Labor, Migration and Sex Trafficking in Tokyo, by Rhacel Salazar Parrenas. Stanford University Press, 2011, 336 pp. $21.95 (paperback)
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Sep 1, 2012

Patrick W. Galbraith: Willing prisoner of Akihabara

For better or for worse, some of contemporary Japan's most recognizable cultural products come from the ever-ebullient world of pop culture. If this country's heroes in the 1950s and '60s were such intellectuals as film director Akira Kurosawa and author Yukio Mishima, today Japan's calling cards —...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 19, 2012

The air around us is teeming with life — it's just too tiny to see

As I approached the top of Mount Tarumae's western peak, located in Hokkaido's Shikotsu-Toya National Park, for a brief moment I thought an early reward was awaiting me in the form of clusters of ripe blueberries in the bush tops. At first glance it appeared that the bushes were in fruit, and it was...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 22, 2012

The spirit behind Japanese cohesion

Building Democracy in Japan, by Mary Alice Haddad. Cambridge University Press, 2012, 270 pp., $20.34 (paperback) Mary Haddad seeks to refute those non-Japanese scholars who are dismissive of Japanese democracy because it doesn't measure up to western standards. She argues that they overlook and marginalize...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 19, 2012

Marx: the return of the giant

If an author's eternal youth consists of his capacity to keep stimulating new ideas, then it may be said that Karl Marx has without question remained young.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jul 15, 2012

Slugs, snails and astonishing tales

Late last month, I arrived at my friends' house in the historic southwest English town of Stroud a little too early, only to find both Ian and Caroline Redmond out. So, with time on my hands, I wandered into their lovely garden on the slope of a hill overlooking the town and began to "potter about."...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 8, 2012

Japanese geek cool

OTAKU SPACES, by Patrick W. Galbraith. Chin Music Press, 2012, 240 pp., $20.00 (paperback)
COMMENTARY
Jun 5, 2012

Fighting peace for Taiwan

Four months after the presidential elections in Taiwan, there is a big difference when comparing the aftereffects of the elections in 2008 to those in 2012.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 3, 2012

Hashimoto: A man with a plan, or dictator with an agenda?

Thirty years ago, while a program director at NHK, Nobuo Ikeda oversaw a panel discussion on the merits of adopting a federated political system. Among the panelists were several influential politicians, including Morihiro Hosokawa, then-governor of Kumamoto Prefecture and later prime minister, and Takahiro...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
May 22, 2012

The elephant in the foreigner's room now has a name: microaggression

Some positive and negative readers' reactions to Debito Arudou's provocative and widely read May 1 Just Be Cause column, "Yes, I can use chopsticks: the everyday 'microaggressions' that grind us down":
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 24, 2012

Flagging will for gun control

April 16 marked five years since the massacre at Virginia Tech, where a mentally ill student, Seung Hui Cho, used two handguns he had bought legally to kill 32 people and wound 25 others.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 7, 2012

Fighting the good fight for a healthy natural diet

Mamiko Matsuda, the best-selling author, translator and nutritional expert who divides her time between Japan and Houston, overcame an early struggle with poor health and disease to become an advocate for healthy diets and "natural hygiene."
CULTURE / Books
Apr 1, 2012

Japan's 'spiritual recrudescence'

SOLDIER OF GOD: MacArthur's Attempt to Christianize Japan, by Ray A. Moore. Merwin Asia, 2011, 167 pp., $35.00 (paperback) India, the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, the largest the world has ever known, was won mainly by attrition, though some of the later additions to it, like Burma, were...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 18, 2012

There may be no time like the present — but the present's no time at all

"Japan is so small: What's the hurry?" This catchphrase, from a road-safety campaign in 1973, was created to help Japanese people slow down. In those days it was common to see drivers racing up to lights, people sprinting through a station to catch a train, or running and dodging down a sidewalk so as...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Mar 18, 2012

Birds of a feather

A crescent moon is just visible through the treetops, with Venus, Jupiter and Saturn aligned diagonally above it crisp and clear in a frost-sharpened sky — planetary heralds of the peppering of stars soon to be revealed as night falls.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 4, 2012

Myanmar and the search for democracy

Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Democracy, by Bertil Lintner. Silkworm Books: Chiang Mai, 2011, 196 pp. The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi, by Peter Popham. Rider: London, 2011, 446 pp. The abrupt shift in Burmese politics over the past few months has been extraordinary,...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Feb 21, 2012

Ill-prepared schools put returner, family in tough spot

In response to our recent two-part series on education ("Rejoining school system in Japan after time away can be tough" and "Acceptance — social and otherwise — a crucial issue for Japan returnee kids," Jan. 10 and 17), Rosie decided to share the story of her daughter's difficulties entering the...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 16, 2012

Use law enforcement and fees to sink Net pirates

Last year, I told a colleague that I would include Internet ethics in a course that I was teaching. She suggested that I read a recently published anthology on computer ethics — and attached the entire volume to the email.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 5, 2012

Nuclear crisis given lightweight treatment

JAPAN'S NUCLEAR CRISIS: The Routes of Responsibility, by Susan Carpenter. Palgrave MacMillan, 2012, 248 pp., $90 (hardcover) Alas, this very important subject gets short shrift in this misleadingly titled, hastily cobbled together assessment of the causes and consequences of the accident at the Fukushima...
Reader Mail
Feb 2, 2012

Ability to deal with uncertainty

Sawa Takamitsu, in his Jan. 24 article "More crucial than English," makes a number of interesting points that have to do with research budgets and even the involvement of business people in deciding the course of studies at Japanese universities. While I agree with everything the author says regarding...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 15, 2012

Grace shines through Nagai's tales of horror

GEORGIC, by Mariko Nagai. BkMk Press, 2010, 163 pp., $15.95 (paperback) Between writing the "Eclogues" and the "Aeneid," the Roman poet Virgil composed the "Georgics," published circa 29 B.C., which deals with rural lives, agriculture and all things bucolic. In the "Inferno," Virgil acted as Dante's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 13, 2012

Bearing witness to brutality in 'Devil's Double'

"Should I ask him whether it's true or not?" That's the question I had for my editor regarding my interview with Latif Yahia, the Iraqi exile whose story about being the lookalike body-double for Saddam Hussein's psychotic son Uday has been parlayed into a best-selling book and a movie. "Probably," said...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 6, 2012

'Magic Tree House' hits the big screen at last — but only in Japan

If your fantasy-based series of children's books has hit sales above at least 50 million copies, with translations into more than 20 languages, then you can certainly expect Hollywood to come calling. Such was the case for author Mary Pope Osborne, whose "Magic Tree House" series has 48 books published...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 1, 2012

Unknown quantity rich in quality

ZERO and Other Fictions, by Huang Fan. Translated by John Balcom. Columbia University Press, 2011, 152 pp. $19.50 (paperback) Huang Fan, translator John Balcom informs us, is "a literary phenomenon" and "a bright star among Taiwan's so-called new generation of writers." He was, according to Balcom, "such...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 18, 2011

Education for all from '60s Tokyo tale

J-BOYS: Kazuo's World, Tokyo, 1965, by Shogo Oketani. Stone Bridge Press, 2011, 211 pp., $9.95 (paperback) Like an affliction that allows you to function in an apparently normal manner but seditiously disables the sufferer, the dark legacy of war, never far from the minds of the adults in the story,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 18, 2011

Cultures mingle amid Atami's hot springs

She was on a train from Tokyo to Atami in the summer of 1959 when the English travel writer Ethel Mannin "saw what I had read about and been told about but felt unable to accept until I had seen it for myself."
COMMENTARY
Dec 13, 2011

The golden curse of the Peruvian Amazon

Madre de Dios, the name of a region in southeastern Peru bordering Brazil and Bolivia, is a common designation for the Virgin Mary, meaning Mother of God in Spanish.

Longform

A man offers prayers at Hebikubo Shrine in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. The shrine is one of several across the country dedicated to the snake.
Shed your skin and reinvent yourself in the Year of the Snake