Search - 2014

 
 
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Mar 11, 2015

Why robots will be granted a license to kill, in Japan and everywhere else

As long as we feel the need to occasionally harm our fellow human beings, most of us will happily let other people — or things — do the dirty work.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 11, 2015

Panasonic comeback seen in biggest bond sale since 2011

Panasonic Corp. has completed the biggest bond sale to Japan's institutional investors since 2011 after the electronics maker forecast its best profit in seven years.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Mar 11, 2015

FamilyMart likely to absorb Uny in forming second-biggest convenience store chain

FamilyMart Co. and Uny Group Holdings Co. have confirmed they are in merger talks and will decide the basic terms by August to form Japan's second-largest convenience store chain in terms of sales.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 10, 2015

Stepping back from the edge

There is a solution to the crisis in Ukraine, which is to leave well enough alone before something really bad happens.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Mar 10, 2015

Monkey ski, monkey brew as Shiga Kogen hosts annual beer-and-bands festival

Two of the bigger booms of the last few years in Japan seem like they would be a great match. But nobody thought to merge the worlds of craft beer and music festivals until Eigo Sato did so in 2012.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 10, 2015

Momus honors music's eccentrics on 'Turpsycore'

Twenty years ago the Shibuya-kei music scene was in full swing. The charts were filled with some of the most daring, artistic pop music this country had ever heard, courtesy of artists such as Cornelius, Pizzicato Five, Original Love and Kahimi Karie.
JAPAN
Mar 10, 2015

Russian-held islands 'shrink' by 33 sq. km

The total area of the Russian-held islands off Hokkaido claimed by Japan has shrunk by about 33 sq. km — thanks to more accurate mapping techniques by the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan (GSI).
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Society
Mar 10, 2015

Forty years after escaping war, 'boat people' find fortune back in Vietnam

As one of the Vietnam War's final battles raged four decades ago, Quynh Pham lay with her mother in a field covered in a stranger's blood. They survived only by pretending to be dead.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 10, 2015

'Red purge' during MacArthur era hurt unions now pushing on wages

As annual wage talks climax this month, one of the obstacles to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's campaign for outsize pay raises has its roots in the 1940s: a stunted union movement.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / NFL NOTEBOOK
Mar 9, 2015

NFL players gearing up for free agency

The free agency period in the NFL is set to open as the new league year starts on Tuesday. As usual, it presents teams with a dilemma of needs and money, where one's loss is another's gain.
Japan Times
JAPAN / 3/11 STILL BEING FELT
Mar 9, 2015

Some Tohoku disaster areas on fast track to rebuilding while others stuck in slow lane

A 3-km-long conveyor belt system is spearheading the reconstruction effort in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture, but other areas aren't so lucky.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 9, 2015

It's time for troubled Sharp to sink or swim

Continuing to prop up complacent Japanese companies deadens the creative destruction that chastens stagnant industries and makes way for innovative and new ones.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Japan Pulse
Mar 9, 2015

Will Line put the brakes on Uber with its taxi app?

Line is expanding its smartphone messaging platform by letting users book cabs in Tokyo via its app.
BUSINESS / Economy
Mar 8, 2015

China eager to learn from Japan's economic missteps

China is poring over Japanese history for economic lessons to keep its massive economy away from the recession and deflation that has blighted Japan for 20 years.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 8, 2015

Cameron's disappearing act

A German newspaper is leading a chorus of cruel comments about how British Prime Minister David Cameron shines nowadays by his absence on the international stage.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 8, 2015

Finance minister calls for public investment that enables India to meet growth ambitions

As the Indian Parliament opens opens the budget session, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley calls for increased public investment that enables India to meet its growth ambitions.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Mar 8, 2015

Abducted by aliens? Stolen by Russians? MH370 theories abound

One year on from the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, an extraordinary amount of key data remains unknown — fueling conspiracy theories and heated online debate about one of aviation's biggest mysteries.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 7, 2015

Rikuzentakata looks to future with new tourism ventures

The coastal town of Rikuzentakata in southeastern Iwate Prefecture became an international symbol of the devastation wreaked by the tsunami that followed the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011. Lashed by waves up to 13 meters high in places, the sections of the town closest to the sea were...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 7, 2015

Where will 'proactive pacifism' lead us?

Seventy years after World War II ended, should we be thinking about war or about peace?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 7, 2015

The problems and pleasure of publishing the horrors of the 3/11 tsunami

At a symposium on "Trauma and Utopia" held in Tokyo in October 2014, photographer Naoya Hatakeyama talked about his work in the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, a disaster that killed his mother and destroyed his home in Rikuzentakata, Iwate Prefecture. During this, he acknowledged...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 7, 2015

Electricity and gas deregulation

The Abe administration has readied two bills for finalizing the deregulation of the nation's electricity and city gas businesses, but each bill comes with a rider allowing the delay of implementation if conditions aren't right for the utilities.
JAPAN / Politics
Mar 7, 2015

Japan, North Korea eye abduction talks in late March

Tokyo and Pyongyang are working to recommence stalled high-level talks on North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals.

Longform

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