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Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Feb 27, 2013

Interviews with 'evil personified' reveal very different men

He shuffled into the room and stopped, plexiglass and cinderblocks framing his slight figure. He looked much as I remembered him from nearly a decade earlier: big eyes in a boyish face, a thin build, long fingers, waist chains. But his eyes, once cold and flat, had mellowed into something resembling...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Feb 27, 2013

Boosting the Japan-U.S. alliance

If the two countries work to tackle problems in their own societies, the Japan-U.S. partnership could be as significant in the future as it has ever been.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 27, 2013

Stuck in a rut: why can't the U.S. move forward?

"Your dearest wish is for our state structure and ideological system never to change, to remain as they are for centuries. But history is not like that. Every system either finds away to develop or else collapses."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 24, 2013

A compelling entry point for discovering Japanese poets from the postwar era

101 MODERN JAPANESE POEMS, compiled by Makoto Ooka, translated by Paul McCarthy, edited by Janine Beichman. Thames River Press, 2012, 144 pp., $45.00 (hardcover)
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Feb 24, 2013

One former student's inspiring path to success

Seeing fewer years ahead and more behind me as a teacher, I often think back over the students who have passed through my classrooms and wonder how many will truly make a difference in the world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 24, 2013

Recommended reading

Donald Richie was a scrupulous writer who paid finite attention to language and content. The following are 10 outstanding choices — titles that should be on any discerning readers' bookshelf.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Feb 24, 2013

Spring training in Mukojima

It's hard to think of February as springlike, what with snowfalls, freezing winds and a dusting of dead leaves everywhere. But I know from experience that the intrepid Prunus mume, or plum tree, blooms this month, and a trek to see some blossoms seems de rigueur. From the Tobu Isesaki Line, I get off...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Feb 23, 2013

Akiko Kuno's strength as a woman stretches back through generations

Akiko Kuno, 72, believes her destiny is tied with a red string to the United States. So she says as she speaks of her and her family's life at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo, where as a child she first tasted Coca-Cola and a hamburger.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Feb 23, 2013

The stalking cure: rehabilitating an all too common menace

When forensic psychiatrist Frank Farnham first meets a stalker, he doesn't judge. Some of his clients have done awful things. They have intimidated, pursued and terrified their victims.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 23, 2013

As Africa rises, Europe loses grip on Catholic power base

The muted light of an African sunset filters into the high, pointed roof of Christ The King church in Accra, a wide, understated building just metres away from the seat of government in Ghana's capital city.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / EVERYMAN EATS
Feb 22, 2013

Foodie Media 101: Eat all about it

Every Monday night at 7, Japanese TV viewers are treated to the sight of comedians being locked inside a fast-food restaurant. Formica tables take the place of iron bars, and instead of three square meals a day the cast is fed a steady diet of the shop's specialties — tonkatsu breaded pork cutlets,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 21, 2013

Pro-Pyongyang schools barred from tuition waiver

Pro-Pyongyang high schools are banned from the government's tuition-waiver program, almost three years after every student in Japan was declared eligible to receive the financial aid.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 21, 2013

Creative-content agency helps Korean music abroad

Regardless of whether you are a bigger-name draw or a smaller, emerging band, planning — and more importantly financing — international gigs is no easy task. But since last year, things have gotten a bit easier for Korean acts touring abroad.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 20, 2013

Writer Donald Richie dies at 88

Long-term Japan resident, writer and critic Donald Richie, who through dozens of books and articles published from the late 1940s until the last decade helped introduce Japanese film and culture to the world, passed away in Tokyo on Tuesday, according to his long-term editor, Leza Lowitz. He was 88....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Feb 19, 2013

Journey to Kenya turns writer's life on its head, spurs Africa fascination

It was a single visit to Kenya in 1972 that completely changed Michio Hiraiwa's philosophy on life. He fell in love with the country, and visited there 150 times over the past 40 years. Once a workaholic, Hiraiwa says he now leads a stress-free and relaxed life, visiting Kenya and Tanzania four times...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Feb 19, 2013

Millions of dogs and cats coddled, 200,000 gassed each year in pet-mad Japan

Cast in bronze, Hachiko sits in a position of prominence befitting a storied daimyo or prime minister, right next to the busiest intersection in Japan, if not the world.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: FASHION
Feb 19, 2013

Mastermind moves on, American Apparel is at home in Japan and Primitive London takes a trip to Tokyo

It's a bittersweet finale for the famed Japanese fashion brand Mastermind, as it officially ends its 15-year run with the release of its 2013 spring/summer — and final — collection.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Feb 18, 2013

Americans find taking family leave can poison their careers

Eight weeks before Danelle Buchman's baby was due, an artery ruptured in her uterus, which nearly killed her and her child. Delivered by emergency C-section in 2010, her newborn daughter, Avery, spent one month in intensive care. Buchman survived only after an immediate hysterectomy. When she tried to...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 17, 2013

Whoever could pass a test to list 'values at the heart of being Japanese'?

Calling all those readers who in their heart of hearts have always wanted to be British! Well, you've got your chance now, you presumptuous Penny-Laners and putative Pythons.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 17, 2013

Judo scandal casts doubt on Olympic bid

News stories don't exist in a vacuum. What often makes them "news" is a confluence of factors that provide a context of interest. Though the public thinks the current story about 15 female judo athletes (jūdōka) demanding fundamental changes to the way the national team is structured and run is a self-contained...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Feb 17, 2013

Tracing time's passing through faces of Tokyo

Petri Artturi Asikainen would regularly accost strangers in Tokyo, on the streets, in parks or bars and on trains. With a high-end Nikon D3 digital SLR in his hands, the lanky and bespectacled Finn would ask — somewhat timidly summoning one of the few Japanese phrases he had memorized: "Can I take...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Feb 17, 2013

Tokyo Station nears completion, Hitler lauds Japan, high-schools surge, Constitution to keep Article 9, PM declares

100 YEARS AGO
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 15, 2013

Party picks up in Chinatown this weekend

While it seems politics is all that comes to mind when talking about China these days, the current New Year's holiday shows what a remarkable breadth of culture the country has.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Feb 15, 2013

Teuchisoba Narutomi: Soba and tempura make for a classic combination

Tempura and soba: Separately, they're two essential elements of traditional Japanese food culture. Put them together side by side on the table and they add up to one of the all-time classic dishes.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 14, 2013

Armed drones stir debate in pacifist Germany

The debate over the legality of drone warfare is stretching from Capitol Hill into the shadow of the Brandenburg Gate, as Germany considers purchasing armed drones for the first time.
EDITORIALS
Feb 11, 2013

Cues from Germany and France

The recently celebrated half-century-long Treaty of Friendship between Germany and France has a lesson for Japan concerning reconciliation in Asia.

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