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EDITORIALS
May 14, 2009

Toward economic growth

Along with the ¥14 trillion supplementary budget for fiscal 2009 designed to stimulate the Japanese economy, the government has a long-term strategy to attain economic growth. It envisages increasing the nation's gross domestic product by ¥120 trillion and creating 4 million jobs by 2020. For the fiscal...
COMMENTARY
May 14, 2009

Military insiders threaten Pakistan's nuclear assets

DELHI — Without naming the United States as his source, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said recently: "We have been assured that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are in safe hands as of now. And I have no reason to disbelieve the assurance."
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 14, 2009

Nuclear energy deal not welcomed by all

OSAKA — The nuclear energy cooperation agreement signed Tuesday by Japan and Russia is expected to be a great boon to firms like Toshiba that are seeking new international markets for their atomic power technology, as well as ensuring Japan a steady supply of enriched uranium for its own electricity...
COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2009

Petty torture rules played on sense of duty

PARIS — The top-secret memorandums released by the Obama administration concerning torture practices in CIA prisons shed new light on a fundamental question: How is it that people acting in the name of the United States government could so easily accept the idea of torturing detainees in their charge?...
Reader Mail
May 10, 2009

Hardly enough to get out of town

Regarding the question in the April 7 edition, "What would you do if you were given ¥300,000 to get out of Japan?": This amount would barely cover the cost of sending personal effects home. In addition, I have two cats, but I'm sure Japanese immigration authorities would simply suggest killing them...
COMMENTARY / World
May 10, 2009

The audacity of optimism in the Middle East

SINGAPORE — The world will be enveloped in a heavy cloud of gloom and doom this year. Economies will sputter, governments will fall and companies will fail. But the biggest danger of all is a sense of hopelessness. Preventing this requires resolving some large and apparently intractable problem. Closing...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 10, 2009

Gained in translation: bringing Asian poetry to the English language

SONGS OF LOVE, MOON AND WIND: Poems From the Chinese, translated by Kenneth Rexroth, selected by Eliot Weinberger. New York: New Directions, 2009, 90 pp., $12.95 (paper)
EDITORIALS
May 8, 2009

Troubling signs in Nepal

A standoff between Nepal's prime minister and its president has brought the country to the brink of crisis. The resignation of Maoist Prime Minister Prachanda threatens the survival of a peace agreement between Maoist rebels and the government that ended a decade-long civil war. The Maoists say they...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 8, 2009

Pop impresario turns Arab dance belly up

There surely aren't too many people out there who can talk about hanging out with The Sex Pistols in one breath and taking calls from then-United States Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the next. Miles Copeland, however, is one such person.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 8, 2009

Issey Miyake's "U-Tsu-Wa" filled with character and inspiration

In Japanese, the word utsuwa literally means "vessel" or "container," but it can also be used to describe a person's character. Someone said to have a "large utsuwa" ("utsuwa ga ookii") is a person of high caliber or someone with tremendous capacity or generosity. When celebrated Japanese fashion designer...
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 6, 2009

Calls to revise organ law grow as lawmakers debate various plans

When Yasuto Katagiri asked New York's Columbia University in February to perform a heart transplant on Hoku, his 2-year-old son suffering from a rare form of heart disease called restrictive cardiomyopathy, the university had to turn him down because its 5 percent limit for accepting foreign transplant...
COMMENTARY
May 2, 2009

Mideast and cheaper oil

LONDON — Back in the golden bubble days when stock markets were riding high and a barrel of crude oil sold for more than $140, there was no doubt which countries were getting richest quickest.
BUSINESS
May 2, 2009

SMFG to buy Nikko Cordial

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. has agreed to buy Nikko Cordial Securities Inc. and part of Nikko Citigroup Ltd. from troubled U.S. financial giant Citigroup Inc. for ¥545 billion, the two sides reported Friday.
EDITORIALS
May 1, 2009

South Africa votes for Mr. Zuma

There was never any doubt about who would win parliamentary elections held in South Africa last week. The African National Congress (ANC), which has dominated the country's politics since the apartheid era ended, was certain to prevail. The only question was the ANC's margin of victory and whether it...
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
May 1, 2009

Playoff tiebreaker in bj-league becomes point of contention

Every sports league has a right to create its own set of rules. And it's only natural for a new league to face greater scrutiny for the way it operates than a league with a long established tradition, a way of doing things that won't change very easily.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Apr 30, 2009

Rengo-staged May Day rally draws 36,000

Expressing solidarity at a time of employment crisis, nearly 36,000 regular and temporary workers turned out Wednesday for the 80th annual May Day rally organized by the Japanese Trade Union Confederation (Rengo) in Tokyo's Yoyogi Park.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Apr 29, 2009

Rumors about Mullin joining Knicks intensify

NEW YORK — Despite an upsurge of chatter claiming Donnie Walsh only has eyes for Chris Mullin — a couple of NBA observers assert the apparently departing Warriors VP has been promised the GM job — this is untrue, according to the Knicks president.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 29, 2009

Hope, doom: Japan Prize pair poles apart

The two Americans who received this year's Japan Prize did a first by appearing afterward at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan to highlight their visions — one of hope in medical breakthroughs and the other in the inevitable doom of mankind.
EDITORIALS
Apr 27, 2009

'We don't torture'

That was then U.S. President George W. Bush's emphatic response in 2005 when asked about how his government questioned terrorist suspects in U.S. custody. The release of four previously secret memos by the U.S. Justice Department reveals — in excruciating detail — just what U.S. interrogators were...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 26, 2009

Like it or not, becoming bilingual involves being bicultural, too

Several weeks ago in this column, I wrote about some of the nonlinguistic aspects of raising a bilingual child. These can be social, financial and marital, involving the milieu the child grows up in, the necessity to move back and forth between countries, and even the periodic separation of husband and...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Apr 26, 2009

Ignorance of 'sustainability' is not an option

Judging from the last month's headlines, it's clear we are collectively still not getting it — despite how much we know about the environment. In fact, it seems the more we know, the less we learn.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 26, 2009

Recalling 'the fall of the Yasuda Auditorium' and the end of Japan's student movement

At a friend's Easter Sunday dinner party, I asked, "What do you think the student movement of the '60s in the U.S. accomplished?" One guest answered, "Obama's election." Unexpected but true: in this country, the opposition to the Vietnam war went hand in hand with the movement that culminated, in federal...
LIFE
Apr 26, 2009

A literary loner

In Tokyo and even in the Occident, I have known almost no society except that of courtesans. — Nagai Kafu There's not much left of Kafu today. Among the major Japanese writers of the early 20th century, he scarcely ranks as a survivor. Natsume Soseki, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Junichiro Tanizaki are the...
EDITORIALS
Apr 26, 2009

90 million Japanese wired

Internet users in Japan topped 90 million at the end of 2008, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications reported earlier this month. That means three out of four Japanese are communicating, shopping, reading or hanging out on the Internet. With Japan's advanced broadband and fiber-optic connections,...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
Apr 24, 2009

Kanemoto, Rhodes aging like fine wines

Finding and identifying talented young players is a big part of the game of baseball.
COMMENTARY
Apr 23, 2009

U.S. shifting Mideast policy

It is almost possible to hear the tectonic plates grinding. The whole international landscape is once again on the move, tumbling old structures and turning old assumptions upside-down.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Apr 23, 2009

Stylish ways to organize clutter, keep time, track burned calories and send letters

A stylish plug
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 22, 2009

An era of translation by everybody, for everybody

The Internet has brought us closer together than ever before, or so the cliche goes. But has it really?

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