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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 26, 2014

'Granta' opens a window into Japanese literature

With such a piddling amount of Japanese fiction finding its way into English translation each year, you learn to make the most of what you can get. So when this year's Tokyo International Literary Festival marked the launch of not one, but two compendia of Japan-related writing, it felt like an embarrassment of riches. In addition to the latest issue of 'Monkey Business,' the annual journal edited by veteran translators Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen, the festival welcomed the arrival of a Japan-themed issue of the British quarterly, 'Granta,' released simultaneously in English and Japanese.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 24, 2014

Skin divers turn to tourism to stem the tide

At the Sea People restaurant in Shima, a coastal hamlet in Mie Prefecture, sea diver Machiyo Yamashita wants a piece of a tourism industry dominated by the cities that sapped her town's vitality by luring away its youth.
EDITORIALS
Apr 24, 2014

When will Abe learn?

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dedicates a 'masakaki' tree offering to the war-related Yasukuni Shrine as if refraining from an actual visit would pre-empt frictions with the U.S. and others. When will he learn?
COMMENTARY / Japan / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Apr 22, 2014

Anti-Abe forces emerging

Little was heard from Yasuo Fukuda, nor was much said about him, after he stepped down as prime minister in 2008. In recent months, though, he has been sought out by some LDP leaders to help repair the damage to relations with South Korea and China, which Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's style of diplomacy is said to have caused.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 21, 2014

Artists' mission to revitalize an onsen town

It begins with a long, slow hiss. The valves open, and a thick fog is released into the air, pouring from the roof of Dogo Onsen Honkan, the famous three-tiered bathhouse built in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, in 1894. It flows down the side of the building, past bathers in bathrobes on the open balcony...
JAPAN / View from Osaka
Apr 19, 2014

America: the superpower ally that's far, far away

Japan is, at heart, politically as well as geographically, a country of small towns. One of these is home to the Japanese-American political relationship.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Apr 19, 2014

Cannabis: the healing of the nation

Every summer in Hokkaido and northern Honshu, platoons of police and public servants scour the countryside for cannabis.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 19, 2014

How should a civilized nation treat women?

In 1872, a Peruvian ship transporting Chinese coolies docked at Yokohama for repairs. One of the coolies jumped overboard and sought refuge, complaining of gross ill-treatment. What to do?
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 19, 2014

Team Abe's alternate-reality Kool-Aid

Japan's relations with China and South Korea are in tatters, there has been no progress on dealing with North Korea's nuclear weapons program, strains with Washington persist, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) talks are at an impasse, whaling got harpooned and hopes for a deal with Russia on the northern...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 18, 2014

Raise corporate profile of women, confab urges

A two-day international conference aiming to empower women kicked off Friday in Tokyo with a call for companies and the government to foster more female executives — an area of gender equality where Japan greatly lags behind the global norm.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
Apr 17, 2014

Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai: Tales of the Weird and the Strange

While many overseas scholars are attracted to the retrained aesthetics of Japanese arts and letters, it was the country's wild and wooly folklore that captivated Zack Davisson, an American writer and translator. While pursuing his masters degree in Japanese studies Davisson immersed himself in the mysterious...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 16, 2014

Diet ranks call for whaling to continue and feast to defy ICJ ruling

The Lower House committee on agriculture and fisheries unanimously approved a resolution Wednesday to demand that the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continue to allow the country to hunt whales.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 15, 2014

Diet members dine on whale meat in defiance of ICJ ruling

Lawmakers across party lines hold an annual whale-meat cuisine event to celebrate the country's whaling culture in defiance of the International Court of Justice's decision to ban Japan's whale hunt off Antarctica.
EDITORIALS
Apr 15, 2014

Flawed foreign labor plan

The Abe administration's sudden plan to use participants in a controversial foreign trainee program to fill manpower shortages in the nation's construction industry smacks of a ploy that benefits only Japan. The government must first consider how these workers' rights will be protected as well as how to avoid social problems if they are used.
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Apr 14, 2014

Tetrapod

Dear Alice,
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Apr 14, 2014

Suit over dismissal to tackle thorny issue of language teachers' employment status

At the heart of the Sulejman Brkic case is the issue of what, in legal terms, the nature of his employment status was while he worked for language school ICC: Was he an employee or a contractor?
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 12, 2014

Weapons for peace and proactive pacifism

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has relaxed curbs on arms exports and sees great market potential in Asia. In the Pacific Century, Asia's impressive economic growth is funding expanding defense budgets, making the region the most lucrative global arms market. Alas, it is also a region of significant flash...
JAPAN
Apr 11, 2014

Cabinet OKs new energy policy, kills no-nuclear goal

The Cabinet adopts a new basic energy policy that officially abandons Japan's zero-nuclear goal for atomic energy and aims to restart the nation's idled reactors instead.
BUSINESS
Apr 11, 2014

Congress top obstacle to TPP deal

Failure by Japanese and U.S. negotiators to reach a Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement is making headlines across Japan and raising concerns about the implications for U.S. President Barack Obama's trip here later this month.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Apr 11, 2014

Tax-free NISA luring individual investors

A spring downpour last week wasn't enough to stop Norito Nagahama from heading to a central-Tokyo brokerage to study up on Japanese stocks.
Japan Times
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
Apr 10, 2014

Seguignol says being flexible key to success in NPB

Fernando Seguignol towered over a group of people huddled near one of the batting cages on the field at Tokyo Dome, where the Yomiuri Giants' Leslie Anderson was getting his work in prior to a game against the Hiroshima Carp earlier this week.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LABOR PAINS
Apr 9, 2014

Foreign workers fear exploitation as Olympic projects gather steam

My first Labor Pains column of the new fiscal year will look at the government's recent proposal for bringing in foreign workers.
JAPAN / Politics
Apr 7, 2014

LDP gropes for clarity on collective defense rewrite

The Liberal Democratic Party is moving ahead fast in talks to lift the nation's self-imposed restrictions on collective self-defense as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continues his quest for a more proactive role in the Japan-U.S. alliance.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Apr 7, 2014

Abe, Abbott reach FTA agreement

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott agreed on a free trade pact Monday in Tokyo, ending seven years of negotiations.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Apr 5, 2014

Lessons of Fukushima: Reactor restarts are unwise

Kyle Cleveland, my colleague at Temple University Japan, recently published a report in the online Asia-Pacific Journal, "Mobilizing Nuclear Bias: The Fukushima Nuclear Crisis and the Politics of Uncertainty" that has drawn widespread media attention. Based on numerous interviews with government officials,...

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