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COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 8, 2014

Economics of 'memento mori'

The primary role of taxes — the redistribution of money for social security and welfare purposes — has been neglected, hidden by the more pressing need to reduce debt.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 8, 2014

Putin struggles with oil prices and sanctions

Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn't appear to have any kind of short-term or medium-term plan for Russia's economy that's compatible with the dual impacts of falling oil prices and sanctions.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Dec 8, 2014

Going backward to get ahead with studying Japanese

In his book "Making Sense of Japanese: What the Textbooks Don't Tell You," translator and Japanese literature scholar Jay Rubin notes that the Japanese language "works backward."
EDITORIALS
Dec 6, 2014

Paper-making gets culture tag

Japanese culture gets another global pat-on-the-back after UNESCO designates Japanese traditional paper-making techniques an intangible cultural heritage in this digital age.
BUSINESS
Dec 3, 2014

North Korea's fingerprints reportedly found on Sony hack

North Korea may have had a hand in the digital attack against Sony Pictures Entertainment that used destructive malware to disable systems and destroy data, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Dec 2, 2014

Liberia wrongly added 1,000 deaths to Ebola toll, WHO claims

A surge in Ebola deaths reported by the World Health Organization over the weekend arose from about 1,000 Liberian deaths wrongly ascribed to the disease, the WHO said, and they were removed from an updated data set released on Monday.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 29, 2014

Newspapers take sides on 'Abenomics'

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's dissolution of the Diet has become another point of contention between right- and left-leaning entities in Japan. One of the more revealing responses involved a website set up by a member of a nonprofit organization called Bokura no Ippo ga Nihon wo Kaeru (Our One Step Will...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 24, 2014

Like Japan, South Korea embroiled in textbook battle

A 17-year-old Korean girl tortured to death for opposing Japanese colonial rulers nearly a century ago has become the latest touchstone of the nationalism that is shadowing Asia's economic rise.
Japan Times
WORLD
Nov 18, 2014

Pop idol's funeral draws biggest crowds in Iran since 2009 unrest

The funeral of Iranian pop idol Morteza Pashaie drew the biggest crowds seen in Iran since mass protests in 2009 rocked the Islamic Republic.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 15, 2014

Creative crooks stay one step ahead

The "Ore, ore" ("It's me") fraudsters and their ilk, who telephone elderly people and pretend to be a relative in need of money to help them out of a jam, keep coming up with new scams.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 15, 2014

Holiday gifts they'll cherish from cover to cover

As the holiday season rolls around, it's time to dash about in a mad panic in search of gifts that say "I've given this one some thought, honest." Or you can just let us do the thinking for you, with gift suggestions from our regular book reviewers — tailor-made for the Japanophile reader.
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 11, 2014

Apple iOS bug makes most devices vulnerable to attack: FireEye researchers

Cybersecurity researchers have warned that a bug in Apple Inc's iOS operating system makes most iPhones and iPads vulnerable to cyberattacks by hackers seeking access to sensitive data and control of their devices.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 1, 2014

The Sarashina Diary

The author known as Takasue's Daughter, or Lady Sarashina, kept a diary to mark her bold 11th-century journey from the east of Japan to the capital. So enthralled did she become with writing that she continued for 40 more years, producing an account that holds up fantastically for 21st-century readers....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 30, 2014

Looking back to 1964 as Japan envisions 2020

"In Yedo, nothing is so common as to hear the citizens lament the times that have only just come to an end." So ran one editorial of "The Far East," an English-language periodical published in Japan in the 1870s.
EDITORIALS
Oct 29, 2014

Proposed temp law bad for workers

The Abe administration's move to meet business demands for more irregular workers without establishing the principle of 'same work, same pay' will only increase the job insecurity of many of the nation's workers.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Oct 26, 2014

Special report: why Ukraine's revolution remains unfinished

In the afternoon of Feb. 20, after the morning's dead had been cleared away, Volodymyr Melnychuk arrived outside Kiev's October palace.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 25, 2014

Spooky tales from beyond the grave

Ghost stories are universal, but Japanese ghost stories, argues Zack Davisson in "Yurei: The Japanese Ghost," are unique. So much so that Davisson, a translator and essayist who is something of a specialist in the supernatural, uses yūrei, the Japanese word for spook, throughout the text. He also makes...
Japan Times
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Oct 25, 2014

Reds' woes run deeper than Balotelli

Jose Mourinho called him "unmanageable" at Inter Milan. Manchester City manager Roberto Mancini ran out of patience with him. He lasted 18 months of his 4½-year contract at AC Milan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 22, 2014

Siro-A's show blurs realities

I can still remember the first time I saw Siro-A. The six-strong team of acrobatic techno-wizards marched out on stage at London's quaint Leicester Square Theatre in an assault of thumping beats, dazzling lights and laser beams. Kitted out in white PVC jumpsuits and the kind of mono-lens visors that...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 16, 2014

U.S.-China skirmishes beg for guidelines on 'spying'

What do the dangerous encounters at sea and in the air between Chinese and American ships and aircraft have in common, and how can they be prevented or managed?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 15, 2014

Tonnerre: 'Being nice is one way to get a girl, but it's not enough to keep her'

What do you do when you're a has-been musician with thinning hair, staring at middle age and years of loneliness ahead? The good news — at least for Maxime (Vincent Macaigne) in "Tonnerre" — is that you've got a kind old dad (Bernard Menez), a dog and a rambling house in the titular French city,...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Politics
Oct 15, 2014

Web page on 'comfort women' donations taken down by Foreign Ministry

The decision by officials to delete the Web page, which carried a 1995 appeal for donations to a government-linked fund for former 'comfort women,' drew immediate protest from Seoul.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / IMPERIAL ANNALS
Oct 11, 2014

Selective history: Hirohito's chronicles

Between July 30 and Aug. 2, 1945, when most of Japan's cities, including Tokyo, lay in smoldering ruins from U.S. aerial bombing and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were days away from being incinerated by American nuclear weapons, Emperor Hirohito sent an envoy to several Shinto shrines to pray for the "crushing...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 8, 2014

Fukushima No. 1 plant workers kept in the dark over hazard pay

Almost a year after Japan pledged to double hazard pay, workers still don't know how much extra — if anything — they'll get for cleaning up the nuclear disaster.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / Politics
Oct 7, 2014

Pockets of Hong Kong protesters may defy student leaders

With Hong Kong's student-led protests dwindling and rally leaders in talks to end their 12-day campaign, a small number of demonstrators are threatening to ignore any call to abandon their posts.
Japan Times
JAPAN / GENERATIONAL CHANGE
Oct 5, 2014

Educator reverses school's fortunes by reviving progressive principles

When Evernote Corp. CEO Phil Libin visited Tokyo's Shinagawa Joshi Gakuin in May, the combined junior and senior high school for girls came under the media spotlight — not only because it was unusual for a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur to visit a girls' school, but also because of the progressive...

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