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Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 24, 2006

Penmanship: A lost art is rediscovered

At this time of the year, you may have received and sent any number of Christmas cards. Or, in the Japanese tradition, you might still be panicking about writing all the New Year's postcards that the nation's army of mailmen and women endeavor to deliver on New Year's Day.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Dec 17, 2006

Classified information

Every week in Japan, English-language magazines carry upward of 200 classified ads placed by both Japanese and non-Japanese people seeking to meet strangers whom they hope to strike up a relationship with.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 10, 2006

What remains 'Japanese' in such climates of change?

What is national character, and how does it differ from custom, manners and fashion? People talk about "the Japanese" as if referring to a nationality with an immutable quality that has existed and will continue to exist throughout the ages; and yet, Japan and the Japanese of the past are so different...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 7, 2006

Golden oldies step out into the limelight

Sixty-three-year-old Masatake Takei careened around the stage without his trousers, trying to beat off the angry mob of obasan (old ladies) who had just stripped him to his underpants. The audience obviously loved the spectacle, roaring with delight. But what was the president of a Tokyo architectural...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 26, 2006

Dealing with death the Japanese ways

There is a quiet revolution taking place in the attitudes and practices concerning death and burial in Japan -- striking changes that shed light not only on how Japanese people today view death, but also life and the relationships that underpin it. So this week and next, I will explore contemporary issues...
EDITORIALS
Nov 22, 2006

Working for a better society

Japan's population began to shrink in 2005 and society continued to grow older. That year, people aged 60 or older accounted for 21 percent of the population, making Japan one of the grayest countries in the world. Taking these factors into consideration, the 2006 welfare and labor white paper compiled...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Sep 17, 2006

Bizarre bouts of self-expression

Nearly 300 spectators cheered wildly as disco music blared. A spotlight picked out two fighters approaching the ring to kick off a puroresu (prowrestling) event held recently in a Tokyo town hall.
LIFE / WEEK 3
Sep 3, 2006

An 'outsider' speaks out

Later this month, when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi concludes what may have been Japan's most flamboyant premiership ever, pundits aplenty are sure to lavish his five-year term with glowing praise.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 31, 2006

M.crew offers work in the day, cheap bed at night

Three years ago, a 19-year-old man arrived in Tokyo from Kyushu to work at a security company.
JAPAN
Aug 29, 2006

Ishihara crime fight serving Big Brother, stoking xenophobia?

A former deputy chief of Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara's task force on public safety is questioning some of the projects the metropolitan government has been promoting.
EDITORIALS
Aug 28, 2006

Strictures of job flexibility

The 2006 white paper on labor and the economy focuses on the rising number of irregularly employed workers, such as part-timers and temporary workers from agencies, and the widening gap in income between regularly and irregularly employed workers. If this gap grows and becomes fixed, society as a whole...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 27, 2006

An underclass returns -- and with it, what?

All indications are that Japan is reverting to prewar norms. I am not referring solely to the new nationalism, bolstered by Japan's increasingly aggressive military stances, but rather to the notion of social equality -- or inequality -- that is being created for its citizens today.
Japan Times
LIFE / DISABILITY IN JAPAN
Aug 27, 2006

Is 'disability' still a dirty word in Japan?

Mainstream society is slowly, but slowly, opening up to the physically ormentally impaired, as officialdom appears happy with a 'steady' approach
EDITORIALS
Aug 22, 2006

The possibility of work at any age

Job opportunities for young people, women and elderly people are the main topic of this year's government white paper on people's lifestyles. Many young people can't seem to get the jobs they really want. Women are experiencing a hard time finding jobs after giving birth or after raising their children....
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Jul 16, 2006

Up close . . . and virtually personal

When the Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan characters fell in love via the virtual world of Web chat in the 1998 movie "You've Got Mail," it seemed a classic case of something that could only happen in the movies, not in the real world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 13, 2006

Antiestablishment for all

Founded in 1970 by director Sho Ryuzanji, the Engekidan company was a natural bridge between two major theatrical movements in postwar Japan: the 1960s underground scene of dramatists such as Shuji Terayama and Juro Kara and the so-called "small-scale theater movement" started in the 1980s by the likes...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 12, 2006

Look deeply into Putin's eyes

LONDON — As the leaders of the G7 countries meet in St. Petersburg this week I hope they will have another look into the eyes of Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is five years since U.S. President George W. Bush looked into those eyes and claimed to be able to see Putin's soul, which he found to...
EDITORIALS
Jun 21, 2006

Medical reforms need work

The laws passed last week by the Diet to curb the growth in the nation's medical spending testify to the government's determination to solve the problem. While the laws include positive elements, they are not problem-free. The government needs to continuously review the nation's medical system. Rationalizing...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 13, 2006

Fuss over fingerprinting

No consistency The new law requiring foreigners to be fingerprinted and photographed at Japan's airports is unfair.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 8, 2006

Planting seeds of hope in Japan's youth

The bright laughter of children is the true measure of a society's health. Ten years ago, I was in San Jose, Costa Rica, for the opening of an exhibition on the reality and threat of nuclear weapons. Even as participants began a dignified rendition of the national anthem, through the wall that separated...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 5, 2006

The revolution will not be memorialized

PRAGUE -- Forty years ago, Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution. The Propaganda Department of China's ruling Communists have now issued an order banning any kind of reviews or commemoration of this disaster as part of the party's bid to make the Chinese forget about that lost decade.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 4, 2006

How shall we dance?

This summer, the movie that shot Johnny Depp to Hollywood stardom, Tim Burton's 1990 fantasy "Edward Scissorhands," comes to Japan as a live dance stage created and directed by Matthew Bourne.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 1, 2006

Addressing social issues with drama

The Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is often dubbed "the father of modern drama" for being one of the first to place ordinary people squarely center stage. Forty-four-year-old Yoji Sakate, founder of the Rinkogun theater company, has now created not just an homage to this Scandinavian icon,...
EDITORIALS
May 31, 2006

'Benevolent act' undermines pension

An illegal practice by the Social Insurance Agency came to light last week. Social insurance offices in Osaka, Nagasaki and 24 other prefectures have waived premium payments into the national pension (kokumin nenkin) program by more than 110,000 low-income people without their application.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 19, 2006

It's all music for Warp label

Warp, home to sonic pioneers such as Aphex Twin, and Boards of Canada is arguably the most influential electronica label in the world. But don't tell Warp founder Steve Beckett. For Beckett, who began the label with now deceased partner Rob Mitchell in a Sheffield record store in 1989, genre, and in...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
May 14, 2006

Home and away

AUSTRALIA Respect brings harmony without being workaholic
COMMENTARY / World
May 11, 2006

A power to resist the currents of history

One cold morning in December 1941, I was running through the frozen streets of Tokyo during the predawn hours, delivering newspapers. I saw this as my way to contribute to the family finances. I was 13 at the time, my father was bedridden with rheumatism, and my four elder brothers had been sent off...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
May 7, 2006

May Shigenobu: A life less ordinary

In November 2000, May Shigenobu stood speechless in front of her TV set in Beirut, staring at crackly satellite images of her mother, Fusako Shigenobu, giving the thumbs-up and smiling as she was led away by police in Osaka, half a world away.
EDITORIALS
May 4, 2006

Minamata's legacy after 50 years

Fifty years have passed since the first official recognition of Minamata disease, a major symbol of Japan's postwar industrial pollution. Yet relief for those who suffered massive organic mercury poisoning, dating back to the 1950s and '60s, has not been fully delivered. More than 3,700 people have filed...
EDITORIALS
Apr 21, 2006

Reforms for nursing-care insurance

Under a revision of the nursing-care insurance law, the nation's care system for the elderly (people aged 65 or older) entered a new stage on April 1, the first day of fiscal 2006. This stage boosts efforts to prevent the health of senior citizens from deteriorating to the point that they need expensive...

Longform

Visitors to Kyoto walk along a street near Kiyomizu Temple in April. A popular tourist spot, Kyoto has seen what locals feel to be an overwhelming amount of tourists in 2024.
Is Japan ready for 60 million tourists?