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EDITORIALS
Dec 29, 2011

Unprepared for what happened

A third-party panel set up by the government to investigate the accidents at Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant issued Monday an interim report based on interviews with 456 people. It emerges from the report that before the March 11 disaster both Tepco and the government had...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 28, 2011

What will become of North Korea?

According to North Korean state television, the heart attack that killed Kim Jong Il on Dec. 17 was "due to severe mental and physical stress from overwork."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 22, 2011

Seeking solace in artistic responses to March 11

What can art do? What role can it play when the whole world seems suddenly unstable, unsure?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 22, 2011

Japan's dramatists take on the 'nuclear village'

The place to start when reviewing this year's highlights in contemporary Japanese theater, has to be The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11. That day led to a nation in mourning, an ongoing nuclear crisis and an awakening among dramatists, who saw the importance of their role to stimulate debate...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 17, 2011

Australians recall POW ordeals

Former Australian prisoner of war Alfred Ellwood can vividly recall being interrogated and at times tortured by the Imperial Japanese Army's notorious military police after he was captured in East Timor, an experience that scarred him most of his life.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Dec 13, 2011

One-fifth of kids deprived of contact with one parent

Dear Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Minister of Justice Hideo Hiraoka, Minister for Foreign Affairs Koichiro Gemba, Minister of Health, Labor, and Welfare Yoko Komiyama, and the government of Japan,
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Dec 13, 2011

One-fifth of kids deprived of contact with one parent

Dear Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Minister of Justice Hideo Hiraoka, Minister for Foreign Affairs Koichiro Gemba, Minister of Health, Labor, and Welfare Yoko Komiyama, and the government of Japan,
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 11, 2011

The Scot who shaped Japan

This coming Friday, Dec. 16, 2011, marks the centenary of the death in his opulent home in the Shiba Park area of Tokyo's central Azabu district of the Scottish-born trader Thomas Blake Glover, who became the first foreigner ever decorated by the Japanese government when he was awarded the Order of the...
COMMENTARY
Dec 3, 2011

Asia's water stress challenges growth and security

Water, the most vital of all resources, has emerged as a key issue that will determine whether Asia is headed toward cooperation or competition. After all, the driest continent in the world is not Africa, but Asia, where availability of freshwater is not even half the global annual average of 6,380 cubic...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Dec 3, 2011

Playing a little chicken

Here it comes, the eternal question . . .
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Nov 24, 2011

Dressed to impress Tokyo's art crowd

A life-size bucking brown horse, pieced together from old leather jackets. A loom operated by a Noah's Ark collection of polar bears, birds and other beasts. A fashion boutique till that scans barcodes to create a cacophony of musical sounds.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Nov 20, 2011

Paradoxes pervade gender issues' public face in Japan

Transgender people are popping up everywhere in the current Japanese media landscape. Whether it's appearing on variety shows or hawking soft drinks or makeup in TV ads, the current crop of "new-half" celebrities have established themselves in the mainstream in a way that has surprised many onlookers....
COMMENTARY
Nov 16, 2011

Who in America gets to judge political truth?

The Stolen Valor Act of 2005, a compound of political pandering and moral exhibitionism, was whooped through the Senate, aka the "world's greatest deliberative body," by unanimous consent; the House, joining the stampede, passed it by a voice vote.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 15, 2011

Tokyo ordinance a potential contract-killer

A prediction: if Japan ever becomes a police state, it will come about not by national law but municipal ordinances. And the war on organized crime could be the engine that drives the process.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 13, 2011

Media takes both sides of TPP debate

Last week Kyodo News conducted a survey on the public's understanding of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Japan is thinking of joining. The TPP basically constitutes a free-trade zone among member countries in the Pacific rim region, including the United States, but right now it is still in the negotiation...
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 13, 2011

In the wake of the Vikings

At both its western and eastern extremes some 10,700 km apart in France and the Russian Far East respectively, the great, fused supercontinent of Eurasia breaks into fragments, into not quite matching fringes of islands.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 11, 2011

An audience with Kyoko Kagawa

Kyoko Kagawa is among the fast dwindling number of living witnesses to Japanese cinema's Golden Age of the 1950s and '60s.
COMMENTARY
Nov 7, 2011

Asian leader receives coveted American award

They honored the controversial, though increasingly appreciated, Asian statesman Lee Kuan Yew at the historic Ford Theater in Washington recently, and I wish I had been there.
BUSINESS / THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Nov 7, 2011

A U.S. of Euro Land may be what's needed but unity is in short supply

Japan launched major yen-selling intervention on Oct. 31 in response to massive speculative yen-buying — the first such action since August. The ever-rising yen is threatening Japan's export industry and can easily derail the eagerly awaited economic recovery from the March 11 shock. However, it remains...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 3, 2011

Japan has viable options on the TPP conundrum: Why not use one?

U.S. President Barack Obama will soon head to Hawaii for the 2011 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum, November 8-13. Hosted by the United States, it and eight other APEC economies are holding talks to reach broad outlines of a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement.
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 23, 2011

Citizens' forum queries nuclear 'experts'

To whom does scientific debate belong?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 21, 2011

'Heartbreaker'

You can take a French boy out of France, but you can't take France out of the French boy. Usually — but this time, the formula doesn't apply, because nifty French romance "Heartbreaker" has all the trappings à la Française but ends up being a glossily plasticized Hollywood-style product.
EDITORIALS
Oct 18, 2011

Economic trouble in China

The decision of China's sovereign wealth fund to buy shares of four of the country's biggest banks is a warning signal. The move to prop up the plummeting value of those institutions is intended to boost confidence; instead, it has highlighted the many unknowns that dominate the country's financial system....
EDITORIALS
Oct 7, 2011

Missing Okinawa documents

The Tokyo High Court on Sept. 29 overturned an April 9, 2010, ruling by the Tokyo District Court that not only had determined that Japan and the United States had secret pacts over the 1972 reversion of Okinawa but also had ordered the state to disclose related diplomatic documents.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 5, 2011

Model T testing in the Internet Age

When Frederick Kelly invented the multiple-choice test in 1914, he was addressing a national crisis. The ranks of students attending secondary school had swollen from 200,000 in 1890 to more than 1.5 million as immigrants streamed onto American shores, and as new laws made two years of high school compulsory...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2011

JFK showed reluctance in acknowledging aide's help in crafting words for a generation

The recently released 1964 interviews of Jacqueline Kennedy by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. make for fascinating reading. But if the one subject on which I have some detailed knowledge is any indication, historians will need to be careful about putting too much stock in what Mrs. Kennedy said.

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