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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LIGHT GIST
Sep 27, 2011

No-nos for Noda: Japan's top 10 most useless PMs

On Sept. 2, Yoshihiko Noda was appointed the 95th prime minister of Japan, the sixth man (and they have all been men) to hold the job in five years. To mark this occasion and offer lessons to the new Democratic Party of Japan chief on how not to lead the country, the Community Page asked 10 writers to...
Japan Times
JAPAN / POWERING THE FUTURE
Sep 23, 2011

Current nuclear debate to set nation's course for decades

First in a six-part series about major sources of renewable energy in Japan and the prospects for their future use and development
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 21, 2011

Where we all should mind our own business

One of the more regressive proposals in this still-young U.S. presidential election season comes not from a candidate but, rather, from a journalist, specifically Bill Keller, the departing executive editor of the New York Times. In a recent column, Keller asserted that candidates should be subjected...
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Sep 20, 2011

Anzan kigan

Dear Alice,
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 15, 2011

Francois Girard and a woman of many letters

"This wonderful project started when my friend, the Lebanese writer Wajdi Mouawad, gave me a book and said I should make a movie out it," Francois Girard explains. "But after I read it I got back to him and said, 'Sorry, I disagree with you. This is really not right for a movie — but it's perfect for...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Sep 13, 2011

The loneliness — or otherwise — of the long-distance foreigner

The Japan Times received a large number of readers' emails in response to Debito Arudou's Just Be Cause column published Aug. 2, headlined "The loneliness of the long-distance foreigner." Here, belatedly, are a selection.
EDITORIALS
Sep 10, 2011

Switzerland wages war

In a move that jolted currency markets, the Swiss National Bank, the European nation's central bank, pledged this week to drive down the value of its currency, the Swiss franc. The move was prompted by the rising value of the franc against the euro, a trend that has pummeled Swiss exporters.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 7, 2011

Is China's economic miracle a mirage?

Doubts are beginning to be heard about how sustainable is China's economic miracle, particularly the relentless emphasis on exports and investment spending by hundreds of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and local governments. Beijing, of course, has its supporters, including banker turned academic Stephen...
COMMENTARY
Sep 6, 2011

Instrument of love in Libya

Somebody (perhaps a Jesuit) once said: "Force is an instrument of love in a world of complexity and chance."
Japan Times
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Sep 5, 2011

MLB scouts doing due diligence on Fighters' Darvish

The press box at QVC Marine Field isn't exactly state-of-the-art. Upfront are three sections of long desks topped with aging, faded wood looking out onto the field from ground level, behind a net and tinted glass. The rear resembles a school cafeteria, with an old television resting on a filing cabinet...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 14, 2011

Blavatsky's Book of the Dead

THE TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD: A Biography, by Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Princeton University Press, 2011, 175 pp., $19.95 (hardcover) In 2005 a journalist telephoned the eminent scholar of Buddhism and Tibetan Studies, Donald S. Lopez, Jr., and asked him whether "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" was the most...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 12, 2011

Ireland excoriates Vatican over new reports of abuse

In my first few days as editor of The Universe, the leading English-language Catholic newspaper, I had a long conversation with the monsignor who was a member of the board, an adviser to the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, and who wrote a religious "Agony Aunt" column for us.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 5, 2011

Do we rate state-run companies as heirlooms or dear luxuries?

Conventional wisdom, except in China with its plethora of state-owned enterprises, has become that governments should get out of business. Business knows best how to run things efficiently and to make money, whereas governments tend to tie up enterprise in bureaucratic red tape, or so the thinking goes....
COMMENTARY
Aug 2, 2011

Arab revolutions unable to waken media to revolutionary discourse

When President Ali Abdullah Saleh tried desperately to quell Yemen's popular uprising, he appealed to tribalism, customs and traditions. All his efforts evidently failed, and the revolution continued unabated.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 31, 2011

Nadeshiko Japan show that a relaxed approach gets the best results

The national women's soccer team that just won the FIFA World Cup in Germany is called Nadeshiko Japan. "Nadeshiko" is the name of a flower, but it also represents a certain ideal of Japanese femininity that's demure, quiet and accommodating to men; or, at least, it used to be. Japan's victory over the...
EDITORIALS
Jul 30, 2011

ARF makes a contribution

After the fireworks at last year's meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the big question at this year's get-together was whether the United States and China would again clash over the South China Sea.
Reader Mail
Jul 28, 2011

Disappointing answers on beef

I was shocked to see that the July 23 question-and-answer article, "Are worries over meat warranted?," made it past editorial screening. For starters, I refer to the last paragraph of the first answer: "The 82.65 microsieverts compares with the 100 microsieverts of radiation a person would be exposed...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 25, 2011

Links between Pakistan and post-3/11 Japan

During my tenure there, Pakistan went through the heightening of tension resulting from the Islamist resistance to the U.S.-led military action in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, and the near-war with India in May 2002.
Reader Mail
Jul 24, 2011

Sweet car-less option in Tokyo

Regarding the July 19 Views From the Street (Kamakura, Kanagawa) question, "Is it better to own a car or not in Japan?": For all of those people living in the bigger cities like Tokyo, it's nice to have the option of owning a car or not. Here in the countryside, if we don't have a car, we can't even...
BUSINESS / THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Jul 18, 2011

German energy study offers framework for Japanese policy chaos

Pure chaos is reigning over Japanese energy policy and the future of its nuclear power industry.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 17, 2011

Erasing the bloody wounds of war

IMAG(IN)ING THE WAR IN JAPAN: Representing and Responding to Trauma in Postwar Literature and Film, edited by David Stahl and Mark Williams. Brill, 2010, 375 pp., $179 (hardcover) This anthology is as incisive and demanding of consideration as any that I have read. The central question reframed again...
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Jul 17, 2011

Imperial work ethic; Electric Society's defiance; the 'Flat Tire Bandit'; the state of AIDS

100 YEARS AGOThursday, July 20, 1911
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2011

Key to 'East Asian' health

On May 8, 2011, leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations issued a joint statement to reaffirm their commitment toward the development of a common position on global issues.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 6, 2011

Lagarde in the IMF inferno

Christine Lagarde has leaped into a hot job, an inferno, as the first woman to head the International Monetary Fund less than a week after after having been chosen.
EDITORIALS
Jul 6, 2011

Mr. Thaksin wins again

Ms. Yingluck Shinawatra and her Pheu Thai party have won Thailand's parliamentary elections, claiming a commanding majority in the legislature. The results are a vindication of sorts for Ms. Shinawatra's brother, former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, deposed in 2006 by a military coup.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jun 28, 2011

Does Japan need an education in dealing with difference?

The Community Page received a large number of emails in response to Gerry McLellan's May 24 Hotline to Nagatacho column "Japanese adults need an education in dealing with difference." The following is a selection of readers' views.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 26, 2011

Top scientist in academic row

An article that helped Tohoku University President Akihisa Inoue win the Japan Academy Award has been retracted from a leading U.S. scientific journal after the author violated protocol by reusing his own previously published material without acknowledging it.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 15, 2011

A dentist need not be a masked demon

Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
Jun 12, 2011

Ishikawa's goal still putting on green jacket at Masters

Ryo Ishikawa doesn't own a crystal ball. Nevertheless, the teenage golf star says he knows where his future is going to lead him.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 12, 2011

Heights of survival

When the March 11 tsunami hit the village of Yoshihama in Iwate Prefecture, the water overran a seawall, smashed through a coastal pine forest, poured over a large embankment and then surged up a long, low-lying valley. It was a scenario almost identical to that being played out at dozens of settlements...

Longform

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