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November 22, 2024
 

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Philip Brasor
CULTURE / Music
Jul 3, 2005
Datarock: "Datarock Datarock"
Weirdness exerts its own energy, which is why Talking Heads and The Happy Mondays made such great dance music. In front of a tight combo of drums, bass and rhythm guitar the lead singer couldn't keep his feet on the ground or his brain in his skull. Datarock, two guys from Norway, understand this juxtaposition....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 29, 2005
Where did we go right?
When it opened on Broadway in the spring of 2001, Mel Brooks' musical comedy "The Producers" became an instant cultural phenomenon steeped in irony. The day after its premiere, 33,000 tickets were sold at $100 each, a record high price, and the production was able to pay off its initial investment of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 26, 2005
The Damned
The Damned's 1977 debut, produced by Nick Lowe for Stiff Records, has often been called the first British punk album, but the distinction is merely a technical one. The Sex Pistols and The Clash were already around, so by the time those groups released LPs, The Damned already sounded passe. In retrospect,...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 26, 2005
Japan gets a life and finally drags its heels into Live 8
There used to be a common expression that money used to send men to the moon could better be spent on feeding people down here on Earth. As if in response, funding for space exploration was eventually cut and more money was channeled into so-called development aid, the ultimate aim of which, we were...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 19, 2005
Takanohana vs. Wakanohana: The final faceoff
The battle between former sumo grand champion siblings Wakanohana and Takanohana over the legacy of their father, sumo elder Futagoyama, started well before his death from mouth cancer on May 30 at the age of 55. The press, however, didn't dive into the melee until after Futogayama's body was placed...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 12, 2005
Stereophonics
When the Stereophonics became the first band signed to Richard Branson's second label V2, the U.K. rock press greeted the Welsh power trio with comparisons to Manic Street Preachers. However, as the group released one hit single after another during the late 1990s, most comparisons fell by the wayside....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 12, 2005
Japan's leaders try to be 'cool' to take heat off themselves
Some people are hard to please. Though he was a member of the committee that chose the term "Cool Biz" for the campaign launched last week to bring government dress more in line with seasonal realities, fashion designer and critic Don Konishi is very disappointed with the sartorial choices made by Diet...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 5, 2005
Misfits stand up, look to the stars -- or for some grub
The media and the popular arts thrive on synergy: Broadcasters and publishers play footsy with movie companies, record labels and talent agencies to keep the public drooling over whatever product or personality they're all selling at this particular moment. Synergy takes work, but sometimes it just happens...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 5, 2005
The big presence of Little Joe
If the old saying that you can't play the blues until you have lived the blues is true, then Little Joe Washington should be a giant of the genre. The 66-year-old Houston native has certainly paid his dues. Some will say he is still paying them. He's marginally homeless and has been for 20 years or so,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 5, 2005
The Go-Betweens: "Oceans Apart"
On their third album since reuniting five years ago, Robert Forster and Grant McLennan utilize the services of producer Mark Wallis, who worked with them on "16 Lovers Lane," their last studio album before the Go-Betweens split in 1989 and also their lushest record.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 29, 2005
Anger, not pity, is best response to poverty
In his new book, "Planet of Slums," the American urban historian Mike Davis paints a bleak picture of a world in which the poorest have become so marginalized that they have dropped off the economic radar. Over the past 20 years or so, globalization and the neoliberal policies of the International Monetary...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 29, 2005
Autechre
The often derided genre label "intelligent dance music" was coined to lend critical legitimacy to a kind of nonmelodic techno that seemed willfully avant garde and devoid of style. In fact, considering how often flagship IDM artists like Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada flouted 4/4 time signatures, calling...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 22, 2005
It's not all quiet on the (Middle-) Eastern front after the abduction
After it was learned that Akihiko Saito, a Japanese national working for a British security company in Iraq, was captured by a militant group during an ambush, the media seemed so stunned by the revelation that they couldn't get their bearings. So they seized on the only source of local information they...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 22, 2005
Four Tet: "Everything Ecstatic"
As the title of his third album implies, Keiren Hebden's laptop jazz (my description, not his) has a definite reactive purpose, which is to make you happy by any means necessary, but mainly through his manipulation of what is certainly techno's biggest catalog of electronic percussion and drum samples....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 15, 2005
Little Barrie
The importance of the less-is-more principle waxes and wanes in popular music, but Little Barrie, a new power trio from England, seems to understand it better than most rock minimalists do these days. Though the group refers to its sound as "stripped-down," they're only talking about the instrumentation...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 15, 2005
The great corporate escape: Blame it on the factotums and avoid responsibility
The news media's breathless coverage of the train derailment in Amagasaki that claimed 107 lives last month operated on several levels. On one level was an investigation into the details of the accident itself. On another was the coverage of victims and their families. And on a third was the gradual...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 8, 2005
Reflecting truth and beauty
Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn, who writes and performs under the moniker Mirah, records for K Records, the proudly lo-fi label headquartered in Olympia, Wash., and run by indie rock's most dedicated iconoclast, Calvin Johnson, singer in band Beat Happening.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 8, 2005
TV show scrapes bottom of barrel in bringing Asia to Japan
One of the hoariest cliches of international politics is the idea that governments only have beefs with other governments, not with their citizens. The tragic irony is that the citizens suffer anyway. Maybe the majority of Iraqi people didn't like their tyrant, but one has to wonder how much they accept...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 1, 2005
'The Only Woman in the Room' who helped to reshape Japan
Last Monday evening, 81-year-old Beate Sirota Gordon walked onto the stage of the Japan Bar Association auditorium in Tokyo, took a seat, and for 90 minutes explained in Japanese how she helped write Japan's post-war Constitution.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 1, 2005
Soundz from Germany
Classical German culture had a profound influence on modern Japan, especially in the fields of philosophy and medicine, but recent German trends have had to compete for attention with all the other international cultural imports. The Deutschland in Japan Year aims to give Germany a higher profile here,...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Tokyo Metro’s overseas efforts begin in earnest with London deal
Tokyo Metro will soon have a role in the running of London's Elizabeth Line, a major train route serving the U.K.’s capital city and environs.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ex-yokozuna Kitanofuji dies at 82
Yokozuna Kitanofuji enters the ring during the May 1970 grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.
Man charged with murder allegedly made victim date other men for money
A car carrying suspect Ryotaro Masuda, who was indicted for allegedly beating his 25-year-old girlfriend to death, leaves the Shibuya Police Station in Tokyo on Thursday.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

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

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