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November 22, 2024
 

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Philip Brasor
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 13, 2005
Little progress on Japanese gender equality
Last weekend the Cabinet Office released the results of its latest gender-roles survey, which it has been carrying out irregularly since 1979. About 3,500 adult men and women offered their opinions about who should be in charge of the home and who should do the breadwinning. The results were reported...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 13, 2005
Dan Hicks
He turned 63 last December, but even back in the 1960s and early '70s, Dan Hicks could have been mistaken for a middle-aged hipster, more interested in clever, sexy wordplay and jazzy harmonics than in rockin' or jammin', which is more unusual than it sounds. As the drummer for the short-lived psychedelic...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 6, 2005
Kabuki kid's taxi tussle exposes insular world
Celebrities live in goldfish bowls, but some goldfish bowls are roomier than others. The amount of leeway the public is willing to allow a famous person in terms of objectionable behavior depends on the nature of that person's fame and his or her own understanding of the seriousness of the trespass....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 30, 2005
Japanese hero pointedly ignored
It's said that the virtue most valued in Japan is loyalty, which is why the famous heroes of Japanese literature and history are people who made sacrifices for their lords rather than their beliefs. And often, as in the case of the 47 ronin celebrated in Chushingura or the tokkotai (kamikaze) pilots...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 30, 2005
Mercury Rev: "The Secret Migration"
Along with their occasional partners in crime, The Flaming Lips, Mercury Rev made orchestral pop safe for college radio in the '90s. Both bands started out as psychedelicatessens, and like the Lips' Wayne Coyne, MR's Jonathan Donahue possesses a limited vocal instrument that makes it necessary for him...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 23, 2005
The Delgados
Everybody knows that Glasgow is the current Mecca of international indie rock, though there's some debate as to who is its Mohammed. People with long memories will claim it's The Pastels, who first explored the lo-fi, do-it-yourself aesthetic that the city has become famous for way back in the early...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 23, 2005
LDP big guns fight NHK censorship claims
Last Monday, a meeting organized by the Violence Against Women in War Network Japan to discuss its ongoing lawsuit against NHK was moved at the last minute from a tiny room in the Bunkyo Kumin Center to a large hall at the YMCA. The change was made to accommodate the many reporters who were suddenly...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 16, 2005
Brian Wilson
Ironic, isn't it, that Brian Wilson, the one with the famously debilitating anxiety problems, has outlived his two supposedly more well-adjusted brothers. Commercially, it means that The Beach Boys name is the property of cousin Mike Love, who for the past 20 years has successfully turned it into a touring...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 16, 2005
Single thirtysomethings under the spotlight
Last weekend, Nihon TV broadcast a two-hour program based on Junko Sakai's bestselling book "Makeinu no Toboe (The Howl of the Loser Dog)," a piece of nonfiction. The show, however, was a standard trendy drama, meaning long on ritzy real-estate and product placements, short on situations that resemble...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 12, 2005
Balancing act
Singer-songwriters are the half-breeds of pop music. Evolved from Bob Dylan's navel-gazing spawn, they lead hyphenated existences because each half of their calling is considered insupportable without the other. Though many are accomplished vocalists, what distinguishes them as singers doesn't always...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 9, 2005
Highlights and lowlights of a year in the media
Media Person of the Year: Bae Yong Joon
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 26, 2004
Archer Prewitt: "Wilderness"
The fourth solo release by graphic artist and Sea and Cake guitarist Archer Prewitt is a passionate ode to romantic melancholy. In the spirit of Jimmy Webb, Prewitt lends mystical qualities to songs that can hold their own on Top 40 radio, highlighting his lush, high tenor rather than his guitar this...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 22, 2004
Bang a gong for . . .
The '60s Live! Award: Tie between Art Garfunkel and David Crosby, both of whom were busted for marijuana possession.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 22, 2004
Camping out
Camp was cool this year. Freddie Mercury was the most revered dead-pop-star role model, and many up-and-coming rock acts indulged in what Susan Sontag once called "the love of the exaggerated," whether it was Franz Ferdinand's metrosexual take on new wave or the Scissor Sisters' Studio 54 appropriation...
CULTURE / Music
Dec 19, 2004
Gang of Four
The news that Gang of Four is reuniting has been acknowledged happily by folks who grew up with the lads from Leeds back in 1979. Younger folks who love the band but want them to remain in the history books seem less pleased. Fans of The Futureheads, one of the many new British bands that shamelessly...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 19, 2004
Final warning: The horror of horrors medical TV show
The medical industry has become as scary as the diseases it treats. On Dec. 10, the government released a list of 7,000 medical institutions nationwide that handled tainted blood products before 1994, and on the same day a judge ordered the Tokyo Medical University Hospital to preserve evidence related...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 12, 2004
The Donnas: "Gold Medal"
Ditching their Ramones-like pseudonyms on their sixth album, The Donnas move beyond whatever novelty appeal they've retained since their high-school days in Palo Alto, Calif. Though they were never really a punk band, their artless energy endeared them to the kind of indiephiles who think innocence of...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 12, 2004
Lord Shrimp gets deep-fried over New Year's special
While surfing for coverage of the most recent NHK scandal on commercial television, I naturally had my radar tuned for expressions of schadenfreude, especially on the wide shows, where commentators enjoy a little more freedom to be critical. But there hasn't been much gloating. Last Monday, the host...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 5, 2004
Zap Mama
Originally an Afro-European vocal project based in Brussels, Zap Mama has over the past decade-and-a-half become the sole property of Zaire-to-Belgium transplant Marie Daulne, who formed the group with some "slightly eccentric" female friends in 1990. As those friends left, Daulne's sound became increasingly...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 5, 2004
Telephone fraud is criminally dumb at the end of the line
Misfortune for some can be entertaining to the rest of us. Microwaved poodles and death-by-sexual-dalliance often have such a ridiculous aura about them that we tend not to identify with the victims because the stupidity inferred precludes any feelings of sympathy.
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.
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
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.

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

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

mission sustainability vol.12 : Kose Corp.Kose takes pride in creating beauty in the world
mission sustainability vol.12 : Kose Corp.Kose takes pride in creating beauty in the world

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