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Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 2, 2009

Creating a catalyst for self-reflection

"One of the hardest missions for people is to face themselves in the mirror, to criticize themselves, to ask themselves really basic questions," says ex-Israeli soldier Avichay Sharon. "No one wants to touch sensitive nerves, no one wants to go underneath, scratch underneath within himself." Sharon is...
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS / ICE TIME
Oct 8, 2008

Murakami case shows JSF short on skater support

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.''
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 27, 2008

VOCA: A look at the state of 2-D

Given the profusion of events lined up for next week, it's easy to believe that Tokyo is going through a contemporary art renaissance. Since the opening of the Mori Art Museum in 2003, contemporary art has arguably enjoyed a higher profile than it has in the past 30 years in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 20, 2007

Seeking collectors in Shanghai, not censors

Shanghai Exhibition Center is a massive, Stalinist birthday-cake of a building surrounded by newly constructed glass-and-steel skyscrapers in Shanghai's center. Originally know as Palace of the Sino-Soviet Friendship, from Sept. 6 to 9, the exhibition center had within its walls a new, capitalist friend,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 8, 2006

Arab Strap celebrate '10 years of tears' with sayonara tour

Pop artists tend to be identified by their musical stylings. But some, like Scottish duo Arab Strap, are associated more with specific themes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Aug 11, 2006

Psychedelic radar 08.11

Mother: Aug. 13-15
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Jul 24, 2006

Kyushu showers let up long enough for All-Stars to play ball

MIYAZAKI -- Kyushu, what a boulevard of broken sweat.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 7, 2006

Deejay U-Roy's still-righteous chat

"Wake the town and tell the people" rings the trademark battle cry of Jamaican deejay extraordinaire U-Roy, who plays three live dates in Japan this weekend.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 22, 2006

Innovation, individuality in the mix

One place where language and cultural differences are barely an issue for Japanese artists is at the annual Barcelona electronica and multimedia event Sonar, which is part music industry showcase, part festival for ordinary music fans.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 9, 2006

Eye looks to tranquillity after his contrived chaos

"I don't really think I have any musicianship. I can't play any instruments. I have no technique. I really can't do anything. I have no professional skill at all. I'm also a crap DJ. I'm really not very deft! Really I'm crap . . . and I've been doing it for 10 years!" says Yamataka Eye, leader of the...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
May 19, 2006

Clean living under very difficult circumstances

To the legions of impeccably attired ravers who will attend the Mods Mayday '06 Weekender taking place this weekend in Tokyo, "mod" is about a whole lot more than renting a DVD of the 1979 mods and rockers classic "Quadrophenia" or throwing a beaten-up Kinks LP from their dad's record collection on the...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 25, 2005

Help the disabled, but don't deny them

Several years ago, the government discussed state-sponsored care for people with disabilities. The idea was to assist mentally and physically disabled people in leaving publicly-funded facilities and entering society; or, at least, that was how it was presented.
JAPAN
Dec 21, 2004

Salsa fanatics defy rigid Japan

A pulsating mambo fills the air at a cavernous club near Tokyo Bay. "Ayyy-esssooo!" the song calls in exhortation as a sea of dancers -- sweaty, skin bared, clothes clinging -- roll their hips and hurtle into turns with increasing abandon.
Japan Times
Features
Oct 10, 2004

Altogether now for the business of peace

LAYTONVILLE, Calif. -- Running a nonprofit organization with a global mission of promoting peace activities and sustainability might seem noble but naive to the skeptical, but Chris Deckker takes his role seriously as the founder of Earthdance.
MORE SPORTS
Aug 4, 2004

Tiger's agent Steinberg says business better than ever

Mark Steinberg is the agent for the world's No. 1 golfer Tiger Woods.
EDITORIALS
Mar 30, 2004

A test for Taiwan's democracy

Ten days after Taiwan's presidential election yielded a contested result, there are signs of progress in resolving the political crisis it created. The winner of the vote, President Chen Shui-bian, last weekend promised a recount to defuse mounting tensions. The recount is a vital step in sorting out...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Feb 25, 2004

Discovering the bright side of the 'dark continent'

When I was young, Africa and its people were represented to me through two distinct sets of images. The first, delivered by National Geographic and other anthropological sources, were the cliched photographs of tribesmen gripping spears in their hands and bare-breasted woman balancing baskets on their...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / GARDEN PATHS
Sep 25, 2003

Lush 'theme park' of the shoguns

Four hundred years ago, Edo was little more than a fishing village in the large domain of Tokugawa Ieyasu. But then, in 1603, the new shogun made this quiet spot his power base, and over the next two centuries Edo became one of the greatest cities in the world. Remarkably, the Koishikawa Korakuen garden,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 4, 2002

No fear of flying

"There's no such thing as improvisation," the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia once said. "There's only composition. Only you do it quickly; you're composing on the spot."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 17, 2002

It takes a village . . .

The feat of building a community takes vision, commitment and lots of time. But once every year, a massive village materializes on a mountainside in Niigata Prefecture in late July, only to vanish into thin air less than a week later.
SOCCER / THE BALD TRUTH
Sep 4, 2001

Far and away: The story of Japan's World Cup venues

Last weekend, I was on tour in China with British Football Club Tokyo. We played so badly in the annual Shanghai Sevens tournament that I decided to give poor Shunsuke Nakamura a break in this week's column (something about the pot calling the kettle black).
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Aug 26, 2001

Between Sonic rock and a hard place

At first glance, the biggest thing happening in Makuhari last weekend was the sale at the local outlet mall. No banners. No bullhorns. No hype. Just a silent, eerie cityscape of hotels and empty family restaurants. In short, there was nothing to indicate that Summer Sonic, Japan's second-biggest music...
EDITORIALS
Jun 8, 2001

No answers in Nepal

The mountainous little Himalayan country of Nepal exploded into the headlines last week on the strength of an incident as bizarre, as mysterious -- and as bloody -- as the final scene of "Hamlet." On Friday, June 1, Nepal's King Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev was shot to death along with his wife and seven...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 19, 2001

Dancing with rubbish leads to dancing with rice

It is easy to pick out dancer Firak di Bello in a crowd. Slight of build and all skin and bone, his shaven head mirrors the sun. Equally distinctive are his eyes (as wary as they are warm and all-seeing), the hawklike nose (which leads the way) and a gait that bobs rather than glides.
JAPAN
Jan 7, 2001

One person killed family, police say

Police investigating the brutal murder of Mikio Miyazawa, his wife and two children in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, now believe that one person was responsible for the killings, based on blood samples taken from the site of the crime.
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Aug 15, 2000

Knife-wielding nutters, karate chop cocktails and ueberbabes

"There's nothing for kids to do in Nagoya except sit around all day drinking and taking drugs," says pal Hiroshi, who spent three years there at college.
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Aug 1, 2000

Hard training is its own reward as big event looms

Note: By the time you read this you're still probably suffering a hangover with the force of two stars colliding in a distant galaxy (courtesy of Fuji Rock Festival): far out and painful, in other words. Well, this article concerns the Fuji Rock warmup weekend, an annual ritual where Fuji Rockers imbibe...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 10, 2000

Aborigines raise their cause's profile

SYDNEY -- On its way from Greece to the Sydney Olympics 2000, the Olympic flame this week passed by Uluru, a huge rock rearing up out of the vast emptiness of the "dead heart" of Australia. Watching it were Aborigines, this country's inhabitants for the past 50,000 years, to whom Uluru is sacred.
CULTURE / Music
Jan 21, 2000

Fashion segueing into sound

A special guest at a Ryuichi Sakamoto concert summons a host of international possibilities -- David Sylvian or Bowie, perhaps? Instead, the audience at Sakamoto's recent Christmas concert got designer Yohji Yamamoto clutching an acoustic guitar. Yamamoto's foray into music (he has recorded with rootsy...

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan