Search - text

 
 
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
Jul 20, 2011

Will Japan invite Google+ into its growing circle of social networks?

Despite only being in closed beta testing at the moment, Google's new social-network service, Google+, is rapidly proving to be huge, with more than 10 million users joining since it was announced on June 28. And thanks to their international connections, Net-savvy Japanese too were soon getting invitations...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 10, 2011

Watch your manners!

MANNERS AND MISCHIEF: Gender, Power and Etiquette in Japan. Edited by Jan Bardsley and Laura Miller. University of California Press, 2011, 245 pp., $22.95 (paper) Don't let the cutesy Hello Kitty cover fool you. "Manners and Mischief" disdains frivolity and stands firm as an academic text for students...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 8, 2011

"Kohitsugire: Ancient Calligraphy Fragments"

Kohitsugire are fragments of ancient calligraphy manuscripts. These sections or pages of text were originally part of scrolls or books such as the famous "Kokin Wakashu," an Imperial anthology of poetry popular with aristocrats during the Heian and Kamakura periods.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 30, 2011

An artist caught in the moment

Why isn't Yukihiro Taguchi in jail?
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Jun 21, 2011

Kinpū

Dear Alice,I am fascinated by the elaborately decorated envelopes offered for sale in Japan. I know they are used for giving money, because the first time I came to Japan to study martial arts a friend taught me to put my lesson fees into an envelope, rather than just hand bills to my teacher. I'd like...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 20, 2011

Keeping a lid on Argentina's 'secrets and lies'

By a relatively slight margin, the U.S. Congress has rejected an amendment by Democratic Rep. Maurice Hinchey to declassify files on Argentina's 1976-1983 military dictatorship.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 20, 2011

Objective defense of why some things matter

Can moral judgments be true or false? Or is ethics, at bottom, a purely subjective matter, for individuals to choose, or perhaps relative to the culture of the society in which one lives?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 16, 2011

You're not alone in feeling lonely

For playwright and director Ryuta Horai, the last two years have been a nonstop whirl of activity since "Mahoroba" ("A splendid location") — his drama about four generations of women in a traditional rural family meeting up and feuding — won the highly prestigious Kishida Kunio Award for best play...
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...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jun 9, 2011

Video-sharing website sparks Net revolution

When you get down to it, the Nico Nico Douga website is just a combination of videos and text comments about them.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Jun 8, 2011

Walsh says time right to move on

Donnie Walsh's most sacrilegious compadre predicts his semester break in Indianapolis will not agree with him.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 5, 2011

Exquisite designs for better living

TRADITIONAL JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE: An Exploration of Elements and Forms, by Mira Locher. Photography by Ben Simmons. Tuttle Publishing, 2010, 223 pp., $39.95 (hardcover) In Zen Buddhism there is a ceremony called "The Transmission." The ritual, both mystic and arcane, is little known in lay circles....
LIFE / Digital / TECH_JAPAN
May 18, 2011

Japan, the Twitter nation

According to Twitter's official blog (blog.twitter.com), when the clock stuck midnight last New Year's Eve, Japanese Twitter users went crazy, recording 6,939 tweets per second—a new record at the time. In fact, globally 14 percent of all tweets are in Japanese—second only to English, with 50 percent—which...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 8, 2011

'Transcendent Man' denies life ends with death

When Ray Kurzweil was a child he tried to invent a homework machine: He didn't accept that he had to waste time doing his dumb school assignments. Half a century on, nothing much has changed, though the authority Kurzweil challenges has got loftier: Now, says the American futurist and inventor, he doesn't...
CULTURE / Books
May 1, 2011

Temperance comes to Japan

REFORMING JAPAN: The Woman's Christian Temperance Union in the Meiji Period, by Elizabeth Dorn Lublin. University of Hawaii Press, 2010, 176 pp., $35.95 (paper) A temperance movement supports a reduction in consumption or total abstinence from alcohol beverages. It found followers in Europe and North...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 24, 2011

Of monsters and men: Godzilla's stable master

MASTER OF MINIATURES, by Jim Shepard. New York: Solid Objects, 2010, 51 pp., $12 (paper). Jim Shepard's "Master of Miniatures" is a masterful miniature, a small container filled with substantial events and substantial pleasures. Based on the life of Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects man who made it...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 19, 2011

The only panacea for Indonesia's troubles

Is there any idea of the rule of law in the Indonesian Constitution? What is the notion of the rule of law in the context of Indonesia?
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 17, 2011

Viewing wildlife through a lens

I grew up in Britain, which is a crane-free zone, so from the very first time I arrived in Japan I was dreaming of seeing the iconic red-crowned cranes of Hokkaido. How much more iconic as a crane can you get than being dubbed Grus japonensis? But just how was I to learn about their haunts and habits?...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Apr 16, 2011

Earthquake relief: Little people doing big things

Prime Minister Naoto Kan took out nearly a full-page ad in the International Herald Tribune last week to thank the international community for their kizuna (bond of friendship), regarding Japan's earthquake and tsunami disaster on March 11. It was a stirring tribute to those who have come together to...
EDITORIALS
Apr 14, 2011

Prosecutor sentenced

The Osaka District Court on Tuesday sentenced a former prosecutor to 18 months' imprisonment for tampering with evidence in a case against a former welfare ministry official charged with ordering a subordinate to fabricate a document making an unqualified organization eligible for the postal discount...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 10, 2011

Colonial Japan and the first 'Korean Wave'

PRIMITIVE SELVES: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-1945, by E. Taylor Atkins. University of California Press, 2010, 280 pp., $24.95 (paper) While pop-culture industry insiders reputedly hate the term, and discussion of it has generally waned in Korea, the "Korean Wave" remains inescapable...
EDITORIALS
Apr 9, 2011

Sumo must clean up its act

The Japan Sumo Association on April 1 took disciplinary action against 21 wrestlers and two stable masters for their involvement in match-fixing. Nineteen wrestlers — six in the elite makuuchi division, eight in the second-tire juryo division and five in lower divisions — and one stable master were...
COMMUNITY
Apr 2, 2011

Students whip up multilingual site with disaster information

On the day after the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, a group of students from Tokyo University of Foreign Studies gathered a group of volunteers to set up a multilingual website for foreign residents seeking information about the disaster.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 27, 2011

Love, war and betrayal in old Siam

THE TALE OF KHUN CHANG AND KHUN PHAEN: Siam's Great Folk Epic of Love and War. Translated and edited by Chris Baker and Pasuk Phongpaichit. Silkworm Books, 2010, 970 pp., $60 (hardcover) Those who like their novice monks prim and proper, taming desires, meditating and selflessly engaging in good deeds...
CULTURE / Music
Mar 23, 2011

Japan to the fore at SXSW despite disaster at home

AUSTIN, Texas — Minutes after arriving in downtown Austin, Texas, for the South by Southwest (SXSW) Music Conference and Festival, I ran into a Japanese friend from Tokyo. While we were catching up, an American woman passing by overheard him mention Japan and instantly stopped to shake his hand. "I'm...

Longform

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