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CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Dec 8, 2000

Hanayo's gift wrapped in seductive complexity

With her mix of artifice, artistic discipline and sexual promise, no traditional figure is more ambiguous than the geisha.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 8, 2000

Flood of goods from China an eye-opener for Indians

NEW DELHI -- China's invasion of India in 1962 was perhaps less of a humiliation for India than Beijing's latest attempt at capturing its market.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Dec 7, 2000

Yahata keeps the Bunnies hopping

You might say Shin Yahata is the Tom Jones of the Japan Ice Hockey League. And while he has yet to experience women tossing their underwear at him as he tools around the ice for the Kokudo Bunnies, it may only be a matter of time.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Dec 7, 2000

Counting down to Christmas in gold and silver

When you're getting into a Christmas mood, nothing expresses this festive state better than sparkly, shimmery, glimmery things, and when it comes to buying special gifts from the beauty realm, there is plenty of that sparkly stuff out there to choose from.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 7, 2000

SMAP star finds true love, new role

When the public recently learned that 28-year-old idol Takuya Kimura was marrying singer Shizuka Kudo, who is already four months pregnant with his child, the SMAP-man's image immediately changed from sex symbol to . . . well, actually, the image still seems to be under construction.
JAPAN
Dec 5, 2000

Columnist feels 'stronger' despite living with HIV

Patrick Bommarito is a 35-year-old openly gay American who lives in Tokyo.
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Dec 5, 2000

Audio Active beams down the space dub

Masa of Audio Active has gone AWOL. I'm at the new offices of his management company, Beatink, in Shibuya. Tae, who arranged the interview, is refilling my coffee cup and apologizing, telling me that the main man is not answering his keitai and nobody knows where the hell he is.
BUSINESS
Dec 4, 2000

World's tallest building planned in South Korea

South Korea's Lotte Group is to construct the tallest building in the world -- nearly one-third as tall again as the highest building in Japan, the Landmark Tower in Yokohama -- at a cost of some 1.2 trillion won, over $1 billion.
EDITORIALS
Dec 3, 2000

Handsome is as handsome does

What would we do without social scientists? Creeping about with their clipboards and calculators, they are forever coming up with solemn, statistic-studded pronouncements about things so obvious we were practically born knowing them. And yet there is something satisfying about having our assorted prejudices...
SOCCER / J. League
Dec 3, 2000

First leg ends scoreless

YOKOHAMA -- One of the arguments against the J. League having a two-stage format is that the first-stage champion spends the entire second stage coasting.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 2, 2000

Lack of leadership doomed climate talks

"We almost had it, we were close but there is no deal," said British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott as he left a last-ditch effort among European Union countries to agree on a deal with the United States that would salvage the Kyoto Protocol climate-change negotiations. The U.S. proposal had major...
CULTURE / Art
Dec 2, 2000

Treasures of ancient China

Until the 16th century, when the first Europeans reached these shores, China had, for over 1,000 years, been the sole foreign influence on the development of Japanese culture. Some of this influence had been refracted through Korea, but Korea itself was in a position similar to Japan's: a recipient of...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Dec 2, 2000

The new American autism

George W. Bush, Al Gore or civil war? This is the question being asked now by alarmists, especially those with a taste for theatrical overstatement.
JAPAN
Dec 1, 2000

Opponents sidetrack suffrage debate

The ongoing debate on a bill to grant foreigners voting rights is being sidetracked by opponents who claim the issue can be resolved by amending the nation's naturalization policy.
CULTURE / Music
Dec 1, 2000

In search of the turntable tingle

It made perfect sense for French beat-head Kid Loco to dedicate one of his albums to both Jimi Hendrix and Andrew Weatherall. In the techno scene, Weatherall dwells in just as lofty a realm as Hendrix does in the rock world.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 30, 2000

With election at a stalemate, coverage shifts into overkill

As is usually the case when I'm in California, the talk turned to real estate. A 75-year-old retiree told me exactly how much it cost him to buy all the cacti surrounding his pool. A stockbroker from Seattle said the house she recently bought was originally owned by Col. Tom Parker and had a TV room...
SOCCER / J. League
Nov 30, 2000

Alex: Dreadlocks in deadlock at S-Pulse

SHIMIZU, Shizuoka Pref. -- It's an image that sticks very firmly in the mind. Sixty seconds into a crucial game against the Yokohama F. Marinos, a brilliant 60-meter pass out of defense by Kazuyuki Toda catches a flurry of dreadlocks on the run.
JAPAN
Nov 29, 2000

Mori sympathizes with water-tosser

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who has come under fire a number of times for making controversial remarks, on Tuesday expressed sympathy for a lawmaker facing suspension from the Diet.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 29, 2000

Caring more and judging less: fighting AIDS with compassion

"What you need is a hooker!"
LIFE / Travel
Nov 29, 2000

Pilgrimage to Chiba's stone daibutsu

KYONAN, Chiba Pref. -- Finding the perfect, companionable Buddha can become an obsession. Foreigners living in Asia are often struck by this calm, enlightened face; its features contrast sharply with the figures of Western religious art and their often contrived depictions of the ecstasy of Christian...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 28, 2000

Miserable every step of the way

REDISCOVERING NATSUME SOSEKI, with the first English translation of "Travels in Manchuria and Korea." Introduction and translation by Inger Sigrun Brodey and Sammy I. Tsunematsu. Folkestone, Kent: Global Books, 2000, 155 pp., 24 b/w plates, 2,950 yen. In the autumn of 1909, Natsume Soseki, already...
MORE SPORTS
Nov 28, 2000

The charm of an autocratic Frenchman

The big mistake many Japanese people make with Philippe Troussier is thinking he doesn't have a sense of humor. If he didn't, he probably wouldn't have survived over two years of dealing with the Japan Football Association.
JAPAN
Nov 28, 2000

Fujimori staying in home of Nippon Foundation chief

Ousted Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori has been staying at the house of popular writer Ayako Sono in Tokyo's Ota Ward, Sono told a hastily arranged press conference Monday.
JAPAN
Nov 27, 2000

DPJ's Kan raps Nonaka's remarks

Democratic Party of Japan Secretary General Naoto Kan on Sunday criticized his counterpart in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Hiromu Nonaka, for saying the defeat of a no-confidence motion against the Cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori does not mean his Cabinet has the public's confidence.
EDITORIALS
Nov 26, 2000

Emissaries with feet of clay

Sometimes there is nothing for it but to send out the troops. Doubtless frustrated by the slow pace of progress toward unification with its "renegade province" of Taiwan, China last week announced plans to do just that. A small force of soldiers, it said, is being prepared to cross the Formosa Strait...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Nov 26, 2000

Sweet potato season brings bloody good fun

These days I can see women on our island, all over 80-years old, carting piles of sweet potatoes in wheel barrows from their gardens to their homes. Japanese sweet potatoes are the size of hand grenades and have what look like fuses on the ends. I always think of artillery when I see piles of sweet potatoes....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 26, 2000

Visual abstractions in old-fashioned language

Imagine the gentle good humor to be found in the name Michael England but being, say, Scottish. In fact England's mother is Irish and his father Welsh, so quite the national conundrum. "Do I think of myself as Gaelic? Only when drinking and dancing. First and foremost I'm a painter."
JAPAN
Nov 25, 2000

Nonaka justifies remarks as 'pep talk'

Hiromu Nonaka, secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party, on Friday said his earlier comments that rejection of the no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori did not prove public trust in his administration were only meant to "encourage."

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat