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COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 13, 2011

Will trickle-down class discrimination rob Britain of what's so great?

Britain may be broken, but London is hot. A recent trip to the city exhilarated me.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 21, 2011

'Heartbreaker'

You can take a French boy out of France, but you can't take France out of the French boy. Usually — but this time, the formula doesn't apply, because nifty French romance "Heartbreaker" has all the trappings à la Française but ends up being a glossily plasticized Hollywood-style product.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Oct 18, 2011

Greenthumb plants 'kolonihave' seed

Jens Jensen makes almost anything he needs for his weekend life from scratch, from a doorknob to a window frame to a small wooden hut.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 9, 2011

Early days of Ayako Koshino; miracle-worker maid; CM of the week: Japan Tobacco

Last Monday, NHK's latest six-month asa-dora (morning drama series) started. "Carnation" (NHK-G, Mon.-Sat., 8:45 a.m.) is a fictionalized version of the early life of Ayako Koshino, one of Japan's first Western-style fashion designers, who emerged during the Taisho Era (1912-26) and gave birth to three...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 9, 2011

Television's skewed version of poverty

The Occupy Wall Street demonstrations currently taking place in New York continue to garner more and more attention from the American media, which mostly ignored the movement when it began several weeks ago. Now everybody in America who reads a newspaper or watches TV news understands that the protesters...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 30, 2011

'Hayabusa'

When Hayabusa, a Japanese satellite sent to collect soil samples from a distant asteroid, returned safely to Earth in June 2010, many Japanese felt an excitement and pride more akin to a World Cup win than an event that, abroad, was a one-day news story to all but space geeks.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Sep 30, 2011

Average Joes become champions on 'Sasuke'

"Pole dancer! Pole dancer!! Pole dancer!!!" From the bellowing announcement thumping through the speakers, you might think we're in a night club. We're not. But, without doubt, the location is just as fabled as many nocturnal haunts, and the atmosphere is just as electric.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Sep 27, 2011

Jamaica coffee, music recipe for success

Yukiko Ariga, 39, a Tokyo native, visited Jamaica, where her friend was living, twice on holiday because she loved reggae music. Eventually, she decided that she wanted to do something different in her life, so she went to live and work in the Caribbean nation in 1998.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 3, 2011

American trumpeter makes his horn sing in Kansai clubs

On a Sunday in early August, American trumpeter James Barrett led his band through a set featuring rhythmic jazz and world music beats as part of the Saiin Music Festival in western Kyoto.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 2, 2011

Kyoko Kagawa retrospective looks back at Japan's golden age of cinema

Actress Kyoko Kagawa has starred in some of Japan's most successful films, over an impressive acting career that has spanned more than 60 years. She was the First Lady during the so-called golden age of the Japanese film industry in the 1950s and '60s, appearing in such classics as 1953's "Tokyo Monogatari...
LIFE / Language
Aug 29, 2011

Japanese humor: more universally funny than you think

Japanese comedy gets a bad rap. Foreigners either knock it for being too silly and too focused on slapstick or too pun-based and difficult to understand.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 28, 2011

Star's exit shows it's not what you know — but who

If you asked anyone in the world with access to any sort of media what last week's big news story was, they would probably say Libya. If you asked the same question of similarly connected people in Japan, they would probably say the retirement of comedian Shinsuke Shimada. The fall of Tripoli didn't...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 24, 2011

Unraveling the evolution of modern Japan

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF JAPANESE CULTURE AND SOCIETY. Edited by Victoria and Theodore Bestor with Akiko Yamagata. Routledge, 2011, 325 pp. (hardcover) This is a tremendous book and should jump the queue of all those books on contemporary Japan you have been intending to read. The editors deserve kudos...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 25, 2011

'Reluctant' musician blows success his way with horn

Over half his lifetime ago, reluctant horn player Jonathan Hammill, at 15, slumped in the back seat of the family car. Sweaty and bored on a family trip to his grandparents' house in Florida, Hammill watched as his mother impulsively popped in a tape his music teacher had given him as encouragement at...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jun 4, 2011

The home fires — burning out of control

American poet Walt Whitman once said that if anything was sacred, the human body was sacred.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 2, 2011

Fired-up tales of ceramics in wonderland

Craft was maligned in Japan's Meiji Era (1868-1912) as the transposition of Western aesthetic theory denigrated it in relation to grand ideas of "fine art." All the while, though, it was an important export industry and a core component of Japan's contributions to various world expositions. It became...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 19, 2011

8otto lively up themselves again

Osaka's 8otto have a new album, a new label and a new mindset.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
May 15, 2011

Japan's renegade hero gives Saipan new hope

Graciano Lisua doesn't look like someone who would get too worked up about ghosts. Yet superstition, says the broad-shouldered, barrel-chested Chomorron as he leans on his machete, is of great import for the inhabitants of the Mariana Islands.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 8, 2011

Hisashi Inoue's great legacy is just the ticket to inspire our best efforts

A beautiful cherry-blossom tree stands right beside the sento (public bath) I religiously go to, and its top branch hangs over an opening in the roof. In early April, petals were falling from the branch down into the water, which comes out of the ground the color of strong coffee.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
May 1, 2011

Atsuko Muraki: Fighter for justice

Atsuko Muraki was thrown into the public spotlight in 2009, when she was head of the Equal Employment, Children and Families Bureau at the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
May 1, 2011

Rethinking Tohoku's rebuilding

The March 11 megaquake and tsunami, and the ongoing disaster at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant that they triggered, has sideswiped all of us. Nagging worries about the dangers of the radioctivity leaking from that crippled facility and concern for those brave souls striving to tackle the plant's...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: FASHION
Apr 14, 2011

Bouncing back and reaching higher

A blast of fashion literature
Japan Times
LIFE
Mar 20, 2011

The Bronze Bonze

Yoshiyuki Yoneda had a problem. As chief priest of a temple in Kyoto, he ministered to the spiritual and ritual needs of his local community. But like many other clerics in Japan's ancient capital, he also wanted to attract fee-paying tourists to his temple.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 13, 2011

Of goldfish and food demons

A RIOT OF GOLDFISH, by Kanoko Okamoto. Translated by J. Keith Vincent. Hesperus Press, 2010, 136 pp., £8.99 (paper) Between 1929 and 1932, the poet Kanoko Okamoto traveled through Europe and the U.S. with her husband, the cartoonist Ippei Okamoto, her son and two male retainers. The group visited the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 11, 2011

'Rakugo Monogatari (Rakugo Story)'

Rakugo, which might be described as traditional Japanese sit-down comedy, once had a certain snob appeal among foreigners here. If you could boast that your hobby was rakugo, as either a fan or participant, you were saying you had summited the Mount Fuji of the Japanese language. (The Everest to me was...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 9, 2011

Japanese women and the art of being alone

One of the biggest changes in Tokyo women over the past five or so years has been their new-found capacity for solitude. Tokyo joshi (女子, young girls, single women or any female who sees herself as being a relatively free-spirited individual) had been notorious — even among themselves — for their...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 4, 2011

'Chatroom'

Speaking strictly from a J-cinema fan/patriot point of view, "Chatroom" is a cause for celebration. It's set in London, stars some of the brightest young talent in the United Kingdom, centers around the timely topic of social networking — and the whole thing is directed by Japanese horror meister Hideo...
Japan Times
CULTURE
Feb 4, 2011

Anime's late, late show

A sea gull arcs through the clouds and swoops over a house perched high on a clifftop. The sound of waves can be heard breaking far below as a young boy sits down for breakfast across from two robots who, it turns out, are doppelgangers of his parents. In the future, he later informs us, "you can get...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 23, 2011

Mystery at a crossroads of continents

By the time I reached the small town of Palmyra, way out in the middle of the Syrian desert, I had become somewhat accustomed to the ways of the locals.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 21, 2011

A shot of Ardbeg in temple grounds

There's a faint scent of incense as you crawl through a knee-high door into a pebble-filled corridor that leads into a white igloo-like space, just big enough to fit three people. "This is my meditation room," says Akiyoshi Taniguchi, the curator who is introducing Kurenboh, a tiny modern gallery located...

Longform

A man offers prayers at Hebikubo Shrine in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. The shrine is one of several across the country dedicated to the snake.
Shed your skin and reinvent yourself in the Year of the Snake