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Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Mar 25, 2009

Programmed for combat or for pleasure

While Japan is a technological powerhouse, it is usually a follower and not a pioneer.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / ART BRIEF
Mar 20, 2009

"Hiroshima"

Vacant, Omotesando
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 20, 2009

Photographer Sugimoto strikes a Stone Age deal with U2

Just two minutes into an interview with artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, it became clear why the famously discreet 61-year-old had agreed to talk about rock band U2's use of one of his photographs on the cover of their latest album, "No Line on the Horizon."
CULTURE / Books
Mar 15, 2009

Invoking 17th-century demons and desires

On the opening day of Shin-Yoshiwara — Edo's new pleasure quarters — Matsunaga Seiichiro, a 26-year-old swordsman stands on the Asakusa Nihon Embankment and looks across at the city. He then descends into streets filled with music, danger, alcohol and prostitutes, and thus begins his journey to manhood...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2009

Aso's kanji conundrums spur self-reflection, textbook sales

Reading Japanese isn't easy — even for Japanese.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Mar 4, 2009

Top technology comes in small packages

Touch and go: Asus virtually created the burgeoning market for netbook computers with its groundbreaking Eee PC lineup. Whether it can give the demand for touch-screen desktop machines the same sort of boost is open for debate. But the Taiwanese maker is giving it a shot with its Eee Top 1602, due out...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 28, 2009

Power of words eludes politicians

Japanese prime ministers aren't known for the impact they make with their words, or straight talk with the public.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Feb 18, 2009

A bigger, better netbook — and not quite an iPod killer

Touched up: Korean innovator iriver is firing off both barrels with its latest personal media player, the P20, a model it hopes will take some market share away from Apple's iPod touch. The P20 is a chunky device with impressive hardware credentials. Released in Japan as an 80-gigabyte model, the PMP...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 8, 2009

Revealing artistic shades of pink in Japanese cinema

Porno gets little respect as a film genre in the West, with its makers relegated to a ghetto that few escape. How many A-list directors in Hollywood, past or present, started by making even the milder sort of sex stuff seen on cable?
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 1, 2009

Obama magic unlikely to work with India

LONDON — While the rest of the world swoons over the new U.S. president, India is conspicuous by the discomfort that the new political dispensation is generating in the corridors of power in New Delhi.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jan 24, 2009

Kaka-Bellamy tandem had unique potential

LONDON — The main sadness about Kaka not joining Manchester City is that there will almost certainly never be a conversation between the AC Milan maestro and Craig Bellamy, who signed from West Ham for £16 million.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 22, 2009

Magnetic speaker's words resonate with masses

When Tsutomu Toyama first read Barack Obama's November victory speech, he was deeply impressed, both by the choice of language and the message conveyed.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 11, 2009

Egg-on-face bloopers can make a yolk or worse of any translation

Many readers will be familiar with the infamous guarantee said to have been spotted on the menu of a Hong Kong restaurant: "All the water used in our soups has been personally passed by the chef." Some may also have heard of that creepy assurance printed in the catalog for an art exhibition during the...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 5, 2009

Disgraced DPJ member dies in apparent suicide

Former Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Hisayasu Nagata, 39, died in a hospital after falling from an apartment building in Kitakyushu in an apparent suicide, a local police source said Sunday.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 4, 2009

The beauty of imperfection and much more

"Wabi-sabi," which is two words combined, represents in abbreviated form an elusive concept that is key to the understanding of traditional Japanese aesthetics. Indeed, rather than a single concept, it is a cluster of ideas that permeate artistic practice in Japan, or at least did so in the past. Now,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 1, 2009

Words as images

On a single white sheet, the kanji for "snow" — yuki — printed in black, is repeated exactly 1,352 times in a symmetrical grid formation. A 1970 work by Niikuni Seiichi, "flowery snow" (1970) is at once calligraphy, poem and picture. In the Chinese literati tradition — which was influential on...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Dec 20, 2008

Blackburn makes smart decision by naming Allardyce new manager

LONDON — We will probably never know why Sunderland did not consider Sam Allardyce to be the right man to succeed Roy Keane, who resigned (by mobile phone text to chairman Niall Quinn) earlier this month.
COMMENTARY
Dec 19, 2008

Chinese reporters push bad-news envelope

HONG KONG — Strange things are happening in the Chinese media. Articles that would normally be expected to be censored have appeared in the establishment press, exposing the possibly illegal behavior of Communist Party officials.
EDITORIALS
Dec 17, 2008

Trade talks run out of steam

Last month, world leaders met to plot a response to the global financial crisis. As part of their package of recommendations, they called for progress in trade talks to jump-start the faltering economy. Apparently, that was just empty rhetoric. Last week, Mr. Pascal Lamy, director general of the World...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / BEST OF BOOKS: 2008
Dec 14, 2008

Ready for a little Yuletide reading?

YOJOKUN: Life Lessons From a Samurai, by Kaibara Ekiken (Kodansha International)
CULTURE / Books
Nov 23, 2008

Deadly disconnect in the 'Real World'

REAL WORLD by Natsuo Kirino, translated by Philip Gabriel. Vintage, 2008, 224 pp., £7.99 (paper) A high school student, unhappy with life, bludgeons his mother to death with a baseball bat. He is calm and appears removed, almost abstracted from the events. He leaves the scene and disappears into the...
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / INSIDE LOOK
Nov 22, 2008

Matsui struggles as season begins

NEW YORK — Editor's note: Entering this weekend, Columbia University men's basketball team is 1-1. The Lions defeated Fordham University 65-62 on Nov. 14 and lost a 71-50 contest to Seton Hall University on Nov. 16.)
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 15, 2008

Taking a structural stance on culture

It was at the groundbreaking ceremony of Osaka's Breeze Tower in the spring of 2006 that architect Yuichiro Edagawa met a German woman by the name of Sybille Fanelsa and happened to tell her about his cherished plan to publish a photo book that would introduce the splendor of Japanese culture and tradition...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Nov 11, 2008

Nova refugees: Where are they now?

'All the schools are closed.'
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 4, 2008

Reappreciating Okinawa's languages, while there's still time

The saying "a language is a dialect with an army" is a bit worn out in linguistic circles. A change in how it is uttered might save it, though. How about "gengo ndi yyu shē guntai muchuru hōgen yaibin" (言語んでぃっゆしぇー軍隊むちゅる方言やいびん)? This is how you would say it...
COMMENTARY
Nov 3, 2008

Different playbooks aimed at balancing Asia's powers

NEW DELHI — The Japan-India security agreement signed recently marks a significant milestone in building Asian power equilibrium. A constellation of Asian states linked by strategic cooperation and with shared common interests is becoming critical to instituting stability at a time when major shifts...

Longform

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