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CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 16, 2008

Poetic reasons to take a card game seriously

ONE HUNDRED POETS, ONE POEM EACH: A Translation of the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, by Peter McMillan with a foreword by Donald Keene and an afterword by Eileen Kato. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, 280 pp., with line drawings, $39.50 (cloth) This is a new translation of one of Japan's most famous...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Mar 12, 2008

Cell phones get more playful

Easy listings: Everything about television is changing fast. One old standard for the living room TV set was that you kept a TV listings magazine close by with a listing of programs. These days, even that is changing. Nintendo is helping the process with its new software for the Wii game console the...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 9, 2008

The art of Frances Blakemore: a love affair with Japan

AN AMERICAN ARTIST IN TOKYO: Frances Blakemore — 1906-1997, by Michiyo Morioka. Seattle: The Blakemore Foundation/University of Washington Press, 2007, 200 pp., profusely illustrated, $35 (cloth) Living more than 50 years of her life in Japan, artist Frances Blakemore was a close and sympathetic observer...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 6, 2008

Warm reception may not await iPhone in Japan

Unlike much of the rest of the world, Japan is unlikely to embrace the iPhone, Apple Inc.'s Internet-enabled multimedia mobile phone, said Nahoko Mitsuyama, a telecom analyst at Gartner Japan who attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in February.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 29, 2008

Shomyo no Kai

Shomyo got off to a good start in Japan. The first documented performance of this form of Buddhist sutra chanting, originally from India, was before an audience of 10,000 monks and priests at Nara's Todaiji Temple in 752.
LIFE / Language
Feb 26, 2008

Get into electronic touch with kanji

'A lot of squinting and counting.' That is how Dries Durnez, a Belgian graduate student at Doshisha University in Kyoto remembers how he used to look up kanji, those intricate Chinese-based characters that make up a sizable chunk of the Japanese syllabary.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Feb 25, 2008

Is ethnic passing finally becoming passe?

NEW YORK — Just about the time Bliss Broyard's book "One Drop" came out last year, I received the latest book from my prolific friend Inuhiko Yomota, "Japan's Marrano Literature."
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 11, 2008

Wise man from Japan now the black pope

HONG KONG — An American Maryknoll priest in Hong Kong preached that the greatest blessings in life come when you least expect them, a rain shower on a hot day, a friend unexpectedly turning up, remission in a crippling illness, an inspiring idea just when your brain seemed to have turned into blancmange....
CULTURE / Books
Feb 10, 2008

Risk-taking 'Cure' for J-Horror

THE FILMS OF KIYOSHI KUROSAWA: Master of Fear, by Jerry White. Berkeley, CA: Stonebridge Press, 2007, $19.95 (paper) Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been an international cult favorite since the release of "Cure," his breakthrough film, in 1997. Telling the strange tale of a blanked-out young man who hypnotizes...
Reader Mail
Feb 3, 2008

Whither the 'keitai' culture?

It was refreshing to read the Jan. 27 editorial, "The 'keitai' generation." With Japanese youth already ostracized and socially strangled, the keitai culture adds fuel to the fire. Kids need physical playgrounds not video games, social interactions not text messaging, more human interactions not keitai....
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Jan 30, 2008

Hitachi gives its HD camcorders even more memory; and cars look us in the eye

Going HD: As television sets get more advanced, so too do video camcorders, and that means going high-definition. Hitachi's recent DZ-BD7H camcorder records onto Blu-ray discs alongside its 30-gigabyte hard disk. But Hitachi has upped the stakes with its new DZ-BD9H, out in February and keeping the Blu-ray...
EDITORIALS
Jan 27, 2008

The 'keitai' generation

Nearly 100 percent of high school students, 50 percent of junior high, and a third of those in grammar school now own cell phones. Even the word "cell phone" already sounds out of date, replaced even among foreign residents by "keitai," the shortened form of the Japanese word for portable phone.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 24, 2008

Quixotic quest of a 'revolutionary'

Breaking away from the herd, exploring new artistic directions and assuming time itself will bring the ultimate vindication is one of the great romantic ideas of avant-garde painting in the 20th century. But rather than defining the field for generations ahead, such an artist risks simply becoming obscure,...
LIFE / Language
Jan 22, 2008

Corny corkers add life to lingo, you elephant!

First of two parts
Reader Mail
Jan 10, 2008

Actual data from real people

Regarding Yoichiro Tamanyu's Dec. 16 letter, "Undue public influence on text": Tamanyu seems just like the kind of reader the education ministry wants for its textbooks. He regards the claims by hundreds of Okinawans that there were official orders to commit suicide during the Battle of Okinawa (1945)...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 9, 2008

Clear apology to sex slaves demanded

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda should make a clear apology over Japan's responsibilities regarding wartime sex slaves and lead his Liberal Democratic Party and the Diet to pass a bill recognizing what Japan did to those women, U.S. Congressman Mike Honda said Tuesday in Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 4, 2008

A director's defense

Francois Girard, the Canadian filmmaker who brought to the screen such quirky masterpieces as "Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould" and "The Red Violin," changes his style and goes all out in the grandiose "Silk." His first feature project in 10 years, "Silk" is based on an Italian novel that explores...
COMMENTARY
Dec 30, 2007

Living with war and a warmer planet

LONDON — 2007 was the year in which global warming finally began to be taken seriously. Climate-change deniers were in full retreat, and the realization that we face a long and grave crisis was finally dawning on the general public. However, it remains to be seen whether the world will agree on effective...
Reader Mail
Dec 25, 2007

Japanese aren't the only victims

This is in response to two Dec. 16 letters, "Okinawans know their own history" by Ayako Hosoi and "Undue public influence on text" by Yoichiro Tamanyu. I largely agree with Hosoi and believe a great many Japanese do, too. Now change the word "Okinawa" in Hosoi's letter to "China," and then ask yourself...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 23, 2007

The many faces of a complex city

TOKYO TOKYO TOKYO, photographs by Gorazd Vilhar, text by Charlotte Anderson. IBC Publishing Co., 2007, 144 pp., ¥3,300 (cloth) The very title of this new collection by Gorazd Vilhar and Charlotte Anderson suggests multiple Tokyos. It posits a city so multifaceted that only various versions of it can...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Dec 19, 2007

The Nintendo DS levels up, and phones make kids safer

Double vision: Nintendo's two-screened DS is set to become even more of a must-have product thanks to the DSVision, which will allow users to watch videos and read e-books and manga on the portable console. Users simply download the media to their computer, transfer the content to a microSD card, and...
Reader Mail
Dec 16, 2007

Undue public influence on text

"During World War II, many Okinawan people were forced to commit suicide by the Japanese Army.''
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 9, 2007

Finding the self and losing others

Losing Keiby Suzanne Kamata. Wellfleet, Mass.: Leapfrog Press, 2007, 196 pp., $14.95 (¥1,554) Like France, after World War II Japan has hosted a varied group of expatriate writers. Though no Hemingways or Gertrude Steins have yet emerged, expectation remains.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 2, 2007

Forever passing on ancient secrets of strategy

The Art of War: Sun Zi's Military Methods, foreword by Arthur Waldron. New York: Columbia University Press, 208 pp., with frontispiece, 2007, $19.95 (cloth) Here is a new translation of the sixth-century-B.C. Chinese military manual that has been long seen as the definitive work on strategies and tactics....

Longform

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