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LIFE / WEEK 3
Sep 3, 2006

An 'outsider' speaks out

Later this month, when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi concludes what may have been Japan's most flamboyant premiership ever, pundits aplenty are sure to lavish his five-year term with glowing praise.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 21, 2006

Too little, too late for Russia

LONDON -- In his recent State of the Union speech, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the "most important [matter] for our country is the demographic problem." He said Russia's population is declining by 700,000 a year -- this from a base of 143 million. Russian demographic experts suggest that the...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 20, 2006

Summertime, and the dying is easy

RENDEZVOUS AT KAMAKURA INN by Marshall Browne. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2005, 288 pp., $23.95 (cloth). SAYONARA BAR by Susan Barker. London: Black Swan Books, 2006, 430 pp., £6.99 (paper). For Detective Inspector Hideo Aoki of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, the sprinklings of misfortune have become...
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Aug 15, 2006

Lanterns

Dear Japan Times,
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 30, 2006

New horizons beckon legendary sailor

This story is part of a package on "Growing old healthily." The introduction is here
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jul 25, 2006

Mariko Sakaida

Mariko Sakaida, 33, is a supermarket cashier in Tokyo and the 2003 Best Checker Concours champion, a title she competed for with about 2,000 of the Kanto region's other checkout aces. She won hands-down with polished greetings, flawless scanning, speedy and accurate cashing, and artful packing. She also...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jul 22, 2006

Robert Erickson

Robert Erickson was born in New Jersey in 1943. The following year, his father was fighting in the Pacific War. "He came into Japan with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, and was stationed at the U.S. Army Air Force Base in Atsugi," Erickson said. "He used to send me small Japanese gifts, wrapped in rice paper,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 18, 2006

Preventing suicide and axing overtime pay is a risky mix

More than 30,000 people kill themselves each year in Japan, bestowing the country with the shameful honor of the highest suicide rate in the developed world. To deal with this reality, a group of lawmakers from across the political spectrum pushed an antisuicide bill through the Diet last month to force...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 16, 2006

For Fumiko Hayashi, not every cloud has a silver lining

FLOATING CLOUDS by Fumiko Hayashi, translated by Lane Dunlop. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006, 328 pp., $27.50 (cloth). Toward the end of her life Fumiko Hayashi (1903-1951) said that she did not think her work would outlive her. Happily, she was quite wrong: She remains one of Japan's most...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 13, 2006

The accidental art collector: Unearthing the pure essence of Nature

The painters in your collection are commonly described simply as "Individualist." Can you elaborate on what is meant by that?
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / WALKING THE WARDS
Jul 7, 2006

Reach for the sky

Sumida Ward spans an area that has endured ruinous fires, floods, plagues, and seismic as well as economic jostlings. Residents of this battered part of the city nonetheless have always kept their pride buoyant and their spirits aloft. Even when the chips are down, residents of Sumida Ward insist that...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
May 23, 2006

Yoshimasa Saito

Chef Yoshimasa Saito, 85, is the founder of Kitchen Country, a Hungarian restaurant in Tokyo's Jiyugaoka area. His goulash was once so famous that even celebrities were happy to stand in line for a place at one of his tables. Saito is a true optimist: Neither five years of hard labor in Siberia's notorious...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 20, 2006

Outer turmoil and art as therapy

One of the quickest ways to understand an artist is to look at his self portraits. Van Gogh's reveal his intensity and passion, while Rembrandt's show the calm dignity to which he aspired in his art and his life, and with which he faced aging. But what is to be made of the self portraits of Horst Janssen,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 1, 2006

Poems that speak in essence of time in Tokyo

Aileen Fedullo is a young American poet whose observations of people and life in Tokyo over the past decade ("Plastic seasons scraping against eyes") have been sometimes acerbic, often passionate, always penetrating and more often than not jotted down in coffee shops.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 26, 2006

A new 'hero' for olden times

LIGHTNING IN THE VOID: The Authentic History of Miyamoto Musashi, by John Carroll. Tokyo: Printed Matter Press, 2006, 520 pp., 2,500 yen (paper). Any history calling itself "authentic" posits one that is inauthentic. Here the target is apparent. It is the "Miyamoto Musashi" of Eiji Yoshikawa, published...
LIFE / Language
Mar 21, 2006

Odd use of foreign loan words a sign of the times

Heed this safety warning: "Caution! Don't lean on the gate. The gate would fall down when lean on it. It occurs you trouble." Having eluded the gate, then follow this health instruction: "The Italian word pomodoro means golden fruit. Tomatoes have vitamin, carotene, potash, pectene, and is good for blood...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 17, 2006

Girls make their mark

Should women directors make films that are identifiably, even explicitly, female -- or should they invade traditional male preserves in gender neutral ways? Make action, horror and gross-out comedies for teenage boys? My own feeling is they should make whatever they want to make. My own observation,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Feb 7, 2006

How Japan became No. 1

Who has the global bragging rights to slimness? First there was Mireille Guiliano's book, "French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating for Pleasure," published in 2004. Hot on the heels of this best-seller, Naomi Moriyama threw down the gauntlet less than a year later with "Japanese Women Don't...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Dec 21, 2005

Soaking up surprises while out birding in the buff

Was it really just the other morning that I opened my eyes to behold a thick frost on the ground around me beside Lake Kussharo in the Akan National Park of eastern Hokkaido? It already seems an age ago.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Oct 18, 2005

Girls in need of direction get it from the comics

The business of being a wakai musume (young woman) in this country used to have just one subtext: There were no options. If she didn't get married she was less than a whole person; on the other hand, marriage meant abject obedience to her husband's household and an endless round of bone-crunching chores....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Sep 7, 2005

'Palookaville' gets gallery treatment

I was chatting with old friends in Toronto last week, and our conversation came round to the subject of Japanese manga. I made clear my reservations regarding the popularity of pulp manga in Japan, and bemoaned the fact that many manga artists have even had gallery shows here.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 14, 2005

In the face of Samurai spirit

BLOSSOMS IN THE WIND: Human Legacies of the Kamikaze, by M.G. Sheftall. NAL Caliber, 2005, 480 pp., $24.95 (cloth). For American sailors who served in the Pacific theater during the final two years of World War II, nothing was more terrifying than a kamikaze attack. Grainy black-and-white footage of...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 6, 2005

What not to do in Japan: die

As a veteran resident approaching his 28th year in Japan, I would like to offer some simple advice to tourists, newbies and fellow graybeards as well. Which is:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 3, 2005

New dimensions in dance

Noism is a veritable supernova in the rapidly expanding universe of Japanese contemporary dance. It burst on the scene in 2004 as the residential company of the Niigata Ryutopia Theater, two years after its founder, 30-year-old Jo Kanamori, returned from Europe.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jul 13, 2005

Interesting times in China

Chinese contemporary art made a splash in the late 1990s with the so-called Mao Goes Pop movement, which broke big among Western gallerygoers and collectors.
EDITORIALS
Jul 10, 2005

Terrorism in London

The purpose of terrorism is to terrorize: to scare or intimidate a society. The perpetrators of the bombings in London on Thursday may claim to have some lofty purpose, but attacks on ordinary citizens are barbaric, pure and simple. And, once again, the murderers have failed: They have not broken or...
COMMENTARY
May 30, 2005

Japan's paradox of wealth

On his first visit to Japan in 1995, French sociologist Jean Baudrillard came up with a paradoxical hypothesis that Japan was affluent because Japanese were poor. Acknowledging that he was not an expert on Japanese affairs, Baudrillard made the suggestion in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun after...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 22, 2005

Clifton Karhu's years in print

KARHU @ 77: A Personal Tribute, by Mary and Norman Tolman, bilingual text: English & Japanese. Tokyo: Abe Publishing, Ltd., 2004, 124 pp., 77 full-page color prints, 6,500 yen (cloth). Last November Clifton Karhu, Japan's most famous foreign resident artist, turned 77 years of age, and his dealer, Norman...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 18, 2005

A woman scorned

The continuing shock appeal of "Medea" by Euripides (480-406 B.C.), is not simply due to its dramatization of infanticide and the rage of a woman who has been scorned by her lover, but also because it touches on other universal themes such as the perennial position of underdogs in society, and how they...

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