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COMMENTARY / World
Jan 5, 2004

What a liberal/conservative view means

MUNCIE, Indiana -- The new year is a good time to examine current applications and definitions of liberalism and conservatism. Writers to the letters section of newspapers often pen their missives in absolutes with few illustrations of what their ideological pronouncements mean or imply for citizens,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 4, 2004

Informed feelings elicit the essence of Japan

There are many good books on Japan (as well as a number of bad ones), so how do you decide which ones are best? The decision is subjective but, objectively, I think that the best are informed with a certain peculiarity, and it is in this that I would find their pre-eminence. "There is but one way of...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2003

High-rise denizens wage effort to regain sense of community

Tokyo, for many of its inhabitants, is a faceless concrete jungle lacking any sense of community, unlike the days when close-knit row-house neighborhoods were the norm before the capital exploded into a soaring, postwar urban sprawl.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 10, 2003

Is it a film? Is it a play? No, it's cinetheatre

Ever had a dream that was so real it made you lose your grip on reality? One that turned into hallucinations the following day? One that drove you close to madness?
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 24, 2003

Koizumi fails to evict LDP elder

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi tried Thursday to persuade two octogenarian former prime ministers to retire from politics because of their age, effecting a quiet exit in the case of Kiichi Miyazawa but running up against a brick wall in the shape of Yasuhiro Nakasone.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 26, 2003

Lee's intensity hardly dulled by age

HONG KONG -- A rare and remarkable Asian leader passed a milestone on Sept. 16. Former Singapore Prime Minister, now Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew celebrated his 80th birthday. He has been running Singapore, in substance if not in title, since his People's Action Party swept the polls in 1959.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Aug 27, 2003

Tabaimo pulls ahead of 'fun art' pack

Although she has only recently turned 28, I am starting to think Tabaimo is one of Japan's most important artists. Here's why.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 6, 2003

O, what a tangled web we weave

Though nowhere near as all-encompassing as the Renaissance in Europe, the closed, feudal world of shogunal Japan did throw up a few periods of vigorous artistic expression in the more than two and a half control-freak centuries it lasted. One of these was about 200 years ago, from 1804-1830, during what...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / THE SECOND ROOM
Jun 20, 2003

Solstice Music Festival off the calendar; Shared honors for 2002; new releases

It's like watching the lights go out at the stadium. You know, that low metallic "Klung!" "Klung!" "Klung!" as the off switches are hit in succession.
Japan Times
JAPAN / IN WITH THE NEW
Jun 5, 2003

Seiko Noda now a force in her own right — and name

Seiko Noda, a Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker in the House of Representatives, wrote in her elementary school composition class that her dream was to become a politician -- and ultimately prime minister.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Jun 1, 2003

You gotta walk the walk, talk the talk

DJ Seen does have tales to tell. After I get all five members of Pico System to play a game in which they have to decide what kind of animal each of the others is most like (this does, believe me, occasionally yield some illuminating responses), Seen is voted a cheetah. Maybe it's got something to do...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
May 29, 2003

"Power and Stone," "Rome"

"Power and Stone," Alice Leader, Puffin Books; May 2003; 249 pp. There's so much more to history than memorizing dates.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 25, 2003

Art that's sweet enough to eat

In early summer, they might evoke dewy irises and swirling water. In autumn, plume grass trembling in the wind. Quite obviously, Japanese sweets are more than a mouthful of sweetness: They evoke the poetry and beauty of life itself.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 25, 2003

The rise and fall of the Romanovs remembered

First of two parts At its height, in the middle of the 19th century, the Russian Empire ruled by the Romanovs covered more than one-sixth of the surface of the globe. It was a glorious era for a dynasty that had sprung from obscure beginnings, when in 1613, in a bid to end years of civil unrest at home...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 21, 2003

The first Western master of woodblock

A Western man clad in a kimono sits in his tatami-floored studio with his paintings strewn about him. In the background a shamisen stands in a wooden box, its neck jutting upward.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Apr 27, 2003

Time after time, show after show

Though Cyndi Lauper is much more than a one-hit wonder, her sudden stardom in 1984 made the subsequent lack of fireworks in her career seem as if she'd put everything she had into her debut album, "She's so Unusual." It's not entirely true, but in any case that LP went platinum five times in the United...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Apr 18, 2003

The air is clear and the food gives cheer

Now in my early 30s, I find myself no longer able to just pick up and head off for a break. Ten years ago, my friends and I would take off anywhere, just about anytime. One of our last considerations — being in motion was the first — was what to do when we got there or what to eat when the time came....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 5, 2003

Not just another pretty spaz

Singer-songwriter Rhett Miller, who is in Tokyo for a few days plugging his album "The Instigator" is feeing encouraged. "I told my manager I wanted to come back in May with a band," he says between sips of green tea at the offices of Warner Music Japan. During a solo acoustic showcase the night before...
LIFE / Travel
Feb 23, 2003

Austere monks in a lavish monastery

It seems at first that they are not of this world, these monks living out their lives of mountain seclusion. They glide purposefully -- as if on some devout mission from on high -- through the monastery corridors. At times, they flit by at great speed, their black tunics and dark blue robes swishing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Feb 12, 2003

Mountain man who walked the path of art

"Born alone, will die alone; come alone, will be gone alone; study alone, walk alone": This is said to have been the mantra of one of Japan's greatest 20th-century artists, the boisterous, arrogant and brilliant Rosanjin Kitaoji (1883-1959).
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Feb 3, 2003

"The Wish List," "Winnie's Magic Wand"

"The Wish List," Eoin Colfer, Puffin Books; 2002; 200 pp. If you couldn't get enough of Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series, put this book on your wish list.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jan 19, 2003

Paradise retained

Palawan is variously cited as the Philippines' "last frontier," "the world's best-kept secret" and "a nature-lover's dream."
Japan Times
SOCCER / World cup
Jan 19, 2003

Perseverance, positive outlook carrying Inamoto

Scoring an important goal obviously affects the outcome of a game. But it also sometimes changes the scorer's career -- as in the case with Japan and Fulham midfielder Junichi Inamoto.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 4, 2003

Banish bad habits with hypnotherapy and healing

Erik Bragg had said to look for a beard and a big blue coat. And here he is, though not quite as hirsute as imagined, and wearing an anorak rather than the more theatrical style somehow envisaged. He has traveled in from Kashiwa, in Chiba Prefecture, where he practices as a certified clinical hypnotherapist...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 22, 2002

Kazuko Shiraishi does it her way

KAZUKO SHIRAISHI: Let Those Who Appear. Translated by Samuel Grolmes and Yumiko Tsumura. New Directions, 2002, 49 pp., $12.95 (paper). I've met the poet Kazuko Shiraishi three times, on each of her visits to New York. Shiraishi made her latest trip to this city in the spring of 2002, to mark the publication...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 20, 2002

The dangerous art of living quietly

Oriza Hirata's 1995 Kishida Drama Award-winning "Tokyo Notes" opened in Japan for the first time in four years Sunday, after touring overseas to critical acclaim. Now being staged at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Kinshicho by Seinendan, the company Hirata founded in 1983, this portrait of...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 10, 2002

The mismeasure of Emperor Meiji

EMPEROR OF JAPAN: Meiji and His World 1852-1912, by Donald Keene. Columbia University Press: New York, 2002, 922 pp. + xiii + 18 pp. of illustrations, $39.50 (cloth) Like any great story, history prefers that its leading men (and women) have some sparkle, whether a foible (Henry VIII's marital tangles;...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 9, 2002

Social responsibility a safe investment

One Akiyama thrived in the fast-paced, high-stakes world of finance for 18 years, working as a U.S. government bond trader for several brokerages in Tokyo and New York. Until about a year ago.
COMMUNITY
Nov 2, 2002

Design consultant draws on stores of good sense

If you see a conservatively dressed Englishman pop a plastic bag over his head as it begins to rain, it's most probably Tim Toomey: "I'd rather turn up for a meeting dry and comfortable than arrive sopping wet in some misguided attempt to preserve my image."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 27, 2002

Coldfeet raise pop to a higher plane

"Sure, we want to be famous," Coldfeet's chanteuse, Lori Fine, says a little defensively in the faux tavern environs of Shibuya's TGIFridays, stabbing at a half-eaten pizza quesadilla. Fine is a former model and has the effortless poise and posture of one -- minus the myopic egotism.

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