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CULTURE / Art
May 30, 2001

From darkness into light

At the turn of the 20th century, Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was one of the most intriguing and original painters in Paris, and his subject matter, the timeless world of myths and dreams, has ensured he is not forgotten. With the current exhibition of his works at the Odakyu Museum in Shinjuku, the curators...
CULTURE / Film
May 16, 2001

A true master in our midst

Tokyo Marigold Rating: * * * * * Director: Jun Ichikawa Running time: 97 minutes Language: JapaneseNow showing Film is art, commerce -- and fashion. Actors, directors and even national cinemas are in vogue one year, out the next. Not long ago the British were hot, now it's the turn of the Chinese....
CULTURE / Film
May 2, 2001

Artcore

There's a scene in "Boogie Nights" in which porno director Jack Horner, played by Burt Reynolds, spells out his life dream: to make a "real movie" with hardcore action, something with a story that would make people want to stay beyond the money shot to find out how it ends.
CULTURE / Music
Apr 22, 2001

Musicians take it back to the bridge

It's Saturday night, and the basement rock 'n' roll club Penguin House in Koenji is packed to bursting. As late-coming guests crowd down the stairs, the performer, Dai Yamamoto, takes the stage and tunes up his instrument.
CULTURE / Film
Apr 11, 2001

Comical Sturm und Drang , all in the family

Rendan Rating: * * * * Director: Naoto Takenaka Running time: 104 minutes Language: JapaneseNow playing "What does woman want?" Freud famously asked -- a question that is just as famously unanswerable. At the dawn of the modern feminist era, however, many women seemed to want what Anais Nin, in a 1974...
EDITORIALS
Mar 18, 2001

A hole in the sky

Sometime this week, space station Mir -- the brightest star in the once mighty Soviet and Russian space program -- will flicker out. After circling the planet for 15 years, at least three times its planned life span, the massive, aging station is scheduled to finally "deorbit" on Tuesday, "give or take...
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Mar 18, 2001

Kan Mikami's 30 years of recording in a box

Kan Mikami has just released a CD box set to celebrate his 30-year recording history, here covered in 19 CDs.
COMMUNITY
Feb 25, 2001

Top industrial designer to lecture on lunchboxes

The ninth-floor room in Tokyo's Mejiro where Kenji Ekuan receives guests is a perfect reflection of his personality. One wall is stacked with diplomas, photos and portraits, all neatly framed but in no particular order. Opposite, floor-to-ceiling glass shelving is crammed with memorabilia and knickknacks...
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Feb 18, 2001

Avant-garde poet tosses Japan a luscious bouquet

The end of last year and the beginning of this one has produced a fine crop of poetry publications. Though each of these volumes deserves its own separate review, happily I'm able to give these works exposure here.
CULTURE / Music
Feb 9, 2001

Richard Thompson defies death and lives to tell

By his own estimate, Richard Thompson played about 100 concerts last year, "which means you're on the road for about 150 days."
MULTIMEDIA / SPORTS SCOPE
Feb 1, 2001

FIFA's football family is fatally dysfunctional

Sepp Blatter, the head of soccer's world governing body FIFA, invariably refers to the world's soccer community as "the football family." Unfortunately, it's a terribly dysfunctional family.
CULTURE / Film
Jan 23, 2001

Lock, stock and instant noodles

Here's a word association game for you. What comes to mind when you hear "Thai cinema?" A blank? Don't worry -- in Japan, you're hardly alone.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 23, 2001

Okinawa's fate through women's eyes

WOMEN OF OKINAWA: Nine Voices from a Garrison Island, by Ruth Ann Keyso. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000, 168 pp., $16.95 (cloth). Ruth Ann Keyso traveled to Okinawa in 1997 to write a history of the island's postwar past. Following conversations with various people on the island, she decided...
CULTURE / Film
Jan 9, 2001

A peep inside the otaku cocoon

Writing about Japanese films in English, I am usually flying below the radar of the local industry -- I can skewer a director's latest triumph on this page and meet him laterat a party secure in the knowledge that he has not the foggiest idea of what I've said about his movie. Once in a while, though,...
CULTURE / Art
Dec 31, 2000

The art of being a farm village

"Grez was an idyllic little place," wrote a Swedish artist in 1884, "offering subjects wherever you looked . . . the river with its watermills and little waterfalls, the sun on white walls, old men in clogs, old women in coifs, girls in the sunshine, hens and ducks, grazing cattle, groves, fields and...
JAPAN
Dec 17, 2000

Tokyo to open parks and zoos for New Year's holiday season

The New Year's holiday season is one of the rare occasions when the hustle and bustle of Tokyo comes to a temporary halt as dwellers of the metropolis leave in droves.
COMMUNITY
Nov 26, 2000

Visual abstractions in old-fashioned language

Imagine the gentle good humor to be found in the name Michael England but being, say, Scottish. In fact England's mother is Irish and his father Welsh, so quite the national conundrum. "Do I think of myself as Gaelic? Only when drinking and dancing. First and foremost I'm a painter."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 21, 2000

Glimpses of long-lost Tokyo

MY ASAKUSA: Coming of Age in Prewar Tokyo. A Memoir, by Sadako Sawamura, translated by Norman E. Stafford and Yasuhiro Kawamura, with an author's note and a foreword by Taichi Yamada. Boston/Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2000, 270 pp., $16.95 Sadako Sawamura was one of Japan's leading character actresses....
CULTURE / Music
Nov 19, 2000

Chaotic, comedic 'Ariadne' shows lighter side of Strauss

Wiener Staatsoper Oct. 22, Filippo Sanjust directing, Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting in Kanagawa Kenmin Hall -- "Ariadne auf Naxos" (libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 1874-1929; music by Richard Georg Strauss, 1864-1949) featuring Waldemar Kmentt, Peter Weber, Agnes Baltsa, Jon Villars, Geert Smits, Heinz...
CULTURE / Art
Nov 18, 2000

A peep into Tokugawa Japan

During the almost two and a half centuries when Japan shunned the rest of the world, the one Western country that remained on nodding terms was the Netherlands. This year the two countries are celebrating 400 years of continuous contact in what must be one of the strangest international relationships...
CULTURE / Art
Sep 24, 2000

The powerful influence of Japan

Western artists of the mid-19th century were both entranced and distracted by their turbulent times. Many sought fresh ways to see the world around them, "savoir voir" as distinct from "savoir faire."
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 1, 2000

Corruption undermines India

In recent weeks, the gentleman's game of cricket has been rocked to its foundations by charges and confessions of match-fixing. A commission of inquiry set up in South Africa has confirmed the fall from grace of former captain Hanse Cronje, once the epitome of professionalism and dedication to God, country...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 27, 2000

Art, enlightenment and empire

THE IDEALS OF THE EAST, by Okakura Kakuzo. Tokyo: ICG Muse Inc., 2000, 250 pp., 1,300 yen.
COMMUNITY
Jun 25, 2000

Don't run for cover, go Zurich Insurance!

Sitting on the swishest sofa ever -- an L-shaped signature design in scarlet leather -- in the lobby of Zurich Insurance, I picked up a book from the sea-green plate-glass coffee table and began reading up on "The Swiss." What should I expect of the president of such a company? Having met any number...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Jun 18, 2000

The end for Kim Jong Il?

My trip to North Korea 11 years ago was one of the most depressing times in my whole life. I have never seen a sadder country. It was not simply an issue of appalling poverty: In 1989, the shelves of stores in Moscow were also barren, and Beijing still sported a maze of miniature slums -- the notorious...
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 4, 2000

Chinese ballet master comes in from the cold

It was too off-the-wall to resist: the chance to meet a Chinese ballet master from Alaska. So we arranged to meet in front of Tokyo's Yotsuya Station (not as easy as it sounds, since he is newly arrived and a stranger to Japan) and find him somewhere to eat. Luckily there was a Chinese restaurant right...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 4, 2000

Canterbury meets Samarkand

LIFE ALONG THE SILK ROAD, by Susan Whitfield. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, 242 pp., 12 color plates, 12 b/w photos, 13 maps, $27.50 (cloth). In the ninth century, music from Kucha was popular all along the Silk Road, from Samarkand to Chang-an. One of its enthusiasts was the Chinese...
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 23, 2000

Housing for human beings: Let natural harmony prevail

Akinori Sagane is a man with a mission, an architect with an idealistic vision of how humans can live in greater harmony with the natural environment.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Mar 19, 2000

Tsutomu Yoshioka

Tsutomu Yoshioka's life has come full circle. In the early 1940s, he was a teenage student at Jiyugakuen, the Freedom School founded in 1921 by Yoshikazu and Motoko Hani. Now he is director of Myonichikan, Jiyugakuen's original buildings, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. The American architect said at...
COMMUNITY
Mar 15, 2000

More than a pit stop in the Hita of the moment

It may not be on the typical tourist itineraries, and its name may sound almost like a home appliance, but Hita is a lovely town. It sprawls between two highland rivers in a lush valley at the back of Oita Prefecture, surrounded by forests and fruit trees. Hita is just 70 minutes from Fukuoka, and easily...

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