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JAPAN
Jun 7, 2003

Official denies fiddling with text of Koizumi-Bush talks

Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka denied Friday that he attempted to delete the word "pressure" from documents prepared to brief reporters on the outcome of last month's Texas summit between Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and U.S. President George W. Bush.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 1, 2003

The flowered margin

TATTOOS OF THE FLOATING WORLD, by Takahiro Kitamura; foreword by Donald Richie. Hotei Publishing, 2003, 120 pp., 2,600 yen (cloth). In an age excessively concerned with outward appearances, official disapproval of tattoos in Japan is perhaps understandable. The Japanese are less seriously spooked by...
EDITORIALS
Jun 1, 2003

In the hands of the language police

A nyone interested in the health of either the English language or American education might already have caught wind of a book that caused a stir when it was published in the United States in April. For those who haven't, "The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn," by Professor...
COMMENTARY
May 26, 2003

French reforms under fire

PARIS -- Six weeks ago, his strong opposition to the war in Iraq won French President Jacques Chirac overwhelming support in the polls. Today he has been forced to turn away from the international scene and face a rapidly developing social crisis centered on pension and education reforms.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 22, 2003

Reading the mind through the face

Victorian Englishmen were not known for feeling comfortable displaying their emotions. Charles Darwin, exceptional in so many other ways, was like his countrymen in this regard, and considered the display of emotions in adult humans to be vestigial, something left over from our evolutionary past. That...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
May 21, 2003

Who, what, when, where -- why?

My good friend Tatsumi Orimoto, now one of Japan's best-known artists, has made his mother a central subject in his work for the last several years. This, he once explained to me, is because she always supported him in his creative efforts -- efforts that are, in a word, unorthodox: in one, he famously...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 18, 2003

Top-floor Tokyo

It was 10:30 on a cloudy weekday morning in May, and 40-year-old Masakazu Meguro and his coworkers who make up Calcio Atleta las Manos were happily spending the morning of their precious day off to playing "futsal."
LIFE / Digital / NETWISE
May 15, 2003

Is your wireless network airtight?

I'm sitting with my ThinkPad in a Starbucks near Akasaka. The cafe isn't advertised as a WLAN hot spot, so I'm pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying high-speed Internet access courtesy of some nearby wireless network.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 9, 2003

Camera-phones help DoCoMo to post solid profit

NTT DoCoMo Inc., the nation's top mobile phone firm, said Thursday it posted a group net profit of 212.49 billion yen for the year through March, thanks to strong growth stimulated by camera-equipped handsets.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 4, 2003

Still howling with emotion

HOWLING AT THE MOON: Poems and Prose of Hagiwara Sakutaro, translation and introduction by Hiroaki Sato. Kobenhavn & Los Angeles, Green Integer, 2002, 316 pp., $11.95, (paper) Hagiwara Sakutaro is one of Japan's most important, and most cherished poets. His first volume of poetry, "Howling at the Moon"...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 23, 2003

Aum flailing amid vacuum left by Asahara

In early February, a 37-year-old former member of Aum Shinrikyo launched a Web site featuring transcripts of past lectures by the cult's founder, Shoko Asahara.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 23, 2003

Looking history straight in the face

"I want to live, I do not want to perish gracefully in battle," declares Yamato (Tatsuya Fujiwara), the young hero of Hideki Noda's "Oil."
EDITORIALS
Apr 13, 2003

In search of the real al-Jazeera

The war in Iraq hasn't been easy for nonparticipants such as Japan to sort out. The most obvious villains were also technically the victims, and the perpetrators of hostilities have looked like invaders one minute, liberators the next. Perceptions and judgments could, and still do, shift like the wind....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 13, 2003

Siam's Greek Faulcon

FALCON: At the Court of Siam, by John Hoskin. Bangkok, Asia Books, 2002, 275 pp., 425 Baht (paper) Constantine Phaulkon, a famous Greek adventurer of the 17th century, who had a meteoric rise in King Narai's Siam (former name of Thailand) and an equally dramatic end, seems to continue attracting the...
COMMENTARY
Mar 28, 2003

China's systemic incompetence can sicken world

HONG KONG -- An ugly new strain of atypical pneumonia has medical scientists working overtime in their research laboratories across the world, as they strive to discover why a growing number of patients are now suffering and dying in many nations from this previously unknown virus that is being blamed...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 26, 2003

Secrets of the lost kingdoms of mystery

Mayan civilization flourished and faded more than a millennium ago, and the mystery of its decline has fascinated archaeologists ever since. Although experts debate whether it was a Toltec invasion or the effects of drought that spelled the end of the Maya, all agree that it was the dense jungle that...
JAPAN
Mar 23, 2003

Kyoto water forum opens amid internal wrangling

KYOTO -- A two-day meeting of ministers from 170 countries opened Saturday in Kyoto at the World Water Forum, with delegates making firm promises to deal with the world's water crisis.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Mar 23, 2003

A beautiful day in the life of sound

The phone line buzzes, the electric heater drones and the pitter-patter of rain can be heard in the background. Not the perfect sonic environment for a phone interview, but for Yuko Kitamura, it is perfect.
COMMUNITY
Mar 23, 2003

From ancient to modern

As quintessentially contemporary as manga may seem, the oldest extant manga-style drawings actually date from the eighth-century zare-ga (play pictures), scrawled graffiti-like in the attic of the Horyuji Temple in Nara.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 23, 2003

English text lays bare a secret

Fanc a trip to a not-so-secret but hitherto inaccessible part of Japan?
JAPAN
Mar 20, 2003

Water pushed as human right

KYOTO -- Is access to water a basic human right? This is one of the fundamental questions government delegates to the World Water Forum are grappling with as they prepare for a ministerial conference this weekend.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 16, 2003

A struggle against tyranny

Composed more than 2,000 years ago and first devised for performance in religious festivals, the dramas of Ancient Greece have never lost their powerful relevance. When, for example, a pair of New York-based actresses hit on the idea of a global theatrical protest against war with Iraq, they devised...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 16, 2003

Pictures of peace

VISIONS OF BUDDHIST LIFE, photographs and text by Don Farber, forward by Huston Smith, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, 240 pp., 116 color photos, 36 quadtone photos, $39.95 (cloth) The photographer Don Farber has made his domain (in the words of his publisher) "the beauty and diversity...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / NETWISE
Mar 13, 2003

How to get people to look at your site

It's a simple matter these days to build and host a Web site. What's less simple is getting others -- potential customers, readers and other users -- to find your site among the millions of others already out there. In this column I'll discuss Japanese search engines, particularly how best to use Japanese...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 11, 2003

Beards and the George Bush drum & bass Babylon

The Punchline Comedy Club has again revealed its determination to showcase the cream of Western comedy in Asia, by securing the services of top British comedian Bill Bailey.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Mar 9, 2003

Sordid offspring of Uncle Joe

MOSCOW -- Wednesday was the anniversary of Joseph Stalin's death. The sordid man who for 30 years held the Soviet Union in an iron grip expired 50 years ago, but still casts a long shadow.
COMMENTARY
Mar 9, 2003

Bush will need a quick victory over Iraq

HONOLULU -- Last week U.S. President George W. Bush laid out his vision for the Middle East. For the most part, the text read like any other: It was a stump speech designed to drum up support for "regime change" in Iraq.
JAPAN
Mar 5, 2003

Hearing-impaired man strives to hone sign skills, study at U.S. university

Yuji Sato, who is hearing impaired, has a motto: to be like an "active volcano" as long as he lives.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 2, 2003

Modernization seen from the bottom up

A MODERN HISTORY OF JAPAN FROM TOKUGAWA TIMES TO THE PRESENT, by Andrew Gordon. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, 384 pp., $35 (cloth) In this superb book, by far the best in its genre, Andrew Gordon, director of the Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies at Harvard University, provides a...

Longform

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