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COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 27, 2009

Decade's end abuzz and a-flutter with wist for a warm poetic past

At the end of the year — and, particularly, the end of a decade — an old man's fancy turns, involuntarily, to nostalgia.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Dec 10, 2009

Photographer/filmmaker Kiyotaka Tsurisaki

Kiyotaka Tsurisaki, 42, is a photographer and mondo filmmaker who specializes in shots of corpses. Since 1994, he has taken photos of over 1,000 dead bodies, often chasing police cars to scenes of crimes, accidents and suicides in such countries as Thailand, Russia and Colombia, as well as parts of Palestine....
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Nov 24, 2009

Emperor — poise under public spotlight

This year marks Emperor Akihito's 20th year on the Chrysanthemum Throne.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 18, 2009

Slippery slope of doctor-assisted euthanasia

PRINCETON — Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the "slippery slope": once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be able to limit the killing to those who want to die.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Oct 18, 2009

Power for all the people

The all-electric home craze sweeping Japan with its typhoon of talking bathtubs, full-service toilets and flameless kitchens may finally have met its match.
Japan Times
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Oct 3, 2009

Ain't no mountain in the Andes high enough

Hirohito Ota, 39, a freelance writer, is an adventurer by nature.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Sep 20, 2009

U.K. birders' fair shows we can all help save even LBJs

"Life works by making lots and lots of different kinds of living things, and every one we lose impoverishes us and the world. Every single species, obscure or common, funny or dull, gorgeous or LBJ [the bird-watchers' abbreviation for "Little Brown Job"], is a strand in the web of life: every time we...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Sep 20, 2009

U.K. birders' fair shows we can all help save even LBJs

"Life works by making lots and lots of different kinds of living things, and every one we lose impoverishes us and the world. Every single species, obscure or common, funny or dull, gorgeous or LBJ [the bird-watchers' abbreviation for "Little Brown Job"], is a strand in the web of life: every time we...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 22, 2009

Lifer freed by a single smuggled hair strand

In the end, Toshikazu Sugaya may owe his freedom to a single strand of hair. As he languished in prison on a life sentence for a murder he did not commit, his lawyer told him there was only one way out: disprove the false DNA evidence that had put him inside.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Jul 22, 2009

Long-lasting netbooks and deep snapping

Get a battery life: Mobile computers these days suffer from a lack of mobility thanks to combining huge power consumption habits with little way to satisfy this demand. Asus is trying to redress the shortcoming in netbooks with a newly released model in its Seashell series of thin and light mobiles,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 5, 2009

Motoko Inagawa: Japan's foreign-talent guru shares her worldly wisdoms

In need of a couple of Portuguese missionaries? How about a boatload of Dutch traders — or a platoon of World War II U.S. grunts?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 26, 2009

'Vicky Cristina Barcelona'

Director Woody Allen was interviewed on the radio program Fresh Air (American National Public Radio) the other day, and repeatedly insisted that, whatever his fans may think, the characters in his films bear no resemblance whatsoever to the real him. His own marriage to a woman 34 years his junior, or...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 24, 2009

High court OKs Sugaya retrial

The Tokyo High Court said Tuesday a retrial will be held for Toshikazu Sugaya, who was released from prison earlier this month after new DNA evidence contradicted initial tests that led to his conviction in the 1990 murder of a 4-year-old girl in Tochigi Prefecture.
Reader Mail
Jun 14, 2009

Government solutions fall short

The June 7 editorial, "One every 15 minutes," made me sad and then angry. The most crushing part of the editorial was about young people — those that represent Japan's future. If you don't have a big dream or hope for your life in your 20s or 30s, then when do you get it?
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 6, 2009

Occupation orphan traces roots

For New Yorker Demian Akhan, 60, his recent visit to Japan marked the end of a decades-long journey to discover his roots.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
May 31, 2009

Don't blame me, but I did do my bit

Born a son of a Japanese trading- company executive, and exclusively educated in Britain, Tetsuya Ishikawa got his first taste of life in the financial industry in the summer of 1998. That was during his pre-university "gap year," when he worked on the foreign-exchange trading floor at the Tokyo branch...
Japan Times
CULTURE
May 29, 2009

Looking for love, and an English teacher

Actress Kazue Fukiishi looked perplexed when I asked if she could see herself ever marrying a foreigner.
CULTURE / Film
May 29, 2009

It was a year of gore galore at Cannes

A surgeon's smock replaced the customary tux or evening gown at this year's Cannes Film Festival as the most appropriate attire, so drenched in blood and gore were many of the major entries. To walk the red carpet became a wade in viscera, film after film offering all manner of mutilation and dismemberment....
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 23, 2009

Housewives' essays tell other story of Japan

"Manga," "anime," kabuki, geisha — these are some of the images of Japanese culture that Westerners are most familiar with. But one writers' club is seeking to shift the spotlight with their recently published English-language book about everyday life in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 22, 2009

A mother alone

To launch Za Koenji, the new public theater in Suginami Ward designed by Toyo Ito, artistic director Makoto Sato made the bold decision to present "Keshou Two Acts" ("Makeup"), a one-woman play by renowned writer and director Hisashi Inoue that stars Misako Watanabe. Now 76, the veteran actress first...
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Apr 28, 2009

Corporate bankruptcy, the Japanese way

Ever since U.S. financial services giant Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. collapsed in September, in what many have called the worst corporate failure in U.S. history, the global economy has been heading south.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / INSIDE LOOK
Apr 5, 2009

Dreaming of a hoop career back in Japan

NEW YORK — Editor's note: After appearing in 105 games for Columbia University and ending his college career third on the school's all-time 3-pointers made list (173), shooting guard K.J. Matsui took time away from his busy academic workload to reflect on his playing days and look ahead to the future....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Mar 26, 2009

Makeup artist Yukiko Takeda

Yukiko Takeda, 37, is chief makeup artist for Watosa, a skincare line created by famous beauty guru Sablo Watanabe. For the past 15 years, Yukiko has been making women look and feel so beautiful that over 80 percent of her first-time clients turn into hardcore fans who need their fix of "Yukiko magic"...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 21, 2009

From box office hit to the serenity of temples

Vampires and yoga seldom appear in the same sentence — except when talking about Fran Rubel Kuzui.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 20, 2009

No constrictions on BoA's ambitions

"It has always been my dream to debut in America!" BoA announces gleefully. "Every Asian artist has that dream of Hollywood or the Billboard chart, and this is the perfect time to go to America."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 20, 2009

Key actor tells of plot to kill Hitler

Until almost the end of 2008, British actor Bill Nighy was one of those faces you couldn't put a name to.
CULTURE / Film
Mar 20, 2009

Key actor tells of plot to kill Hitler

Until almost the end of 2008, British actor Bill Nighy was one of those faces you couldn't put a name to.
Japan Times
LIFE
Feb 22, 2009

Refuge . . . of a sort

The main character of the one-act play that follows is loosely based on the few known facts concerning a Russian nobleman-refugee named Semyon Nikolaevitch Smirnitsky. Born in St. Petersburg in 1879, Smirnitsky fled the Russian Revolution in 1919 and spent the rest of his life in Japan, mostly in Otaru,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 6, 2009

'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button'

Director David Fincher is probably best known for his films "Seven" and "Fight Club." His star in both was Brad Pitt, whose iconic turn as an anticonsumerism terrorist in "Fight Club" was so sensational that it inspired an entire generation of men to go out and by maroon faux-leather jackets.

Longform

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