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EDITORIALS
Jan 9, 2010

The problems of Yemen

There are two important lessons to be learned from the bungled attempt on Christmas Day to cause an explosion on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit: (1) the need to remain vigilant against the threat posed by terrorists, and (2) recognition of the importance of Yemen, a state that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 8, 2010

What's real in a world of copies and clones?

I n contrast to the type of mass- produced art best characterized in Japan by Takashi Murakami and the hordes of assistants who complete paintings and sculptures to the specifications of their employer, is a small coterie of sculptors/painters who work at individually crafting the mass-produced items...
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Jan 5, 2010

Minors in own category but never above the law

Jan. 11 marks Coming of Age Day, an annual holiday to celebrate people who have reached legal adulthood.
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 27, 2009

Koza remembered

It's October 2009, and I'm sitting in the parking lot of a convenience store in Koza city, taking photographs of the sidewalk. I've been here for close to an hour — surrounded by a dozen old photographs, four maps and reams of photocopies all weighed down with chunks of brick to stop them blowing away...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Dec 26, 2009

The industry of the under-motivated

"How do you do?" The man greets her in Japanese and bows in his doorway. He wears the same teasing grin and the same rumpled shirt as always. Even the cookie crumbs on his collar seem the same.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Dec 23, 2009

Yappa! Abbreviated Japanese ain't all that bad

"Ain't" ain't a word. My high school English teachers pounded that into my head. And they were right — "ain't" is not proper English. On the other hand, it is used colloquially by people all over the English-speaking world. Language is not just limited to those words found in reference books and textbooks....
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Dec 13, 2009

The colorful lure of carp in Japan

Two milestones were achieved at this year's All-Japan Show for Nishikigoi, or ornamental carp, which was held last month in Izumo, Shimane Prefecture.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 3, 2009

Realizing an assertive post-American Europe

PARIS — As U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in Sweden to collect his Nobel Prize, the celebrations expose an awful truth: Europe's admiration for its ideal of an American president is not reciprocated. Obama seems to bear Europeans no ill will. But he has quickly learned to view them with the attitude...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 27, 2009

'Black Gaisha ni Tsutometerundaga mo Ore wa Genkai Kamo Shirenai'

Films about Japanese organization men, from bureaucrats to salarymen, have long broadly divided into two categories — the serious ones, that portray work life as a sort of holy war, fought by loyal, self-sacrificing blue-suited soldiers, and the comic, whose characters range from pompous idiots to...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 27, 2009

'8 Days' that shook Japan's art world

In the chronologies you find appended to Japanese art books, it looks something like this: Title: "Joseph Beuys Exhibition"; Dates: June 2 — July 2, 1984; Venue: Seibu Art Museum, Tokyo
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 27, 2009

The Italian art of making wine and painting

Imagine the colors of a vast Tuscan vineyard drenched in a September sun — emerald green leaves, gnarled brown vines, deep purple grapes, shale earth, azure sky — an artist's inspiration for both palette and palate. For renowned Italian artist Sandro Chia, 63, these Tuscan colors, soaked into the...
Reader Mail
Nov 26, 2009

Caring for patients near death

Regarding Peter Singer's Nov. 18 article, "Slippery slope of doctor-assisted euthanasia": Professor Singer says Roman Catholic thinkers would do well to examine the consequences of the Catholic "double effects" doctrine before invoking the "slippery slope" arguments against euthanasia. In fact, Singer...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 22, 2009

Ozawa's sermon hardly befitted the spirit of the mount he chose

On Nov. 10, Ichiro Ozawa, secretary general of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, dropped a bombshell in a speech he made atop one of Japan's most sacred mountains, Mount Koya, in Wakayama Prefecture.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 18, 2009

Let's kensaku — searching the Web in Japanese

Has this ever happened to you? A friend in another country e-mails a plea for help in finding information in Japanese due to their encountering any one of several obstacles. For instance, the operating system or software on the computer they are using might not be able to input Japanese or read it. Or...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / STYLE WISE
Nov 12, 2009

Discount Comme de Garcons, thermo threads, extreme styles and bohemian flair

Back to black
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 8, 2009

Fashion fantasy meets form

With Japan Fashion Week shows now running concurrently with the Tokyo International Film Festival, it was hard sometimes not to liken the collections to films.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 8, 2009

Reading between the lines of Hatoyama's far-sighted 'vision thing'

The prime minister's keynote policy address in the Diet affords the nation's leader an opportunity to present their overall thinking to the people — as its name in Japanese, shoshin hyomei (declaration of convictions), would indeed suggest.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 6, 2009

'Synecdoche, New York'

Sreenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who spun American cinema on its head with striking scripts for "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," goes for fiendishly obsessional, intellectual acrobatics in his directorial debut.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 1, 2009

Foundations take a new shape

THE CHANGING JAPANESE FAMILY, edited by Marcus Rebick and Ayumi Takenaka. Routledge, 2009, 224 pp., £20 (paperback) The notion of family in Japan conjures up images of stability that are increasingly out of step with emerging realities. Certainly, compared to most other advanced industrialized nations,...
COMMUNITY
Oct 24, 2009

Seasonal rules permeate daily life in Japan

I grew up in Florida, and our year divides itself into seasons of bearable and unbearable. Even the most creative mind could hardly find illumination in topics around the weather, as there are only so many ways to say "the sun is shining with ferocious force today" or "the sweat is running into my eyeballs...
Reader Mail
Oct 15, 2009

Lousy advice for critical thinkers

With reference to the Oct. 11 letter "Same access as Japanese citizens": I have no comment about the national health insurance issue, since my insurance is basically equivalent as long as it covers a comparable risk. What I find very annoying, however, is the tone used by the anonymous writer and a typical...

Longform

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