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LIFE / Travel
Jun 29, 2000

Take the sunset road to Fukuoka's natural lifestyle zone

"Everyone wants to head west," an architect friend told me recently. "It's natural. That's where the sun sets, and where thoughts of relaxation turn to at the end of the day."
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jun 28, 2000

All thumbs

In past columns, I've expressed my support for those people you've probably seen silently staring at their cell-phone screens, furiously typing away or intently scrolling. I recently joined their growing number. I think of it as a test drive; others might call it an occupational hazard. At any rate,...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 20, 2000

Shallow pits and rabbit hutches

JAPANESE HOMES AND LIFESTYLES: An Illustrated Journey through History, by Kazuya Inaba and Shigenobu Nakayama. Translated by John Bester. Kodansha International, 2000, 144 pp., $32. Do you curse costly rents, cramped quarters and cluttered cupboards? Do you think tatami are terrific, futons fabulous...
COMMUNITY
Jun 18, 2000

Commemoration of a musical pilgrimage

"A Shakuhachi Odyssey -- Enchanted by Timbres of Heaven" is a collection of autobiographical essays, cultural musings, musical stories and more. It beat out over 200 competitors to receive last year's Rennyo Sho, a nonfiction literature prize sponsored by the Honganji Temple Foundation and supported...
CULTURE / Art
Jun 18, 2000

Japan's premier graphic designer revisited

One of the most striking aspects of city life in Japan is the bold use of graphics: Posters and magazines continually shout for our attention on busy trains and streets. Artistically, we see the good, the bad and the ugly, but the work of Japan's first great graphic designer was consistently impressive....
JAPAN
Jun 17, 2000

Empress Dowager dies at 97; family at her side

The Empress Dowager, the widow of Emperor Showa, died Friday afternoon, two days after she began experiencing breathing difficulties, the Imperial Household Agency said. She was 97.
LIFE / Digital
Jun 14, 2000

Japanese gaming site unveiled

A Japanese gaming community Web site was unveiled Monday in conjunction with the launch of the Japanese subsidiary of AsiaContent.com, a pan-Asian consumer Internet company.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Jun 14, 2000

Gateways to synergy

Every time I visit a particular convenience store, I wince at the repeated announcement of its Web site: "Eichi chi chi pi koron surashu surashu daburyu daburyu daburyu dotto . . . " It is supposed to be such a cutting-edge play, but it only reminds me of how clumsy the analog world can be, and of how...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 14, 2000

Asian economic ills were homegrown

ASIAN ECLIPSE: Exploring the Dark Side of Business in Asia, by Michael Backman. Singapore: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., 1999, 379 pp., $29.95 (cloth). An insightful adage states that a best friend dispenses "tough love," meaning that if one is turning into an alcoholic, the friend will withhold strong...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 14, 2000

Kyogen's hero is Everyman

KYOGEN COMPANION, by Don Kenny, with a brief history by Kazuo Toguchi. Tokyo: National Noh Theater, 1999. 308 pp. with b/w plates. 1,800 yen. Kyogen are short comic plays sometimes a part of, but more often sandwiched between, the longer and often tragic noh dramas. They are spoken in the vernacular...
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 6, 2000

Inspecting society's 'little people'

Ever since the first performance of Nikolai Gogol's "The Inspector" took place on April 19, 1836, Russia and the world have been fascinated by Khlestakov, a character in the play who poses as a government inspector and gets away with murder.
BUSINESS
Jun 2, 2000

DoCoMo tieup eyes i-mode-friendly ads

Mobile phone giant NTT DoCoMo Inc. and major ad agency Dentsu Inc. announced Thursday they have jointly set up an agency specializing in ads to be posted on DoCoMo's i-mode wireless Internet service.
CULTURE / Stage
May 20, 2000

Still shining after all these years

May is the month of the Dankikusai (Danjuro-Kikugoro Festival) at the Kabukiza in Tokyo's Ginza, commemorating the outstanding achievements of Danjuro Ichikawa IX and Kikugoro Onoe V, the two giants of kabuki theater in the Meiji Era.
CULTURE / Art
May 7, 2000

Jewels of the printmaker's art

"I call these my jewels," said Joanna H. Schoff, as we bent to catch a gleam of silver in the softly lit museum. Treasures indeed, but instead of the brilliance of diamonds we were looking at far gentler beauties: rare gems of Japanese printmaking from the 1800s.
CULTURE / Art
May 5, 2000

Swimming 'Sea Monkeys' and rolling digital mice

Sometimes you just get lucky. That, better than anything else, works for me as the reason why the unfocused, gadget-dependent and low-tech exhibition "New Media New Face/New York" manages, against the odds, to end up being a fairly good show.
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Apr 16, 2000

The silken soul of modern poetry in Japan

At the Power of the Spoken Word reading at Ben's Cafe last month, Yasuo Fujitomi, John Solt, Masafumi Suzuki and Misako Yarita read from their works. Scholar and poet Fujitomi read from poems published in his CD of the highmoonoon spoken literature series, "whatnever" (3,500 yen), a sophisticated production...
CULTURE / Music
Apr 16, 2000

When is a concert not a concert?

Many concert programs follow the standard format familiar to concertgoers everywhere: overture, concerto, intermission, symphony. It's not the only way to arrange a program, but it's the commonest.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Apr 12, 2000

Just browsing?

It used to be so simple. You had Eudora for your e-mail and your tiny Mosaic browser for trolling through text-only university archives and contemplating the bright future of the World! Wide! Web!
CULTURE / Books
Apr 4, 2000

Lessons from a life unlike any other

NO ONE'S PERFECT, by Hirotada Ototake. Translated by Gerry Harcourt. Kodansha International, 226 pp., 1,900 yen. Hirotada Ototake, in his first major literary effort, "No One's Perfect (Gotai Fumanzoku)," has written a work whose seismic rating has scaled off the page: To date, over 4 million copies...
COMMUNITY
Apr 2, 2000

Activist monthly comes to Japan

When Caitlin Stronell first came to Japan in 1984 to spend a year in Tochigi Prefecture, her father gave her a subscription to the U.K. cooperatively produced monthly magazine New Internationalist. "He thought it'd keep me in touch with social and political activism in the rest of the world, while giving...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 19, 2000

Found language and fragmented identity

Yuriya Julia Kumagai's first volume of poetry, "Her Space-Time Continuum," originally written in English and published in 1994, used text layout, language "found" in everyday life, as well as literary theory and language poetry techniques to shape her own idiom. This hybrid approach reflected the speaker's...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 20, 2000

All of life in Daumier's cartoons

A picture is worth a thousand words, and no one knows that better than Honore Daumier. His life story reads like a strand in a novel by Victor Hugo. The poor son of a failed poet and glazier, young Daumier chanced his luck as an artist in Paris in the 1830s. He studied the new technique of lithography,...
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 6, 2000

ASEAN debates growth or consolidation

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- The current tour of some ASEAN capitals by East Timorese hero Xanana Gusmao has triggered soul-searching in various places around the region.
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 4, 2000

Dance fests spotlight solo performances

Tokyo is awash with festivals of dance this month, mostly by solo dancers, which is not surprising since the majority of performers here prefer the controlled environment of one-man shows. But what is surprising is that even with all the organization involved in planning these events, the sudden accumulation...
JAPAN
Jan 28, 2000

Top court hits, but backs mom's firing

The Supreme Court rejected a claim Friday by a woman who sought nullification of her dismissal from a company for refusing to accept a transfer due to the child-care needs of her 3-year-old. The decision upheld lower court rulings. Justice Toshihiro Kanatani said that although the disadvantage to the...
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2000

Team attempts Khmer software to computerize Cambodia

Staff writer When you send e-mail, either in English or Japanese, you assume it can be read on the recipient's computer screen without any problems. But if the message is in Khmer, chances are that it will be turned into a series of symbols that make no sense. "What is common in Japan (and other industrialized...
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 23, 2000

Process of progress; idea to performance

There's a new wind blowing through the performing arts this month, with two companies showing the fruits of "works in progress" instead of finished productions, although any difference in quality seems to be marginal.
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

Pilots' diaries show human side

It may only bring a wary smile to the face of 72-year-old Midori Yamanouchi when she sees young revelers at drinking bashes toast the legendary kamikaze missions.
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

War dead kin's book pushes peace

A bilingual book published recently by relatives of Japanese who died in the war aims to share their peace quest with others who lost people in conflict.

Longform

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