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Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 22, 2007

Architecture takes spiritual turn at GA Gallery

What do China's Chengdu and Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates have in common? Answer: They're all the sites of major future architectural projects featured in the exhibition "GA International 2007," currently running at the GA Gallery in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward. Though small (the exhibition takes...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 17, 2007

Romantic drama-comedy, travel food show and celebrity concert music special

The strong-willed wife is an archetype in almost every culture and it gets the comedy treatment in Fuji TV's series "Oni Yome Nikki (Diary of a Demon Bride)" (Tuesday, 10 p.m.), which is based on a popular manga. Arisa Kanzuki plays the title character, Sanae, whose lazy and negligent husband, Kazuma...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 14, 2007

Adventurer forges bond with nature, poet Basho

Adventurer Mitsuro Oba discovered a different kind of unexplored terrain last summer, a decade after he trekked across Antarctica and became the first person in history to walk unaccompanied to both the North and South poles.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 10, 2007

In praise of morning's glory

Hima Furuta sits across the table from me in a cafe in the Marunouchi business district of central Tokyo. It's only 10 a.m., and although he looks fresh and full of life, he's almost finished his main work for the day.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jun 9, 2007

Hubert Durt

Japan's constitutional peace guarantee was, and still is, the main cause of Dr. Hubert Durt's admiration for this country. It was the magnet that drew him here.
EDITORIALS
Jun 3, 2007

Let Japanese film out of the forest

Naomi Kawase's Grand Prix at the 60th Cannes Film festival last week for "Mogari no Mori" put the Japanese film industry once again on the front page. Kawase's honor is another in a series of reminders about how rich and rewarding Japanese films can be. But at the same time, it is a reminder of how little...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 1, 2007

'Shaberedomo, Shaberedomo'

Japanese are often stereotyped (and tend to stereotype themselves) as bad communicators — or just plain silent. Men, especially, are praised for being miserly with words, though their wives may long for something more than the furo, meshi, neru (bath, food and sleep) that is said to be the sum total...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2007

'Mourning' turns into celebration

"Mogari No Mori (The Mourning Forest)," the Japanese film that crept up from behind bigger-name productions to win the Grand Prix at this year's Cannes Film Festival, revolves around an old man's unswerving desire to find his wife's grave.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 25, 2007

'Ore wa Kimi no Tame ni Koso Shini ni Iku'

Shintaro Ishihara has a lot in common with Michael Moore: Both were long outriders in their particular political cultures, both have been called, more or less rightly, self-promoting blowhards — and both have an outsize talent for show business that has enabled them to imprint their personalities and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 24, 2007

Marilyn Manson

Feared in America as the Satan-worshipper who inspired the Columbine massacre, but widely regarded elsewhere as a camp standard-bearer for goth culture, Marilyn Manson talks about marriage breakups, murder and makeup
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
May 22, 2007

Haruko Iino

Haruko "Big Momma" Iino, an independent public relations consultant, became one of Japan's first female advertising account executives back in the 1980s. Even before working at advertising agencies Chuo Senko and Dentsu Eye, the now 63-year-old Iino had understood the potential of the luxury fashion...
LIFE / Language
May 22, 2007

Buzzwords trying to find own linguistic niche

Buzzwords belong in the category of catchwords and catch phrases. Like cliches — though not always as long-lived as cliches — they capture the imagination of a nation and are used in many contexts. In Japanese, buzzwords are called hayarikotoba and, as such, often do hayarisutari (pop into, then...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 18, 2007

'Fur'

There's a scene in "Fur" where photographer Diane Arbus, played by Nicole Kidman, is having sex with her husband, Alan (Ty Burrell), during a turbulent period in their marriage. His frustrations come to the fore, and he slams her head into the sofa, forcefully pinning her as he takes her from behind....
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 16, 2007

Seasons seen out of sync

I really thought I had missed out on spring this year. Having left Hokkaido when it was still blanketed with snow, I then spent a prolonged spell in South America before island-hopping across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. It all left me overly warm (you can have too much of heat and humidity!),...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 11, 2007

'Ashita no Watashi no Tsukurikata'

Film genres are more or less universal. Even the Western, that quintessential American genre, has inspired filmmakers everywhere, from Italy to Japan, to make local versions. But some genres thrive particularly well in certain cultures, for reasons not always clear to outsiders. Why, for example, the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
May 10, 2007

Looking at the garish and the free

Let's face it, there really is nothing like the face. Lovers dream of faces, poets stretch and struggle to juggle the words so that they might capture and communicate a countenance. Even businesspeople, the ultimate pragmatists, will travel across towns or oceans — when a telephone or e-mail could...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 10, 2007

Modern girls and outrage

The Taisho Era (1912-1926) saw young habitues of Japan's cafe society challenging and outraging their parents as they danced, smooched and smoked cigarettes, aping their idols of the silver screen. Emblematic of the age was the moga (modan gaaru, or modern girl) with her Western shoes, dresses, makeup...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
May 8, 2007

Naoki Sakai

Naoki Sakai, 60, is a designer whose revolutionary ideas have made him an industry powerhouse. After designing Nissan's Be-1, the vehicle that in the late 1980s started the round-and-cute car boom, Sakai came up with concepts for three more popular cars from Nissan — the PAO, Figaro and Rasheen —...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 5, 2007

Initial terror turns into picture-book fascination

The color, excitement and vibrancy of Japanese matsuri festivals leap off the pages of Betty Reynolds' latest book, a welcome commission by Tuttle to fill a niche in children's publishing.
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 3, 2007

Photos of preteen girls in thongs now big business

Asuka Izumi was modeling for a DVD in July 2005 when the director asked her to put on a string bikini. She was just 12 years old.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Apr 30, 2007

Tobacco's road from fashion to filth

NEW YORK -- If a recent article in the Science section of The New York Times is any indication, the idea that the history of the tobacco industry in the United States has been nothing less than perfidy has taken hold among the socially conscientious. Titled "Tracing the Cigarette's Path From Sexy to...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 27, 2007

'Flandres'

In "Flandres," the region referred to in the film's title (located in northern France) is breathtaking in its untarnished beauty. The light -- golden and buttery -- drenches the landscape in an intricately magical, Vermeer-like way. There is, however, nothing remotely idyllic about the film itself; the...
EDITORIALS
Apr 22, 2007

Japan as number-one blogger

Japanese, a recent survey found, is the most common language for blogging. With 70-some million blogs now in all languages, Japan edged out even English and Chinese for the top spot of blog language. A third of all blogs in the world, or virtual world, are written in Japanese. Japan is now number one...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 19, 2007

Works beyond Osaka's sun

If your knowledge of Taro Okamoto's work begins and ends with the sculpture "Tower of the Sun" that he created for the 1970 Osaka Expo, a visit to "Taro Okamoto and His Contemporaries in the Post-War Era," now at the Setagaya Art Museum, is in order.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: FASHION
Apr 17, 2007

Rooms, Tokyo Midtown, Terra Plana, Herchcovitch

Fashion for the filthy rich

Longform

Eme-Ima Kitchen is one of over 10,000 kodomo shokudō in Japan. A term first used in 2012 to describe makeshift eateries offering free or cheap meals to disadvantaged kids, it now refers to a diverse range of individuals, groups and organizations working to provide not only food but a sense of belonging to both children and adults.
Japan’s ‘children’s cafeterias’ are booming — but is that a good thing?