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Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 22, 2005

Breathing the life into the dance

"I had a hard time finding the title," Pina Bausch tells me during an interview about her most recent work, "Nefes." The Turkish for "Breath" is the title of the latest in a series of works which the choreographer, who will turn 65 in July this year, has created in collaboration with theaters around...
CULTURE / Music / JAZZNICITY
Jun 19, 2005

Only one way to get that big band sound

Forming a jazz big band in this day and age is a somewhat insane undertaking. Scheduling the right musicians, writing elaborate arrangements and hiring a studio with the right equipment to record 16 players at once are headaches big enough to hold back even the most inspired leader. The bottom line for...
CULTURE / Music
Jun 19, 2005

Only one way to get that big band sound

Forming a jazz big band in this day and age is a somewhat insane undertaking. Scheduling the right musicians, writing elaborate arrangements and hiring a studio with the right equipment to record 16 players at once are headaches big enough to hold back even the most inspired leader. The bottom line for...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jun 17, 2005

Alcohol continues to fuel Best's free fall toward tragic ending

LONDON -- When George Best was having problems with his first wife, Angie, I shared a flight back to England with him from Miami -- he was playing for the Fort Lauderdale Strikers in the North American Soccer League at the time.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jun 15, 2005

The art that rocks the boat of war in Iraq

If you don't like U.S. President George W. Bush -- particularly if you don't support his war in Iraq -- then there is a new gallery exhibition in Tokyo that you will relish.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 12, 2005

Music of Thad Jones: "One More"

For 40 years, every Monday, New York's Village Vanguard has featured one of the most stylish mid-size bands in jazz. Started as the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra, 1965-1979, trumpeter and composer Jones was the brains behind it and drummer Lewis provided the fire in front. After Jones passed away...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 8, 2005

A fling to remember

The all-male reworking of "Swan Lake" by English choreographer Matthew Bourne has become a dance and stage legend since its November 1995 premiere at Sadler's Wells Theater in London. This powerful piece of ballet zeitgeist toured widely before arriving in Japan in spring 2003. With nonstop curtain calls,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 7, 2005

Have you heard the one about . . ?

'And then, when he saw the other side of the car, where his date had been sitting not 15 minutes earlier, on the door handle, hung . . . a bloody . . . HOOK!"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 29, 2005

The Alban Berg Quartett know Schubert inside out

The Alban Berg Quartett occupies a near-legendary position among string quartets. Their technical fluency, the beauty of their playing, the harmony of their interpretation -- have left critics searching for superlatives and ensured their constant demand in recital halls around the world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
May 18, 2005

Spectacular diversity of clay

As noted in this column last month, Japanese ceramic art is finding a wider audience overseas. Many collectors search out the great potters of the past, such as Shoji Hamada (1894-1978) or Kanjiro Kawai (1890-1966), while more savvy collectors are looking to find out who's hot in Japan today.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 8, 2005

Window dressing the great divide

THE SARI SHOP, by Rupa Bajwa, W.W. Norton Company, 2005, 224 pp., $13.95 (paper). Indian-ness has ceased to be the flavor of the season, or at least that's what they've been saying in Indian publishing circles. One only wishes this were true. The "Indian experience" is the proverbial dead horse, flogged...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
May 7, 2005

Adrienne Westmore

Audiences at the dramas presented by Tokyo International Players exclaim at the costumes the actors and actresses wear on stage. Period costumes invite special praise and wonder. How is it possible for a volunteer organization to put on shows with people so authentically and richly dressed? The answers...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
May 5, 2005

Swallow tales to silence those who speak with forked tongues

It was 1969, and I was driving our open-topped Mercedes Unimog to Asmara to get some building supplies and other gear not available in Gondar, the nearest town to the Simien Mountain National Park in Ethiopia where I was then a game warden.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 2, 2005

Sexual, visual politics: from shunga to shojo

GENDER AND POWER IN THE JAPANESE VISUAL FIELD, edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson and Maribeth Graybill. Honolulu: Hawai'i University Press, 2003, 292 pp., 7 color plates, 106 b/w illustrations, $36.00 (cloth). The original impetus for this interesting volume came during the 1994 Kyoto Conference...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 29, 2005

Reliving the good life in the country

Visitors to Japan often go into a form of shock not long after they arrive. It is not the different language, cuisine, or social customs that are the cause, but, rather, the realization that Japanese cities are vast, crowded, hyper-modern jungles of humanity where life seems to be constantly on warp...
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Apr 28, 2005

"The Mermaid's Manual," "Frozen Billy"

"The Mermaid's Manual," Dawn Applerley, Bloomsbury; 2004; 14 pp. "The Mermaid's Manual" should be a dream come true for many little girls out there. Its vibrant, glittery jacket has a neat press-button on it, which makes this picture-book look like a handy kit for wannabe mermaids.
Features
Apr 24, 2005

Grande dame of haute kuchuuru

In the fickle world of fashion, where players come and go with the regularity of the seasons that their working lives are firmly pinned to, there are fortunately just a few who hang in there to lend some sense of continuity.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 22, 2005

Sipping on Heian history in Uji

In Uji, it's a tough job to go anywhere without consuming its famous product as green tea is liberally doled out on the streets.
CULTURE / Music
Apr 17, 2005

Niyaz: "Niyaz"

The debut album by Niyaz is a delicious, intoxicating collection of songs, with a sound so fresh that it's impossible to reduce it to a particular genre. The band describes their sound as "21st-century folk music," and that's a start, but don't let that fool you: The rolling thunder of frame drums and...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Apr 16, 2005

Christopher Powell

A schoolboy evacuee from London to North Wales during World War II, Christopher Powell said he "fell in love with the land and language of some of my forefathers." Born in Brazil, where his father worked for a British bank, he has Anglo-Welsh antecedents from his father, and Anglo-Scottish from his mother....
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 6, 2005

Butoh creates beauty from misery

"Why are we in this form? Why do we have to be this particular shape? Why is the face on top of the neck? Our face could be on the soles of our feet. . . . Human beings are quite a strange kind of life form . . ."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Mar 30, 2005

Asia week sees debut show of a famous celadon potter

New Asian art becomes the talk of the town each spring -- not just in Tokyo or Beijing -- but in New York City where its annual Asia Week is now in full sway. Exhibitions abound in the Big Apple with some of the world's top dealers offering their treasures to collectors who visit from around the world....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 20, 2005

The earnestness of being important

THE HEREDITY OF TASTE, by Natsume Soseki, translated by Sammy I. Tsunematsu, introduced by Stephen W. Kohl. Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 2005, 201 pp., 1,300 yen (paper). MY INDIVIDUALISM and THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LITERATURE, by Natsume Soseki. Translated by Sammy I. Tsunematsu, introduced by...
EDITORIALS
Mar 19, 2005

Whimsical article of faith

The ongoing takeover battle between Livedoor Inc. and Fuji Television Network offers food for thought regarding "market capitalization," now a favorite topic of conversation among executives of information-technology firms and Internet service providers. Market capitalization, which is calculated by...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 18, 2005

Women take shine to money management

Major banks and brokerages are holding seminars on finance and giving priority to sales of investment trusts aimed at women, who are apparently showing an increasing interest in the world of investing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 16, 2005

Candle held up to a rediscovered master

Most great artists are instantly recognizable. As soon as you see one of their works, you know that it can't be by anyone else. If this is truly the mark of a great artist, then Georges de La Tour (1593-1652) must be among the greatest.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / THEN AND NOW
Mar 4, 2005

Happy in the haze of a hanami hour

The 1830s wood-block print below depicts hanami (cherry-blossom viewing) on the banks of the Sumida River. A group of young women and girls are on an excursion, and, with their elaborate hairstyles and fancy, uniform kimono, it appears they are apprentice geisha from licensed quarters nearby. Like teenage...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 27, 2005

New truths from broken conventions: travel writing outside Japan

MUSASHINO IN TUSCANY: Japanese Overseas Travel Literature, 1860-1912, by Susanna Fessler. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2004, 297 pp., + xii pp., 29 b/w illustrations, 2004, $65.00 (cloth). Japan has a long history of travel literature. From the 10th-century "Tosa...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Feb 20, 2005

There's big, and Hoover Dam big

Take 4,360 cubic meters of concrete (enough to pave a single-lane highway from San Francisco to New York), add 21,000 workers (but deduct an average of 50 a day due to injury or death), stir in 5 million, 8-cubic-meter buckets of cement and 950 km of steel piping, then garnish the lot with a dog that...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 20, 2005

Ah-choo! Picked up an allergy to the hay-fever industry

Last week the pharmaceutical company Riken announced that it was developing a new desensitivity treatment for serious allergy sufferers. The treatment program would entail fifty or so injections over a three-year period, which is quite a reduction in time. I should know. I received biweekly or monthly...

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?