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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 1, 2014

Conjuring the strange brutality of Agota Kristof

Those who loved poring through Agota Kristof's 1986 novel, "Le Grand Cahier," have been waiting for a film adaptation for almost two decades.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 30, 2014

Storytelling in the future will be transforming

A new form of analysis is emerging for the future of storytelling that will let us better understand why some tales grip us. If it succeeds, it will fuel new creative forms and make less vulnerable to manipulation by governments and companies.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Sep 30, 2014

Japan begins soul-searching over crimes against unsupervised children

In a nation where young children are commonly encouraged to walk to school on their own, the recent shocking murder of a girl in Kobe raises questions over whether people in Japan are too trusting and should supervise schoolchildren more closely.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 17, 2014

Tokyo Ballet's 'Don Quixote' revels in its Russian roots

From its inception, the ballet "Don Quixote" has been a global collaboration.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Sep 13, 2014

Low City, High City

Best known for his translations of "The Tale of Genji" and the fiction of Yasunari Kawabata, for which the author won a Nobel Prize, Edward G. Seidensticker was also an accomplished essayist and historian.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 8, 2014

As the chances of a U.K. split grow, the true costs become more clear

Until last week, almost nobody outside Scotland took very seriously the possibility that Europe's most stable and durable nation — the only big country not to have suffered invasion, revolution or civil war at any time in the past 300 years — might soon be wiped off the map.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Sep 1, 2014

St. Mary's International School in Tokyo rocked by sexual abuse claims

After Catholic boys school responds to account from 1960s, other former pupils allege systematic abuse by another teacher during the 1970s
JAPAN / INTERPRETATION & TRANSLATION
Aug 31, 2014

Connecting two cities beyond interpretation

Interpreters and translators facilitate communication and understanding between people who speak different languages, which sometimes is instrumental in bridging two distant cities.
Japan Times
JAPAN / GENERATIONAL CHANGE
Aug 31, 2014

Rebel entrepreneur turns job market on its head

Yujun Wakashin seeks to present an alternative lifestyle that he hopes will serve as a wake-up call for dropouts, shut-ins and underutilized hopefuls such as high school girls.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 27, 2014

Stories We Tell

Diane Polley, the mother of Canadian actress and director Sarah Polley, was, by all accounts, a vivacious woman who could light up a room upon her arrival. She was ditzy, impulsive and passionate, with a big horsey laugh. If an actress had played her on-screen, it would have been Gena Rowlands, for sure....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 27, 2014

Bunraku meets the Bard in new 'Sir Falstaff'

The type of Japanese puppetry known as ningyō-jōruri (aka bunraku) has its roots in 17th-century Osaka. Since then, though, there will rarely if ever have been a bunraku play drawn from stories written a little earlier on the other side of the world — yet that's what awaits Tokyo audiences next month...
CULTURE / Music
Aug 26, 2014

Jazz artist Emi Meyer teams up with guitarist Seiichi Nagai for a warm, poppy album

Jazz artist Emi Meyer had plenty to be happy about in 2008. She had just self-released her debut album "Curious Creature," she was performing shows around Kyoto and major labels in Tokyo were attempting to woo her. The half-American, half-Japanese Meyer, though, says the situation wasn't so sunny.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 23, 2014

A Great Valley Under the Stars

A vibrant collection of subdued observation, the poems in this small volume, "A Great Valley Under the Stars," contemplate meaning everywhere — from a truck-stop toilet, over stones in the New Mexican desert and under the great expanse of sky referenced in the title.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2014

In the ethnographic realm of the senses: An interview with Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor

You may think you know what a documentary film is — "Life as it is," as Soviet filmmaker Dziga Vertov once put it — but you probably haven't seen any documentaries like the ones being produced by the filmmakers at Harvard University's experimental Sensory Ethnography Lab.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 19, 2014

Max LeRoy makes the perfect pool party mixtape for summer

I don't think 1980s Miami synth trap is an actual genre, but if it ever becomes one, "Max LeRoy Volume 1" is going down as one of its progenitors.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / HIT AND RUN
Aug 18, 2014

Miura adding to legacy with recent success for BayStars

Daisuke Miura is turning back the clock in Yokohama.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 15, 2014

What should the U.S. do about Islamic State?

The U.S. lost the Iraq War years ago. The sooner it accepts that there is nothing to be saved there and moves on, the better off it'll be. That includes refraining from attacking the Islamic State.
Japan Times
WORLD / FOCUS
Aug 15, 2014

Islamic State puts 'invincible' Kurd warriors to sword

The Kurdish peshmerga fighter ran out of ammunition but saved two bullets to end his own life in case Islamic State militants caught up with him as he fled the front line in northwest Iraq.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 12, 2014

Chi-na aims to win fans over one step at a time

For many musicians, dreams of success take the form of a big break: perhaps a major label record contract, a lucrative tour deal or a barnstorming festival set. However, a quick fix isn't the style of Tokyo indie quintet Chi-na, who is gradually growing in stature through a steady process of connecting...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 11, 2014

Never trust a realist when it comes to politicians

If you're looking for one big reason the U.S. seems to be on the wrong track, try the marginalization of idealism that coincided with the collapse of the peace movement and the American Left at the end of the Vietnam War in the early 1970s.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 9, 2014

Critics get frank when it comes to Godzilla

Because Japanese media are incestuous in their inter-corporate dealings, those writers referred to as hyōronka (critics) tend to be less critical about popular culture than their counterparts in North America and Europe. They are more likely to engage in punditry or public relations, because complaining...
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 7, 2014

Kurds clash with Islamic State militants on outskirts of regional capital Irbil

Kurdish forces attacked Islamic State fighters near the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil in northern Iraq on Wednesday in a change of tactics supported by the Iraqi central government to try to break the Islamists' momentum.
Japan Times
WORLD
Aug 6, 2014

In Scotland, pro-independence leader flunks TV debate

The leader of Scotland's campaign for independence failed to turn a U.S.-style television debate into a victory for his cause on Tuesday, six weeks before Scots vote on whether to break up the United Kingdom.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 5, 2014

Israeli nationalism shows weakness, not strength

The conduct of its latest Gaza war suggests that Israel, which is blessed with a robust high-tech sector, embodies the greatest contradiction today between the imperatives of old-style territorial nationalism and a modern globalized economy.
ASIA PACIFIC
Aug 5, 2014

China probes two Canadians for alleged theft of state secrets

China is investigating a Canadian couple who ran a coffee shop on the Chinese border with North Korea for the suspected theft of military and intelligence information and for threatening national security, China's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 29, 2014

Two weddings and a 'Funeral' at Fuji

It's hard to know what the organizers at Fuji Rock Festival were thinking when they decided to have Jack Johnson headline the main stage on the event's last day. Not the infectious cheer and endearingly kitsch theatricality of The Flaming Lips, who performed directly before, or even the guaranteed singalong...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / OSAKA RESTAURANTS
Jul 22, 2014

Pancotei: 'Kushikatsu' morsels prepared with obsessive care

Precision. This is the premise on which everything at Pancotei is based, from the angle of the ear of wild asparagus, the volume of the froth on a glass of beer, the suitability of a single Japanese maple leaf as an adornment to a dish, the knot in the master's tie. Precision, bordering on perfection....
CULTURE / Music
Jul 22, 2014

Pianist Adachi delves further into the world of Croatian classical music

During his six-year stay in Croatia, pianist Tomohiro Adachi was introduced to a remarkable woman named Dora Pejacevic.
JAPAN
Jul 17, 2014

Female workers may finally get foothold

When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe showed up last Sunday for the 19th International Conference for Women in Business, Kaori Sasaki — who has been organizing the gathering to empower women since 1996 — finally felt that society was changing.

Longform

A man offers prayers at Hebikubo Shrine in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. The shrine is one of several across the country dedicated to the snake.
Shed your skin and reinvent yourself in the Year of the Snake