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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 14, 2013

Hobsbawm's last words

FRACTURED TIMES: Culture and Society in the 20th Century, by Eric Hobsbawm. Little, Brown, 2013, 336 pp., £25 (hardcover)
CULTURE / Books
Apr 14, 2013

Digging for insights on foreigners living in Japan from some of the most prominent figures

Donald Richie, prolific author of more than 40 books and longtime contributor to The Japan Times, died in February at age 88. April 17 was his birthday, so this review pays tribute by sharing some of the insights he passed on during an interview, one of 12 in this book, conducted four years ago.
Japan Times
WORLD
Apr 13, 2013

Catholic priests unmasked: 'God doesn't like boys who cry'

March 13, 2013. The world is waiting. Television screens show days-old footage of cardinals in red and white, processing past Vatican guards into the magnificence of the Sistine Chapel for the papal conclave.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Apr 12, 2013

Hollande seeks to eradicate tax havens

With the French government reeling over a minister's tax-dodging scandal, President Francois Hollande proposed a law Wednesday that would force ministers, legislators and other senior officials to declare their assets publicly and submit to auditing by a "totally independent" authority before and after...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 12, 2013

'Cosmopolis'

We want to like this movie, "Cosmopolis." David Cronenberg fills his movies with concepts and ideas, then turns them into something stupendous and horrible. Sigmund Freud is finished, Don DeLillo is next. But his cinema is losing its narrative quality the same way that painting did once upon a time....
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Apr 12, 2013

New additions to the Kansai food map

Restaurants open and close all the time in Japan's ever-changing dining landscape. Here's a selection of a few noteworthy new places in Kyoto and Osaka.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 11, 2013

Idiosyncrasies of the Kano school explored in Kyoto

Kano Masanobu (1434-1530) founded the Chinese-art influenced painting school that bears his family name and flourished in different forms through to the Meiji Era (1868-1912). A familiar tale is that as it became the dominant hierarchical painting academy of political and military patronage, it began...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Apr 10, 2013

A Japanese poet's whale elegy

If some Japanese advocates of whale hunting could commune with their ancestors, they'd feel the past dismay at the impious waste of whales' lives.
WORLD / FOCUS
Apr 8, 2013

Group behind Luxor attack fills gaps left by government

There are generally two stories about how reliable the police force is in the southern Egyptian city of Assiut, and one of those is told by the police.
Japan Times
WORLD
Apr 8, 2013

A template emerges for prosecuting terror suspects

Aboard the USS Boxer, somewhere in the Indian Ocean, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was sitting across from a team of interrogators, talking and talking. In secure meeting rooms in Washington, senior officials in the Obama administration were wringing their hands over what to do with him.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Apr 6, 2013

Who turns a company into a 'wonderful place to be'?

Kazuhiro Tsuga, president of Panasonic Corp., addressed his new recruits on Monday telling them that he hopes they will turn the company into "a wonderful place to be." President Akio Toyoda encouraged his recruits at Toyota Motor Corp. to exhibit "the strength seen in cherry blossoms that can persevere...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 5, 2013

Audiard's method: as slow and steady as the waves

My first impression of director Jacques Audiard is that he's almost as wired as the street-punk hero of his film "The Beat That My Heart Skipped," fidgeting in his chair, desperate for a smoke, jumping in mid-translation to clarify a point. Entering his sixth decade, Audiard shows no signs of slowing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 4, 2013

Rubens' best work is collaborative

The 17th-century Flemish baroque artist Peter Paul Rubens is a great historical painter, not because of the scenes from ancient Roman history that he sometimes painted, but because, when we encounter his works, we find ourselves trying to understand what kind of society could possibly have produced art...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 4, 2013

JR's portraits put a face on Tohoku

French artist JR, whose show of photographic artwork is on display at the Watari-um (Watari Museum of Contemporary Art), inspires while questioning the role of art in war-torn and disaster-ridden places, asking whether art could really change things for the better. JR not only documents but also involves...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 1, 2013

Working around others who work works better

Yahoo!'s new CEO recently created a fuss when she no longer let employees work from home. Is her edict a step backward or a boon for creativity?
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Mar 31, 2013

Fashion Week Tokyo: Crazy good times make the womenswear cut

If there is one brand that the world needs to stop, drop and roll its collective mouse over online to check out every season, it's Anrealage.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 28, 2013

Unearthing the Seto Inland Sea's social landscapes

Whenever traveling directly from one island in the Seto Inland Sea to another, I sense threads holding each one to the other. Perhaps this is a vestige of the trade routes that traversed the 700-plus islands in this scenic region between Hiroshima and Osaka. As sea trade waned in postwar Japan, these...
WORLD / ANALYSIS
Mar 26, 2013

Syria 'red lines' leave Obama flummoxed

The suspicious attack that killed 26 people in northern Syria last week exposed the difficulty of determining whether the Syrian regime has resorted to using chemical weapons, as well as the lingering uncertainty over how President Barack Obama would respond if what he has called a "red line" is crossed....
COMMENTARY / Japan / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 25, 2013

It's not skin color, it's every way you're different

What should a Japanese expat say to a mixed-race couple in New York who wonder how their children would be treated if they raised them in Japan?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 21, 2013

Enjoy an art night out in Roppongi

Spring finally returns and with the change of weather comes a flurry of activity in and around Tokyo, as this year's Roppongi Art Night is welcomed back. Running from 10 a.m. on March 23 until 6 p.m. the next day, the festival hosts a diverse collection of new and established artists, some showing for...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 21, 2013

Various Artists "Upwards and Onwards" (Ano(t)raks)

Fledgling online-only label Ano(t)raks takes a somewhat needless risk with their second compilation album, "Upwards and Onwards." Founded late last year, Ano(t)raks highlighted bedroom-made indie-pop, a style defined by simple guitar playing and equally basic lyrics about love. Indie-pop has been going...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 21, 2013

The disenchantment of Iraq

Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein, but if economic resconstruction and the establishment of democracy are considered, the Iraq war failed.

Longform

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