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Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Nov 24, 2013

'The Stranger': Nobel Prize-winning author Camus an outsider in France

It is a century since French Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus was born — and more than 50 years since he died in an accident on an icy road — yet the polemics over his legacy and "mysterious" death rumble on.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Nov 24, 2013

Can Christie lead GOP back to White House?

Since Chris Christie's landslide re-election as governor of New Jersey earlier this month, which has seen him confirmed as an early favorite for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, the question of the precise nature of his political personality, and its appeal, has loomed as large as the man...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / EVERYMAN EATS
Nov 21, 2013

Japan's love for curry means endless variety

It's only a slight exaggeration to say that Japanese curry saved my life. After relocating to Japan in the late 1990s, I found myself underemployed, surrounded by unfamiliar foodstuffs and suffering from a near-total lack of cooking skills. Yet I managed to fill up at the cafeteria of a local university,...
MORE SPORTS / MAN ABOUT SPORTS
Nov 19, 2013

A tale of passion for football and Southern hospitality

It took a bad break — a flat tire and bent rim — to open a window for MAS to view both Southern hospitality AND a classic intrastate football rivalry — Alabama vs. Auburn.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 16, 2013

Nationalism, Tibetans and Uighurs in today's China

Nationalism arouses solidarity and generates identity politics that threaten ethnic and religious minorities. Defining the "we" also defines the "they" — and the latter is inexorably marginalized.
BASKETBALL
Nov 15, 2013

Kennedy rips Shimane management following release

The Shimane Susanoo Magic, who reached the playoffs in each of their first three seasons, have dropped nine of their first 10 games under new coach Vlasios Vlaikidis.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 13, 2013

The politics behind Japan's modern era of proletarian art

"Art and Literature in Japan 1926-1936" follows the close of the Taisho Era (1912-1926), which was characterized by democracy, artistic experimentation and widespread social self-absorptions by the citizenry in new fashions such as the "beach pajama" outfits of "modern" girls. The successive Showa Era...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Nov 9, 2013

Mammals choose when to reward my quest

My thoughts were miles away as I crossed the parking lot outside my Hokkaido home. Then a nagging doubt intruded: Had there — or had there not — just been a formless blur of movement on the ground beyond my car? I had certainly not seen anything, so if there had been something, then my awareness...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 5, 2013

Perseverance an effective weapon for activists in Japan

As in other developed countries, there are many cases of steady and long-enduring social activism in Japan, but they have remained largely unknown until recently.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 31, 2013

'Jobs'

The centerpiece of "Jobs" isn't really Steve Jobs but the portrayal of Steve Jobs by Ashton Kutcher — whose fame heretofore had rested largely on the fact that he was married to Demi Moore. Who would have thought the guy who oozes Hollywood charm and toy-boy insincerity from every invisible pore had...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Oct 27, 2013

Rajapaksa: Sri Lanka's affable authoritarian?

Down in the deep south of Sri Lanka, where life usually moves at a leisurely pace, there is one small town that is less tranquil. Hambantota — population 20,000 — is expanding fast. There is a vast new deepwater port, built with $360 million of borrowed Chinese cash; a new 35,000-seat cricket stadium;...
CULTURE / Music
Oct 22, 2013

Biollante "Alone in this World"

Tokyo's Biollante has found a clever way of standing out among the ever-crowded field of Japanese bedroom music producers — get melancholic.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 22, 2013

Perfume "Level3"

"Level3" is going to look amazing live. Perfume member Ayaka "A-Chan" Nishiwaki reportedly told producer Yasutaka Nakata that her trio wanted songs suited to the huge venues they'd perform it in. Nakata has obliged. Perfume's fourth studio album — the first with access to Universal Music's deep pockets...
JAPAN
Oct 22, 2013

No. 1 water woes laid to Tepco's ineptitude

Two and a half years after the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant experienced its three reactor-core meltdowns, the effort to clean up what remains of the complex is turning into another kind of disaster.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 19, 2013

Sado Island: Iconic birds, gold mines, magic caves and art

"The people in our town, they died without ever seeing the ocean."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 19, 2013

Imagining civil servants who actually serve

As a comedy, Nippon TV's 'Dandarin' not only pokes fun at bureaucratic privilege, but also wags its finger at Japan's storied management style, which succeeds on the backs of put-upon employees.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 12, 2013

Busan is still Asia's film-fest gem, but its sparkle is fading

During the Q&A session after the screening of his new film "Stray Dogs" at the 18th Busan International Film Festival, which ran Oct. 3-12, Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang mentioned that not only was his previous film not distributed in South Korea, it wasn't even shown at BIFF. Tsai was one of the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 10, 2013

'Kids Return: Saikai no Toki (Kids Return: The Reunion)'

Released in 1996, "Kids Return" was a change of pace for director Takeshi Kitano, whose films to date had usually starred Kitano himself as a cop or a gangster, meting out violence with a brutal efficiency and a wry black humor. Critics mostly admired them and moviegoers mostly shunned them, despite...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 2, 2013

'Turner from the Tate: The Makings of a Master'

British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner's experimental style allowed him to become one of the most prominent artistic figures of 19th-century Romanticism.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Sep 27, 2013

When worlds collide

My Japanese language skills mostly stink. And always have.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 25, 2013

Kansetsu Hashimoto's Chinese rebellion

From the end of the Edo Period (1603-1867), Japanese art began to shift its fundamental cultural orientation from China to Europe. Kansetsu Hashimoto, however, (1883-1945) initially abjured, and this had much to do with his upbringing
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Sep 21, 2013

Internet NPO links kids worldwide

Earlier this month, when the nation's Olympic bid ambassador Christel Takigawa referred to "omotenashi" (the spirit of Japanese-style hospitality) in her speech to the International Olympic Committee, the term quickly turned into a buzzword in Japan.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Sep 20, 2013

Putin: arch manipulator on a mission to check U.S. will

In novelist Victor Pelevin's pungent satire on contemporary Russia, "The Sacred Book of the Werewolf," its narrator, a 2,000-year-old shape-shifter, kisses Alexander, a brutish but alluring officer with the FSB, the Russian security service — who is a werewolf, like all his colleagues. In doing so,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 19, 2013

'Chronicle'

The found-footage thing: It can be addictive. Though as a movie ploy, it always stumps me how the characters would actually go into a dark woods in the middle of the night ("The Blair Witch Project") or move their family into a house where a gruesome murder had taken place ("Sinister"). So much of the...
Japan Times
BUSINESS / INNOVATIVE CITY FORUM
Sep 17, 2013

Beyond the Residence — Imagining a House for the Nostalgic Future

(Publicity)

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