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JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 23, 2013

NHK discusses gender with a fresh openness

Two weeks ago, the nightly series "Heart Net TV," which is broadcast on NHK's educational channel, repeated a program about a 35-year-old Japanese man who married a 70-year-old Dutch man in the Netherlands. The series dedicates several programs a month to sexual minorities, and there was a sidelight...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 23, 2013

North Korea occupies Fukuoka in Murakami's alternate world

Not to be confused with another famous Japanese novelist who has the same surname, Ryu Murakami is known for being an overtly political, even subversive, writer. "From the Fatherland, With Love," his latest novel to be translated into English, cements that reputation. Taking place in an alternate world...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 23, 2013

French high school curriculum includes pitfalls U.S. should try to avoid with its Common Core

The rigorous French high school curriculum comes with pitfalls that the U.S. should try to avoid as it introduces a Common Core of national standards.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 21, 2013

How top lowbrow U.S. humor translates in Japan

Somewhere in the history of American cinema, someone (maybe John Waters?) decided that gross and profane and funny could all sit on the same park bench and start up a friendship. That was way back in the 1970s.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 16, 2013

Historical biography captures the spirit of early feminist Japan

Time distorts, concealing the individual drops of humanity within the great tide of history. "Beauty in Disarray" attempts to reveal one such individual threatened to be lost in time, a woman named Noe Ito. In telling Ito's tragic story, biographer Harumi Setouchi (now known by her Buddhist name Jakucho)...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
Jun 14, 2013

Parolee in 1963 Saitama girl's slaying hits authorities for lying, forcing confessions

Investigators will lie, grill for hours on end and withhold exonerating evidence — in effect do anything — to extract a confession from a suspect they have pegged for a crime, a 1994 parolee seeking a retrial to clear his name in the 1963 kidnap-murder of a Saitama Prefecture girl said Thursday in...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Jun 14, 2013

Gatsby-inspired cocktail at Swissôtel Nankai Osaka; summer bar at Grand Hyatt Fukuoka; Spanish fair at Royal Park Hotel

Gatsby-inspired cocktail at Swissôtel
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Jun 11, 2013

Japan's Nigerians see symbol of change in masquerade

Anyone wandering the back streets near Omiya Station at 7:20 a.m. on Sunday, June 2, might have passed a particular office building, unremarkable except for two African men standing on a 2nd floor balcony, rope in hand, lowering a car-sized Ugo (eagle) costume down to the parking lot. One of them was...
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Jun 2, 2013

Severe sports training methods became taibatsu in time

The martial arts were the inspiration for the famous baseball team at the First Higher School of Tokyo, a late 19th century powerhouse that helped make yakyu, as baseball came to be known, the national sport of Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 30, 2013

After breakthrough covers, James Blake proud that 'Overgrown' belongs to him

For most, the passage from underground dubstep sensation to critically acclaimed, Bon Iver-collaborating, Kanye West-endorsed artist is the kind of career path you can only dream of.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
May 26, 2013

History shows one man's rape is another's wooing

"The evolution of political thought in this relatively isolated island nation during the period in question is unique to the point of being somewhat freakish."
Japan Times
SOCCER / J. League
May 25, 2013

Moriwaki enjoying challenge playing for Urawa brings

The 27-year-old defender says he was ready for a change of scenery after helping Sanfrecce Hiroshima win theJ. League title last season.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
May 25, 2013

Geary's vision, drive keyed Yokohama's title run

There was something refreshing, interesting and fun about the Yokohama B-Corsairs from the beginning. It wasn't always the easiest thing to explain in a few short words.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
May 20, 2013

Obama keeps fluid grip on levels of power

President Barack Obama's professed ignorance of the targeting of conservatives by one government agency and his support of tracking journalists' sources by another highlight one of the great paradoxes of his presidency: Sometimes he uses his office as aggressively as anyone who's held it; other times...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
May 19, 2013

Fukushima photos focus on what can't be seen

Photographer Tomoki Imai has been a blur of activity since we reached the lookout point halfway up 601-meter Mount Higakure in the Futaba district of Fukushima Prefecture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 17, 2013

'Ore Ore (It's Me, it's Me)'

Satoshi Miki is best known as a director of comedy, including episodes of the 2006-07 cult hit "Jiko Keisatsu (Time Limit Investigator)" series for TV Asahi and seven feature films. But when I programmed a special Miki section for the Udine Far East Film Festival in 2008, I realized anew how, film by...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 17, 2013

'Bill Cunningham New York'

Bill Cunningham is one of the long-revered icons of The New York Times: If you are incredibly lucky, you may catch a glimpse of his blue-jacketed figure walking through the doors of the Times building on Eighth Avenue, camera bag slung around his shoulder, his jaunty step belying his 84 years.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
May 13, 2013

Before the Cleveland nightmare, hints of darkness

Shorty needed a ride home. She got confused sometimes, the result of some undefined mental condition, and wasn't always sure where she'd wandered. Her family knew this about Michelle "Shorty" Knight, all 139 cm of her, and that's why they worried.
Japan Times
WORLD
May 11, 2013

Obama's Guantanamo hunger strike problem

When the military doctors force-feed Guantanamo Bay detainee Fayiz al-Kandari with a tube shoved into his stomach there are three stages to the pain.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
May 11, 2013

Head of international short film festival finds fertile ground up north

Toshiya Kubo consistently gravitates to the peripheral. As a teenager, while his friends rushed to buy Beatles records, Kubo searched for lesser-known musicians; the mainstream in media flocked to Tokyo while Kubo preferred Hokkaido, the prefecture of his birth; producers look toward feature films as...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 5, 2013

Two documentaries on the rougher side of sports; CM of the week: Bandai Namco's Gundam games

The life of a pro athlete can be grueling, but 37-year-old soccer player Dan Ito has a perverse determination to make his even more so.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 26, 2013

Murakami's 'Jellyfish Eyes' blends kawaii and creepy into a postquake critique

In the West he's been referred to as 'the other Murakami.' To those in Japan, the difference is so prominent that very few would ever confuse artist-cum-filmmaker Takashi Murakami with novelist Haruki Murakami.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 19, 2013

Ishikawa knows when to throw away the script

Japanese directors of TV dramas often make films that are basically big-screen versions of small-screen shows. No surprise, since their TV-network backers want product that will work equally well with multiplex audiences and home viewers.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 17, 2013

It's the end of everything as we know it (perhaps)

I hope you had it while you could because, last week, sex ended.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Apr 14, 2013

Gun rights lobby pushes weaker bill

As the U.S. Senate prepares to begin debate this week on the biggest gun-control bill in nearly two decades, the gun rights lobby and its Senate allies are working on a series of amendments that have the potential to do the opposite — loosening many of the restrictions that exist in the current law....
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 13, 2013

Here's what should be done when North Korea goes south

Predictions of North Korean famine come every year, but indeed the last five to 10 years have seen modest, but undeniable, economic improvement.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 11, 2013

The Iron Lady's lasting legacy

Margaret Thatcher was the woman who began the shift to the right that has affected almost all the countries of the West in the past three decades.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2013

Why South Korea has already won

Pop stars, bourgeois lifestyle commentary and funny videos often seem to interest young South Koreans more than the latest provocation by the North.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 5, 2013

'Extreme' characters fuel the plot of 'The Master'

Critics have called 'The Master' a triumph of style over substance. That is, the acting wins out over direction and writing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 31, 2013

Glacial change slow to heat up Japan's economy

The Japanese manager was once portrayed as a fearless samurai ready to take on the world. This was when Western companies and management scholars woke up to the presence of a potent competitor outside the Western world.

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