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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 26, 2012

Rembrandt still outshines Vermeer

The first exhibition at the newly renovated Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art (TMMA) was always going to be an important one. After a two-year closure to let the builders in, it wouldn't have sufficed to just have a run-of-the-mill exhibition. Something special was required, and with "Masterpieces from...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 22, 2012

Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto: 'What Japan needs now is dictatorship'

Confrontational, outspoken, feisty and highly focused, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto is a self-made man determined to redraw the loci of power in Japan. He is clearly using the local platform from which to spring into the national arena. The question on everyone's mind is: Will Hashimoto ever be the prime...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 17, 2012

Suteteko: Hanging out in underwear is a cool way to survive the summer heat

Picture this: A man comes home from work on a summer evening. The intense heat of the day has abated and he goes into another room to change out of his suit. He emerges wearing a simple ensemble of underwear consisting of an undershirt (sleeveless or not) and a pair of suteteko — which can best be...
Reader Mail
Jul 12, 2012

Yukio Mishima's bizarre views

Regarding Hiroaki Sato's June 25 article, "Irony of being in the company of '12-year-olds": Although far from novel, a conversation about the extent to which the Japanese World War II government and military were no worse than Western governments and militaries could be illuminating.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 5, 2012

What is iconic photography?

Osamu Wataya is a photographer, but only in the dictionary sense of the word. Most artistic photographers use their subjects to make a work of art, "I want to be able to serve my subjects," he says, "I want my subjects to be able to use me." When the shutter snaps, he isn't so much freezing a moment...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 5, 2012

Big theater names and 'Super Kabuki'

At the start of the performances at Tokyo's Shimbashi Embujo Ichikawa theater in June this year, Kamejiro II (born Takahiko Kinoshi), 36, took the name Ichikawa Ennosuke IV, while his uncle Ichikawa Ennosuke III, famously known as the founder of "Super Kabuki," took the name Ichikawa En'o II.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 29, 2012

'Crazy Horse' / 'This Must Be the Place'

I knew a dancer back in the States who worked with the Washington Ballet ... by day. Some nights, under a different name, she performed as a stripper in a seedier part of town. While recognizing the need for secrecy, she herself had no problem with moonlighting as a peeler, and in fact enjoyed it. I...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 24, 2012

The doomsday cult of 9-to-5 depression

One of the enduring mysteries of the Aum Shinrikyo atrocities of the 1990s is the ease with which the cult attracted members. The arrest this month of the last two fugitives allegedly involved in Aum's fatal 1995 sarin gas assault on the Tokyo subway system recalls the whole ghastly episode, together...
EDITORIALS
Jun 10, 2012

Exporting 'Japanland'

The government's Cool Japan strategy of promoting the country abroad has taken another step as the trade ministry plans to recreate trendy districts of Tokyo in cities across the globe. The plan is aimed at promoting Japan and encouraging exports by organizing areas for Japan-style shops, restaurants...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Jun 6, 2012

Durant, Green show class of West's best organizations

Kevin Durant cannot possibly be, as commonly portrayed, as great a guy as he is a player, right?
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 29, 2012

Japan's house of the rising sun

What will our lifestyles be like in the future? An international group of students at Chiba University plan to explore the possibilities with their proposal for a next-generation solar house, a futuristic mix of new technology and traditional ways of life in Japan.
BUSINESS
May 8, 2012

Convenience store chains go with flow, grow

The nation's top three convenience store chains last month posted record annual operating profits for the 2011 business year despite the sluggish, disaster-stricken domestic economy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 3, 2012

Signed, sealed and delivered: Paul Smith's stamp collection

His creations are more commonly found paraded on fashion catwalks or on hangers in boutiques around the world.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
May 1, 2012

Blood, beatings and the cage: the bouncer

Before The Japan Times was invited inside Nagoya's iD Cafe to speak to Thomas, the nightclub's security manager, we stopped to chat to a uniformed policeman near the club. He told us there were as many as 50 fights in a nearby park on Friday and Saturday nights. This busy area of the city, Sakae, known...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Apr 29, 2012

Erika Sawajiri is an "Evil Woman"; controversial DaVinci paintings; CM of the week: Lotte Ghana

She's back, and badder than ever! Actually, before her monumental fall from grace, actress Erika Sawajiri rose to fame on her innocent image and ability to weep on cue. But after dissing her own film at a press conference she became poison.
Japan Times
LIFE
Apr 8, 2012

Fashion Week Tokyo escapes comfort zone

In what was the second season of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Tokyo since the German car-maker crucially stepped in as lead sponsor when government funding dried up last year, 37 brands presented their collections for the 2012-13 fall/winter season from March 18 to 23.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 6, 2012

'Oranges and Sunshine'

Decency is often much harder to swing than heroism or conventional success. And to keep plugging away at it without recognition or reward is not just awe-inspiring but truly humbling. "Oranges and Sunshine" highlights such an act of decency.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 5, 2012

Lee Bul: Inspired by the past imperfect

She may be Asia's leading female artist, but Lee Bul has grown very tired of that title.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 5, 2012

Lee Bul: Inspired by the past imperfect

She may be Asia's leading female artist, but Lee Bul has grown very tired of that title.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 1, 2012

Yonaguni: Japan's most westerly isle

A colossal, dark-skinned man rides along the sidewalk on a motorbike: no helmet, two small children aboard — a vision of life in the laconic Tropics. There are times here too on Yonaguni, the westernmost land mass in Okinawa Prefecture, when you see a curvaceous island woman in a vivid, flower-patterned...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 1, 2012

Sky Tree to offer world's highest bungee jump

Tokyo's newest and biggest visitor attraction, the 634-meter-high Tokyo Sky Tree in Sumida Ward, will open to the public on May 22. And if 11th-hour contract negotiations bear fruit, visitors to the Sky Tree may soon have the opportunity to plummet 430 meters (over 1,400 feet) toward terra firma, in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 30, 2012

'The Ides of March' / 'Route Irish'

OK, my job this week is to convince you that "The Ides of March" is one of the best films you'll ever see about politics and elections and the eventual disillusion we all come to harbor about both. But this task is complicated by the fact that I don't want to spoil it for you in the least — and believe...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 19, 2012

Authoritarian democracy looking less Asian

The world is being shaken by tectonic changes almost too numerous to count. The economic crisis is accelerating the degradation of international governance and supranational institutions amid a shift of economic and political power to Asia.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 16, 2012

'Take Shelter'

If there's one thing that's certain about predictions of the apocalypse, it's that none of them have been correct to date. The mother of all end-of-the-world predictions was 2012 — according to all that Mayan calendar mumbo-jumbo — and yet, here we are.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 4, 2012

Stories inspired by Japan's March 11 disasters

Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction (Anthology of Japan Teen Stories), edited by Holly Thompson. Stone Bridge Press, 2012, 384 pp. , $14.95. Holly Thompson, a Kanagawa-based novelist, worked alongside other volunteers in the months after the March 11, 2011, tragedy, shoveling tsunami sludge, clearing away...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Mar 2, 2012

Iri: Hidden pan-European eatery is one of a kind

Neighborhood restaurants are different from those where the lights are brighter and overheads (and expectations) higher. Almost by definition they're more casual and down-home, rougher around the edges, simpler and less stylish. Iri doesn't fit that pattern at all.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 20, 2012

Clean poverty, clean living and love on a shoestring

Okane wa doko ni itteshimattanoka (お金はどこに行ってしまったのか, Where has all the money gone?). Until a few years back, the tone among Japanese business pundits used to go like this — a little humorous and slightly hopeful, almost as if we were all playing kakurenbo (かくれんぼ,...

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