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JAPAN
Nov 25, 2000

Body eyed to curb rights abuses by media

The deputy managing editor of the daily Mainichi Shimbun was shocked when he found out that a Justice Ministry panel had been holding discussions on the premise that the media is an enemy of human rights.
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENING FOR ALL
Nov 23, 2000

Floating island a relic of a long-gone geologic age

SHINGU, Wakayama Pref. -- Inosawa Ukishima, a bog woodland in the center of Shingu City at the mouth of the Kumano River, isn't an ordinary park.
CULTURE / Music
Oct 21, 2000

Songs and sausages in Balkan backwoods

KOPRIVSHTITSA, Bulgaria -- Bulgaria may be one of the worst places to visit in Europe if you're looking for an advanced level of economic development, but it is a great place to go if you want a music festival where you can take off your shirt.
COMMUNITY
Oct 19, 2000

Glittering prizes on the Ginza

There's a new tenant on Ginza's shopping street, a new jewel.
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Oct 15, 2000

Rexroth revolution comes home to Japan

Yokohama-based essayist and poet Morgan Gibson has been and continues to be one of the most prolific contributors to Japan's English literary scene. Of his own work he had poems published in the 1970s in pioneering journals like One Mind and Kyoto Review and later, in the '80s, in publications like Blue...
COMMUNITY
Oct 12, 2000

Till bedtime do us part

At midnight every night, Shoko Ohara, a 39-year-old construction company employee, drives to the station to pick up her hard-working husband Takeshi, an engineer. The two chat during the 10-minute ride to their suburban home, and while Takeshi takes a bath, Shoko warms up his dinner in the kitchen. She...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 3, 2000

Diners, look before you eat

AT THE JAPANESE TABLE, by Richard Hosking. Images of Asia. Oxford University Press, 2000, 70 pp., 22 color plates, 19 b/w, unpriced. THE ESSENCE OF JAPANESE CUISINE: An Essay on Food and Culture, by Michael Ashkenazi and Jeanne Jacob. Richmond/Surrey: Curzon Press, 2000, 252 pp., 11 b/w photos, 45 British...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 26, 2000

Welcome return of four classics

THE IZU DANCER, by Yasunari Kawabata, translated by Edward Seidensticker. THE COUNTERFEITER; OBASUTE; THE FULL MOON, by Yasushi Inoue, translated by Leon Picon. Singapore, Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 2000, 144 pp., $14.95. Here is a new, reset quality-paperback edition of one of the staples of modern...
OLYMPICS
Sep 13, 2000

'The Greatest Show on Earth' hits Sydney

The "Greatest Show on Earth" is back and badly in need of an image makeover.
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2000

Quake of '23 gave Ikebukuro its Bohemian roots

When Ikebukuro Station opened on the Yamanote Line in 1903, the area around it was little more than pasture and vegetable fields.
MORE SPORTS
Sep 10, 2000

Utsugi ready to fulfill softball dream with Japan

Reika Utsugi remembers the summer of 1996 -- missing out on the Japanese Olympic softball team after she changed her nationality. Four years later, the former Chinese captain will play for Japan in Sydney.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Sep 9, 2000

Putting no price on the beautiful

If all the pottery that I live with and use suddenly disappeared from my home, I would find myself quite blue. Those pieces, in their silent voices, spark my imagination and encourage me to live each day with grace and style; they are good friends. Someday I know I will have to part with them; that is...
CULTURE / Art
Sep 3, 2000

The making of alternative history

The xich lo (cyclo) is as ubiquitous in Vietnam as the tuk tuk is in Thailand, but completely man-powered: The driver peddles the vehicle behind the comfortably seated passenger. It is currently an important mode of transportation on Vietnam's streets, as well as a livelihood for countless drivers, and...
MULTIMEDIA / SPORTS SCOPE
Aug 24, 2000

Shooting the breeze with affable Eddie

Sanfrecce Hiroshima manager Eddie Thomson HIROSHIMA -- Former Australian national team coach Eddie Thomson is the longest-serving manager in the J. League, but two weeks ago he announced that he would be leaving Sanfrecce Hiroshima at the end of the current season. However, the affable, 53-year-old...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 22, 2000

Soseki never dreamed of this

TEN NIGHTS' DREAMS, by Natsume Soseki. Translated by Takumi Kashima, Kyoko Nonaka, Hideki Oiwa, Horikatsu Kawashima and Katsunori Fujioka. London: Soseki Museum in London, 2000. 64 pp., unpriced. In 1908, and already an established popular writer, Natsume Soseki turned to more experimental forms of...
COMMUNITY
Aug 17, 2000

Preparing to teach for the next 500 years

It is remarkable that in 150 years of mainstream education, there has been little serious investigation into how the human brain learns. An exception is the work of Bulgarian scientist Dr. Georgi Lozanov, who began studies and experiments in the 1950s.
CULTURE / Music
Aug 13, 2000

Asahina still tall on the podium at 92

Osaka Philharmonie Kokyo Gakudan
CULTURE / Art
Aug 6, 2000

Untruely, unmadly, shallowly in love

Daisuke Takeya went to New York to study art in 1989 and got thoroughly sick of being told by everybody and anybody that they loved him, in typically free and easy American style. On the other hand, he enjoyed the mispronunciation of his name Daisuke into Daisuki, meaning "I really like you" in Japanese...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Jul 27, 2000

Wily Putin seduces the world

Josef Stalin hated international travel: He suspected somebody might attempt to kill him. Nikita Khrushchev loved it: He enjoyed shocking foreign hosts with his erratic behavior. Leonid Brezhnev was happy to travel to any country that would give him a new Mercedes as a state gift. Mikhail Gorbachev had...
CULTURE / Music
Jul 25, 2000

So you wanna be a glam-sleaze superstar?

As befits artists whose chosen mode of expression is more or less a comment on somebody else's mode of expression, Swedish pop groups definitely have the best names. The Trampolines play bouncy, never-less-than-fun British pop while the Wannadies mine the rich vein of teenage angst in straightforward...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 25, 2000

Fenollosa's study of art is art

EPOCHS OF CHINESE AND JAPANESE ART, by Ernest F. Fenollosa. A facsimile of the 1913 edition. New York, Tokyo, Osaka: ICG Muse, Inc. 440 pp., with original plates, 2,100 yen. Ernest Fenollosa, the man who taught the West about traditional Japanese art, first came to Japan in 1878, when he was invited...
CULTURE / Art
Jul 22, 2000

Frozen moments of photographers' lives

They might have been shot in a shadowy New York street in the '30s, at a Parisian cafe in the '50s, or in the middle of a Vietnamese battlefield in the '60s . . . The settings and contexts of the 260 photographs currently on display at "The Century of Photography Exhibition" at Ginza's Matsuya department...
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jul 22, 2000

When a woman tends the flame

Women potters have been on the move in recent years in Japan, which is quite a contrast to bygone days when they weren't even allowed near a kiln.
LIFE / Travel
Jul 12, 2000

Time travel in downtown Seoul

As a resident of Japan, one might be forgiven for assuming that the South Korean film industry is nearly nonexistent, considering the scarcity of offerings here. In fact, South Korean media production is prolific, but it sometimes takes an unexpected circumstance to bring this into clear focus.
JAPAN
Jul 5, 2000

Mori Cabinet not necessarily his own

In an effort to assert his leadership and bolster his sagging political fortunes, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori elected for a mix of the old and new in Tuesday's Cabinet reshuffle.
LIFE / Travel
Jun 28, 2000

Beguiling smiles along an ancient road

All Silk Roads lead to Xian, China's capital during some 2,000 years of its history and the cosmopolitan center of East-West trade during the Tang Dynasty (618-907).
JAPAN
Jun 17, 2000

Empress Dowager dies at 97; family at her side

The Empress Dowager, the widow of Emperor Showa, died Friday afternoon, two days after she began experiencing breathing difficulties, the Imperial Household Agency said. She was 97.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 17, 2000

Sculptures that capture the mysterious rhythms of nature

The press release for the sculptor Susumu Shingu's "Wind Caravan" project opens charmingly with a quote from Christina Rossetti: "Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I, but when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is blowing by."
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 16, 2000

A ghost brings actress back into the spotlight

"I was deeply impressed by the beauty of the words," says actress Keiko Matsuzaka, 47, breathless with enthusiasm as she talks about the play she's producing: "Tenshu Monogatari."
COMMENTARY
Jun 13, 2000

Future rides on this election

The Japanese archipelago will be deafened by the din of election campaigning for the Lower House for about two weeks beginning today. Given the growing public distrust of politics, however, the ranks of voters who claim no party affiliation are swelling. Political parties have repeatedly embraced unprincipled...

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