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JAPAN
Mar 17, 2007

State mum on Nakasone's war brothel

started assaulting (indigenous) women and others started to indulge in gambling. I took great pains to set up a comfort station for them," Nakasone recalled in "Owarinaki Kaigun" ("The Navy Without End"), a collection of memoirs written by navy veterans, published in 1978. "Comfort station" was the government's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 15, 2007

Baba Zula: from the belly of the beats

Underground music maniacs, the real hardcore otaku (obsessed fans), have long raved about the Turkish psychedelic music of the 1960s and '70s -- crazy reverb-drenched, twangy-guitar tracks that sounded like The Ventures if they'd been a belly-dancer backing band with a taste for hashish and quarter-tone...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Mar 8, 2007

The Germans come to play

In most all of the world's larger cities, traditionally the grandest buildings have been religious in orientation. As places of congregation, they were necessarily characterized by large open spaces. As conduits to the spiritual, their design included surging spires, pagodas or minarets. The current...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 7, 2007

Bankrupt Yubari embarks on plan to dig itself out of hole

The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry designated the city of Yubari, Hokkaido, officially bankrupt Tuesday, canceling its autonomy and paving the way for rehabilitation under central government control.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 4, 2007

Unearthing proverbs, essential to life but hard to swallow

ZEN OF VEGETABLE ROOTS, calligraphy by Siu-Leung Lee, paintings by Fu Yi Yao, translated by Siu-Leung Lee. Yuzankaku, 2006, 254 pp., 2,800 yen (paper) The original "Zen of Vegetable Roots" integrates the philosophy of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism in a collection of more than 750 Chinese proverbs...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 2, 2007

'Paris, je t'aime'

It's a collage of miniatures, a collection of gemlike vignettes. In "Paris, je t'aime," 21 directors of various nationalities create 18 bite-size shorts (the longest being five minutes) about Paris, each one named after a Parisian neighborhood. Like a plate of hors d'oeuvres from a five-star restaurant...
Japan Times
JAPAN / WHEN A CITY GOES BUST
Mar 1, 2007

Yubari tries downsizing to solve fiscal crisis

The announcement in June that Yubari, Hokkaido, has effectively gone bankrupt rolled like an earthquake across Japan, jolting numerous local governments suffering their own financial problems. This two-part series examines the situation in Yubari and in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture, which also is in dire...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Feb 27, 2007

A grab bag of affordable products

Great design ideas do not necessarily need to cost an arm and a leg -- even though some manufacturers would like you to think so. With that in mind, this month's picks are a grab bag of affordable products, all under 10,000 yen (the small version of the Oblong clock excepted). Also, you should be able...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Feb 27, 2007

JET set Go MAD globally to help children in need

It was late on Christmas night when the meditation finished. The energy from the hourlong dancing and Sanskrit chanting flowed into charged silence and was now dissipating into the darkness.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 25, 2007

In fallen cities, where money trumps love

Love in a Fallen City, translated by Karen S. Kingsbury and Eileen Chang. New York: New York Review Books, 2007, 321 pp., $14.95 (paper) Money and the scramble to get it are at the center of many of our best novels, and this is nowhere truer than in the work of Jane Austen. The financial security that...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 25, 2007

Upstairs, downstairs and inside old Japan

Companions of the Holiday by Donald Richie, with an introduction by Timothy Harris and an afterword by the author. Tokyo/New York: Printed Matter Press, 181 pp., $15 (paper) Donald Richie is known to readers of The Japan Times for his regular reviews of books dealing with Asia, and more particularly...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 22, 2007

Feminine mystique

Bicultural superstar Anna Tsuchiya on her role in Mika Ninagawa's acclaimed debut film 'Sakuran'
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 18, 2007

Yoshu Chikanobu: the neglected master of Japanese prints

Chikanobu: Modernity and Nostalgia in Japanese Prints, by Bruce A. Coats, with essays by Allen Hockley, Kyoko Kurita and Joshua S. Mostow. Leiden: Hotei/Brill Publishing, 2006, 208 pp., 280 color illustrations, $99 (cloth) This is the first monograph in English on the Meiji Era print-maker Yoshu Chikanobu...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 18, 2007

Strange stories from Canadian suburbs

Nectar Fragments, by Michael Hoffman. AuthorHouse, 2006, 564 pp., $23.49 (paper). In the manner of the anthropologist, Michael Hoffman, in his latest collection of short stories, stakes out a small piece of terrain then proceeds to examine the life within its coordinates. The name of this plot is Nectar,...
MORE SPORTS
Feb 11, 2007

Remarkable return: Hingis happy with comeback

Former world No. 1 Martina Hingis won a record-breaking fifth Toray Pan Pacific Open in Tokyo last Sunday, adding the title to the ones she won in 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2002. It was her third Tier 1 title since returning to the WTA Tour in January 2006 after coming out of a three-year retirement because...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 10, 2007

Time custom-designed for that unique experience

It takes Charlie Spreckley no time at all to leave his apartment in Ebisu and meet at the station. He is tall, smiling, and very droll. Nicole Fall, his business partner, falls in not far behind, looking brisk and wearing wrist weights. "I've no time to go the gym these days. These help keep my upper...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Feb 7, 2007

A short essay on seeming rugged

My eldest daughter Miwako visited me from Canada recently, bringing with her a large cardboard box full of old letters, field notebooks and field logs that had been stored away somewhere. The oldest of the notes was the log of my first expedition into the High North of Canada in 1958. I was 17 when I...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 4, 2007

Thoughts behind the picture book

Ehon: The Artist And the Book in Japan, by Roger S. Keyes, foreword by Paul LeClerc. The New York Public Library in association with the University of Washington Press, 2006, 320 pp., 250 color illustrations, $50 (cloth) "Ehon" means "picture book," that is, a volume comprising pictures along with some...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 4, 2007

Drawing on some humorous animal characteristics

A JAPANESE MENAGERIE: Animal Pictures by Kawanabe Kyosai, by Rosina Buckland, Timothy Clark and Shigeru Oikawa. London: The British Museum Press, 2006, 112 pp., £16.99 (cloth) The Meiji Era artist Kawanabe Kyosai (1831-89) is said to have had his first memorable encounter with an animal as a little...
EDITORIALS
Feb 2, 2007

Freedom to edit

The Tokyo High Court has ordered NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corp.) and two production companies to pay 2 million yen in compensation to a women's rights group for altering the content of a documentary program on Japan's wartime military sex slaves. The ruling, which pointed out that NHK officials' excessive...
LIFE / Travel / WALKING THE WARDS
Feb 2, 2007

Cabbages and kings

Those who live and work in Itabashi are hesitant when it comes to tallying up the highlights of this northwestern Tokyo ward. "There's really nothing remarkable here," says ballerina and homemaker Chieko Muraoka, 37. "It's quiet and small-scale, but we like it that way."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 1, 2007

Aznavour: the voice of France's Frank Sinatra travels well

PARIS -- It had been raining since morning, but Charles Aznavour's welcoming smile banished thoughts of the cold outside.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 1, 2007

Treasures from out of the tombs

A monstrous face spans an entire ax blade, with protruding eyes, uplifted eyebrows, and a gaping mouth with serrated teeth. Weighing 5 kg, this imposing blade from a Shang Dynasty (16th-11th century B.C.) royal tomb site in Shandong Province, China, was used in sacrificial rituals to slaughter prisoners...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 29, 2007

Same hot buttons a hundred years later

NEW YORK -- What was the world like 100 years ago? That was not the question I had in mind when I idly wondered if I could find exactly how French actress Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923) had described British playwright/novelist Oscar Wilde on one special occasion. As this is the age of the Internet, I quickly...
COMMENTARY
Jan 23, 2007

U.S. presence vs. the public will

A tense atmosphere prevails in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, during its centennial this year due to the planned deployment of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier at U.S. Yokosuka Naval Base.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 18, 2007

In the presence of 'Emperor' Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa's assistant for almost four decades, Teruyo Nogami discusses the master filmmaker's genius, and his weaknesses

Longform

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