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CULTURE / Books
Jan 17, 2010

Mystery made of a rationalist's nightmares

A blood-soaked woman, clutching a child, stands on a barren moor. This is the image of the ubume of the title. This creature, or figment, who may or may not exist, but who haunts the narrative of this novel, is defined as the visible form of the regrets experienced by a woman who has died during childbirth....
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Jan 17, 2010

Guilty by ballot, Japan-U.S. security treaty signed, gang war feared

75 YEARS AGO
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2010

How do writers come up with this stuff?

Reading Mieko Kanai's stories is an unsettling experience, like swimming underwater, existing in a new and shimmering medium, and coming up for air between stories just to make sure everything is still real — or as real as you remember it. Concurrently, it feels as if one were skating on a slippery...
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 27, 2009

Koza remembered

It's October 2009, and I'm sitting in the parking lot of a convenience store in Koza city, taking photographs of the sidewalk. I've been here for close to an hour — surrounded by a dozen old photographs, four maps and reams of photocopies all weighed down with chunks of brick to stop them blowing away...
COMMENTARY
Dec 20, 2009

Wake up a friend about China at Christmas

LOS ANGELES — Attention last-minute holiday shoppers: We have an easy-to-purchase gift to recommend. And we guarantee that it will fit all sizes, shapes and tastes. This is assuming your intended recipients are intelligent, literate and eager to learn about the world.
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Dec 20, 2009

Governor's new cricket field, Yoshiwara liberation, first returnees from North Korea

100 YEARS AGO Friday, Dec. 3, 1909
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / STYLE WISE
Dec 10, 2009

Luxuriating at MoT and Vulcanize, customizing at Nike and economizing at Venus Fort

The luxury of fashion
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Nov 15, 2009

Babe Ruth in Japan, protestors storm Diet, Morinaga candy poisoned

75 YEARS AGO
CULTURE / Art
Oct 30, 2009

Verner Panton's colorful visions

Experimentation, playfulness, adventure. Through the example of maverick Danish designer Verner Panton, these words have entered the lexicon of many designers today.
COMMENTARY
Oct 26, 2009

Paranoids feast on China's 'peaceful rising'

LOS ANGELES — Paranoid people tend to live longer, goes the old joke. And so it is in this spirit only — not out of a desire to engage in Cold War China-bashing — that we raise concerns about China. So here's the paranoid's question: Just what is China really up to?
COMMENTARY
Oct 21, 2009

Another twist and shout from North Korea

LOS ANGELES — Like the baby that hurls its rattle out of the crib to grab attention, North Korea has never been known for a subtle diplomatic style. Right now, though, it appears to have abandoned, temporarily at least, the crude infantile approach for a more adult turn.
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Oct 18, 2009

Prince Ito assassinated, English language lauded, socialists accused of seeking Japan-U.S. split, butoh dance heads overseas

100 YEARS AGO
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Sep 20, 2009

North Pole discovery, 1923 earthquake, first trans-Pacific flight and Emperor's regret for colonial rule over Korea

100 YEARS AGO Friday, Sept 10, 1909 Discovery of the North Pole Almost any encyclopedia may be consulted for a history of Arctic exploration, and we do not propose here to take up the subject, except to touch on the latest phase of it, namely the discovery of the North Pole itself.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 28, 2009

Dipping into modern art at Naoshima's bathhouse

At 2 p.m. on July 26, operations commenced at the first public bathhouse on the island of Naoshima in the Seto Inland Sea between the mainland of Honshu and Shikoku. Titled Naoshima Bathhouse "I Love Yu" (the "Love" represented by a heart symbol and "Yu" in kanji form) and designed by artist Shinro Ohtake...
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Aug 16, 2009

Hitler assumes presidency, repatriation to North Korea and a young Kazuo Ishiguro interviewed

75 YEARS AGO Friday, Aug. 3, 1934
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Jul 19, 2009

Yokohama port anniversary, population boom, Zen bus-drivers and Japanese longevity

100 YEARS AGO
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 21, 2009

Secrets to studying Japanese film

In its field I cannot imagine a research guide more needed. For whole decades scholars have struggled simply to locate sources, even to find out what there were. Now, however, the skill and stamina of Mark Nornes and Aaron Gerow have resulted in a reference work that both illuminates and defines this...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 14, 2009

Is a national 'Manga Museum' at last set to get off the ground?

When it was announced in April that ¥11.7 billion had been set aside in 2009's supplementary budget to create a new National Center for Media Arts (NCMA) — a museum for manga, anime, video games and technology art — the news was greeted in the same way that most cultural-policy issues are in Japan....
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 14, 2009

New university library puts focus on the fans

Perhaps no single cultural product is held more dear in Japan than manga. It was a dominant form of pulp entertainment in the early post-World War II period, a forum for social dissent in the 1960s, then for female creativity in the '70s. By the '80s, manga was at the center of a mass market that outstripped...
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
May 17, 2009

Don'ts for ladies, hunting pickpockets and Tokyo named Olympic host

100 YEARS AGO
Japan Times
JAPAN
May 5, 2009

Google crosses line with controversial old Tokyo maps

When Google Earth added historical maps of Japan to its online collection last year, the search giant didn't expect a backlash. The finely detailed woodblock prints have been around for centuries, they were already posted on another Web site, and a historical map of Tokyo put up in 2006 hadn't caused...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 1, 2009

So what then was 1968 all about?

For over a decade, artist-in- residence programs have been held by myriad organizations throughout Japan, all with roughly the same objective: to provide a unique and mutually enlightening experience for the both visiting artist and host. One of the latest residencies held at Tokyo Wonder Site might...
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
Apr 19, 2009

Flying machines, dancing for defense, an Imperial wedding and a bark suppressor

100 YEARS AGO
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Apr 4, 2009

Nihonshu evangelist preaches heady mix of culture, taste

John Gauntner appreciates a great destination, but for him, it's really about the journey. With five books published on sake, and as the only non-Japanese to be recognized as a kikizake meijin (accomplished sake taster) for accuracy in sake tasting, Gauntner is widely considered the leading English-speaking...

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan