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COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 25, 2001

Tim and Lee Pierce

Ever since they first came to Tokyo nearly 30 years ago, Tim and Lee Pierce have been committed, reliable, community people. Separately and as a duo, they have allied themselves to associations that appeal to them. They came as parents, and are now grandparents, whose conversations often bring in mention...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 25, 2001

The best of young modern art

Once a year, Tokyoites have the opportunity to see some of the best contemporary painting and photography from across Japan in one location, the Ueno Royal Museum.
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Feb 21, 2001

Who's napping now?

As any music fan knows, the future of Napster, the biggest free lunch of MP3s on the Net, is still very much in legal limbo. Last week a San Francisco appeals court confirmed a decision made this summer: Napster is knowingly infringing the copyrights of recording artists. The court asked U.S District...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 20, 2001

A convenient but fragile liaison

BROTHERS IN ARMS: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance 1945-1963, edited by Odd Arne Westad. Cold War International History Project Series, Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Stanford University Press, 2000, 404 pp. (paper). At least once a year, the leaders of China and Russia get together...
CULTURE / Film
Feb 20, 2001

Support for Asian filmmakers

Facing nonexistent government support, meager prospects for private-sector funding and even diminishing turnout at box offices, any aspiring filmmaker in Japan might lose sight of their movie-making dreams.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 16, 2001

This one's for the record

Call me a vinyl junkie if you will, but I'm one of those guys who files his memories with his music. I could tell you what record I played over and over when my first girlfriend went off to college and stopped answering my letters ("Love Will Tear Us Apart Again," Joy Division, just released as a funereal...
COMMUNITY
Feb 16, 2001

Japan's designers refuse compromise

Japanese names at the Paris men's collections these days are rather thin on the ground -- at the most recent presentations, for autumn/winter 2001/02, only four Tokyo designers showed.
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENING FOR ALL
Feb 15, 2001

Nature in Tokyo: the long and Short of it

Kevin Short's latest book, "Nature in Tokyo," which came out in December from Kodansha International, is a 335-page guide to animals and plants in Tokyo and the surrounding area. Through this book, readers will become much more aware of the origins of Tokyo and realize that it's not all flat nor totally...
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Feb 12, 2001

Getting back on the right track

In all walks of life, those who make successful comebacks have always been admired. They become figures of resilience with a commendable never-say-die attitude; think Muhammad Ali or even Bill Clinton.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 12, 2001

Let the spring light the fires

THE PILLOW BOOK OF SPRING AND LAUGHTER: Eroticism in Meiji, Taisho and Showa Japan, by John Stevens. Tokyo: The East Publications, Inc. 156 pp., profusely illustrated, color plates/b/w photos. 4,200 yen. We associate spring pictures ("shunga") with the Edo period, lovers usually fully dressed with...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 11, 2001

More than 15 minutes of fame

In many ways, prints take the pulse of modern art. The flowering of techniques early in the 20th century gave artists a wild new freedom of expression, just as their personal opinions and emotions began to move center stage. Prints also reflected the growing democracy of art, the seismic shift that occurred...
JAPAN
Feb 8, 2001

Scientists make gene breakthrough

The work of a Japanese-led international scientific consortium on the development of a method for identifying genes hidden in large genome sequences is described in the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature, which is released today.
LIFE / Digital
Feb 7, 2001

Post-Dreamcast, Sega set to become world's top game publisher

SEATTLE -- With its recent decision to abandon the 128-bit Dreamcast video game console and to publish games for PlayStation2 and other gaming platforms, Sega appears to be leaving the game hardware business permanently. Sega Enterprises cofounder David Rosen says it's about time.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 3, 2001

Europe puts out feelers toward N. Korea

A mixture of adventure, altruism and a desire not to be left behind economically is responsible for the European plunge into Korean political affairs that began this year. First Italy and then, in rapid succession, Belgium, Britain and Germany have dispatched missions to Pyongyang. Only France held back,...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 2, 2001

Casting a literary eye on Japan's aging society

The sociologist and feminist Ueno Chizuko has released a collection of past essays that examine Japanese literature as primary source material reflecting the society and era in which it was written.
BUSINESS
Jan 30, 2001

Expressway tollgates to go cashless

The so-called Electric Toll Collection system will begin full-scale operation on March 30 at 600 expressway gates in Tokyo, Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama and Okinawa prefectures, the Land, Infrastructure and Transport Ministry announced Monday.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 28, 2001

Elegance in everyday sculptures

In the 19th century, ukiyo-e wood block prints and ornamental toggles for pouches -- netsuke -- were greatly prized in the West. But to most Japanese, in the whirl of modernization, they were simply old-fashioned aspects of a fading way of life.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jan 27, 2001

The art of appreciating ceramics

In pottery, as with life, sometimes the most basic questions are the most important: Why is this so? Or, how did this happen? Or, what does this part mean?
LIFE / Food & Drink / KISSA KULTUR
Jan 24, 2001

Mariage Freres: A Ginza tea party

They haven't had to advertise in over 140 years. Of course, when your product is of the highest quality, word travels -- even to distant shores.
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2001

Seirai, Horie win Akutagawa Prize

Yuichi Seirai and Toshiyuki Horie were chosen Tuesday evening as winners of the 124th Akutagawa Prize, one of Japan's most prestigious literary prizes, while the Naoki Prize for popular fiction went to Kiyoshi Shigematsu and Fumio Yamamoto.
LIFE / Digital
Jan 17, 2001

Old game + old system = high-tech breakthrough

SEATTLE -- Digital Eclipse, a relatively unknown video game design company in the United States, has achieved the incredible: It has taken a nearly 20-year-old video game, adapted it for a 12-year-old video game system and in process created a technological breakthrough.
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Jan 16, 2001

The buy-or-die albums of 2000

In 2000 America rocked with Limp Bizkit, Slipknot and At The Drive In, while Britain got all soppy and introverted with Richard Ashcroft, Coldplay and Belle & Sebastian. As for Japan, I have mixed feelings. It was great that Melt-Banana, Audio Active and 54 Nude Honeys (my favorite Japanese bands) all...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 13, 2001

Fates of Estrada, Philippines hang on trial

MANILA -- President Joseph "Erap" Estrada is in the battle of his political life as his lawyers fight corruption charges in an impeachment trial.
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENING FOR ALL
Jan 10, 2001

Daimyo's garden: tall trees among the embassies

Arisugawa Memorial Park has an area of 3.6 hectares and is the largest park in Tokyo's Minato Ward. The collection of tall mature trees gives the park a pleasing woodland effect.
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Jan 9, 2001

Hitting the high notes of jazz

At the age of 5 or 6, Cassandra Wilson recalls hearing the music of Miles Davis for the first time. "Sketches of Spain" was part of her father's record collection, himself a jazz musician and was one of the records he would often play in their home in Jackson, Mississippi.
JAPAN
Jan 7, 2001

Book of Allied surrender fliers proves hot draw for publisher

OSAKA -- The publisher of a book reproducing a series of "rakkasan" (parachute) news leaflets that were dropped on battlefields in Japan and Southeast Asia by the U.S. military toward the end of World War II is excited over the high demand for his book.

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