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JAPAN
Jul 7, 2000

Man arrested for allegedly conspiring to sell fake cigarettes

Police have arrested a 66-year-old real estate company employee for allegedly conspiring to sell counterfeit Mild Seven Lights and Seven Stars, both popular cigarette brands sold by Japan Tobacco Inc., police said Thursday.
COMMUNITY
Jul 6, 2000

Young women take to life at sea

It's common knowledge that a large proportion of Japanese traveling abroad these days are young single women. They usually have decent-paying jobs, live rent-free with their parents and spend their salaries as they please. Well aware of this phenomenon, the travel industry has geared some advertisements...
LIFE / Travel
Jul 5, 2000

Japanese researcher chips away at an ancient mystery

PHONSAVAN, Laos -- Archaeologist Eiji Nitta dug and scraped. The answer to the puzzle of the giant stone vessels scattered throughout the Plain of Jars in northern Laos lay, he believed, not in their material or their contents, but in what lay under them.
LIFE / Travel
Jul 5, 2000

The Plain of Jars: A place of war and death

PHONSAVAN, Laos -- It should be hard to go missing on the Plain of Jars. But hundreds have.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 4, 2000

Japan searches for itself and finds 'Genji'

YOSANO AKIKO AND "THE TALE OF THE GENJI," by G.G. Rowley. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan, 2000, 222 pp., $32.95. There seems to be something of a "Genji" frenzy going on right now. Liza Dalby has the author writing her memoirs in her new book, "The Tale of Murasaki"; Ichinohe Saeko has a full-length...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 4, 2000

Timeless jabs at the ordinary

LIGHT VERSE FROM THE FLOATING WORLD: An Anthology of Premodern Japanese Senryu, compiled, translated, and with an introduction by Makoto Ueda. Columbia University Press, 273 pp., 1999. My employer, a Japanese trade agency, holds an annual New Year senryu contest. One entry back in 1992, when Bill Clinton...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Jul 2, 2000

Remembrance

"Sensei." Along with "sayonara," that is one of the first words most of us learn when we come to Japan. Though the image has been somewhat tarnished in these recent years of school disorders and juvenile delinquency, traditionally the word sensei, or teacher, has been one of the most honorific terms...
JAPAN
Jul 1, 2000

DIC purchases 198 billion yen of Sogo's loans from Shinsei

The state-run Deposit Insurance Corp. announced Friday it will buy 197.6 billion yen of Shinsei Bank's outstanding loans to troubled department store chain Sogo Co. and waive 97 billion yen of that amount.
BUSINESS
Jun 29, 2000

Shinsei asks DIC to take Sogo loans

Shinsei Bank on Wednesday formally asked Deposit Insurance Corp. to take over 205 billion yen of its loans to embattled department store chain operator Sogo Co., bank officials said.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 27, 2000

Art, enlightenment and empire

THE IDEALS OF THE EAST, by Okakura Kakuzo. Tokyo: ICG Muse Inc., 2000, 250 pp., 1,300 yen.
LIFE / Travel
Jun 25, 2000

A humbling experience in the Himalayas

"We have to focus. This is going to suck. We're going to hate it. It's going to be 12 hours of misery worse than we ever imagined."
BUSINESS
Jun 24, 2000

Debt waiver for Sogo 'possible,' DIC says

The head of the semigovernmental Deposit Insurance Corp. on Friday described the proposed partial forgiveness by the DIC of loans owed by the Sogo Co. department store chain to Shinsei Bank as a "possible option."
BUSINESS
Jun 22, 2000

Bankruptcy declared for realtor, unit

Real estate developer EIE International Corp. and its affiliate General Lease Co. have been declared bankrupt by the Tokyo District Court, a private credit research agency said Wednesday.
LIFE / Travel
Jun 21, 2000

Kumamoto: the fortified city

Like the good residents of Granada in southern Andalusia, notorious for their drastic mood swings, natives of Kumamoto have a reputation for being stubborn and sulky. These durable folk (Kumamoto has one of the country's largest contingents of centenarians) are also reputed to be both easy to anger and...
JAPAN
Jun 21, 2000

Keeping it in the Takeshita family

IZUMO, Shimane Pref. — The younger brother of the late Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, the Liberal Democratic Party kingmaker, recently addressed a crowd of some 5,000 people, pledging to carry on his brother's wish to revitalize Japan's "furusato," or hometowns.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 20, 2000

A holocaust foretold by the pattern in the rock garden

BEFORE HIROSHIMA: The Confession of Murayama Kazuo and other stories, by Joshua Barkan. London: The Toby Press, 2000; 139 pp., $12.95 (paper). "Before Hiroshima" is 31-year-old American Joshua Barkan's first published collection of fiction, and the title story, which makes up almost half the book,...
COMMUNITY
Jun 18, 2000

Commemoration of a musical pilgrimage

"A Shakuhachi Odyssey -- Enchanted by Timbres of Heaven" is a collection of autobiographical essays, cultural musings, musical stories and more. It beat out over 200 competitors to receive last year's Rennyo Sho, a nonfiction literature prize sponsored by the Honganji Temple Foundation and supported...
CULTURE / Art
Jun 18, 2000

Japan's premier graphic designer revisited

One of the most striking aspects of city life in Japan is the bold use of graphics: Posters and magazines continually shout for our attention on busy trains and streets. Artistically, we see the good, the bad and the ugly, but the work of Japan's first great graphic designer was consistently impressive....
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 / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
Jun 17, 2000

A tribute to Japanese world music

In two previous columns (Feb. 5 and May 20) I wrote about recently established live-music houses, WAON in Nippori and Manabiya in Yokohama, where one can hear hogaku. The familiar settings of these spaces allow for an intimate connection with the music, which ranges from relatively unknown young musicians...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 14, 2000

Japan's path from imitator to world-beating innovator

CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY IN MODERN JAPAN, edited by Ian Inkster and Fumihiko Satofuka. London/New York: Tauris, 2000, 169 pp., unpriced. The relationship between culture and technology is complex and multilayered. Technological innovations that had profound effects on culture are easy to find: Think of...
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Jun 6, 2000

Super Furries, Eels, Bentley signed up for summer of fun

Super Furry Animals -- "Mwng" (Placid Casual) Their warped imaginations proffer a bent reality, a Dali-like melting pot of madness; they adorn their album covers with exotic monstrosities that are both cute and menacing. They are totally fuzzy. They are the Super Furry Animals, they don't play by the...
CULTURE / Art
Jun 4, 2000

Victorian passion, Pre-Rafaelite dreams

In postwar Britain the reputation of high Victorian art fell to an all-time low, and a Pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia sold in 1950 for a paltry 20 pounds. Times have changed; this summer auctioneers will sell the same painting for around 2 million pounds.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 3, 2000

Japanese ceramics on auction block

Contemporary Japanese ceramics took center stage in New York recently, when Phillips, the world's number three auction house, lifted the hammer on a sale titled "20th Century Japanese Ceramics and Design."
BUSINESS
Jun 3, 2000

NCB deficit grows 50.7 billion yen to 3.24 trillion yen

The capital deficit of Nippon Credit Bank, which is currently under state control, for the year that ended in March increased by some 50.7 billion yen over levels reported in September, the bank's earnings report showed Friday.
BUSINESS
Jun 1, 2000

Unclear rules hinder day trading in Japan

Hajime Mabuchi is an early riser. After sobering up in a hot Jacuzzi at his home in a Seattle suburb, he takes some vitamins and drives to a nearby Starbucks coffee shop. He arrives at 6 a.m.
CULTURE / Art
May 28, 2000

Reinventing the art of exhibition making

Harald Szeemann's recent visit to Japan, at the invitation of the Benesse House on Naoshima Island and Kanazawa City's museum construction office, was a rare chance to hear the freelance curator's views on exhibition creation.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
May 27, 2000

Sweet treats on a canvas of glaze

Though most of the world loves labels, it's hard to give one to the pottery of Norio Kamiya. Many collectors of Japanese pottery feel more comfortable if they know that this style is called Kutani or that one Arita or that this potter has won this award and exhibits at such-and-such gallery. Only after...

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