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Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Aug 26, 2010

Objets d'art with a purpose in life

Working across the grain
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Aug 10, 2010

Makeup Japan-style: Dark to light

Makeup for many women is a vital component of their appearance and one they take great pains to apply, even to the point of dolling themselves up during the crowded morning commute, working through the routine starting with a foundation, then eyebrows, mascara and finally lip gloss.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 23, 2010

'Seraphine'

When a woman values her art over personal happiness, the result can yield sheer, mesmerizing beauty. Tolstoy wrote that women prevail because of their "ingrained talent" to achieve happiness, but at the same time this talent becomes their downfall in achieving true greatness. Indeed, had Frida Kahlo,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 9, 2010

Komura Settai finds a new modern audience

It is often difficult to fathom how an artist so popular in his own time slides into oblivion in subsequent generations. 2010 has been a good year for one such artist, Komura Settai (1887-1940), who in his time was a prolific creator, producing illustrations, woodblock prints and stage designs. His recent...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 4, 2010

Amami Oshima: Take a trip to the cloud forest of the imagination

Despite the environmental mistakes of the postwar decades, the violation of a once pristine landscape, a recent trip to Amami Oshima, gave very real cause for hope. Some regions have always, it seems, been in good shape. Flying over the island's green, volcanic hills, I felt as if I were gazing down...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 12, 2010

Quantitative analysts take on the 'Beautiful Game'

HONG KONG — Sepp Blatter and the Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the organizers of the World Cup, had better watch out — the quants have arrived and have put their infamous models to work in predicting the outcome of the World Cup that has just kicked off in South Africa....
CULTURE / Books
Jun 6, 2010

Art rebel without a cause

Pulse waves from the art world of the early 20th Century may have been felt far and wide, but the movements, practitioners and individual works of art themselves were far from being globally coordinate.
CULTURE / Books
May 9, 2010

From a public toilet to outer space, sliding in filth all the way

In his 1989 essay "Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast" Tom Wolfe argues: "It was realism that created the 'absorbing' or 'gripping' quality that is peculiar to the novel, the quality that makes the reader feel that he has been pulled not only into the setting of the story but also into the minds and central...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 7, 2010

'Whip It (Roller Girls Diary)'

Having been a star player in Hollywood her entire life, Drew Barrymore views the set from the other side of the camera, in "Whip It" (released in Japan as "Roller Girls Diary") — a wobbly but adorable, whip-smart feature debut. Barrymore, whose own screen presence is always wildly ingratiating, made...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Mar 30, 2010

What's your favorite hanami memory?

COMMUNITY
Feb 27, 2010

Something to be said for Japan's gray zone

It was an a-ha moment, an epiphany light-bolting across her face. It flickered with incredulous certainty and ended with awareness in her eyes.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 21, 2010

Truly unique version of the foreigner's tale

Like a Yemenese bride-to-be who first sees the countenance of her fiance in a photo presented by relatives, Rebecca Otowa experienced a presentiment of her future in a black-and-white image of a building, a 350-year-old farmhouse in rural Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / Japan Pulse
Feb 16, 2010

Cell-phone magazine comes out of the closet

Playing to lovers of Tokyo Girls Collection, Model Closet launches a mobile cell-phone magazine promising to provide 'non fiction, real trend.'
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 29, 2010

Blooming successes flower in artwork

East Asian flower-and-bird painting emerged as a genre in China around the 8th century and the tradition has survived through to the present. Its resonances for modern and contemporary Japanese artists are currently the theme of two very different exhibitions: "By the Water-lily Pond" at the Asahi Beer...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jan 9, 2010

A cookie a day for your fluency

Foreign visitors adapting to life in modern Japan have scores of advantages that travelers of the past could never have envisioned, even in their wildest dreams. Like e-mail, Skype, YouTube and the general all-encompassing mesh of the Internet.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 27, 2009

First glimpses of a new world

THE LURE OF CHINA: Writers From Marco Polo to J.G. Ballard, by Frances Wood. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2009, 283 pp., £19.99 (hardcover) Not many readers follow the adventures of Robinson Crusoe as far as China, or even realize he went there. But the first volume of the famous story...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 22, 2009

Funerals a growth undertaking

Death is a growth industry in Japan and everyone from railways to retailers wants a slice.
Reader Mail
Sep 27, 2009

Folly of shopping with the eyes

"Why don't we eat bent cucumbers?" (Sept. 17) is a fantastic article. Many years ago, when I lived in Japan, I was always buying the "cheap" baskets of fruit and veggies sitting on the ground and not the vendor's table. I spoke pretty good Japanese, but despite repeated questioning, I never got a straight...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Sep 25, 2009

Conrad holds wine master classes

The Conrad Tokyo will hold special wine events from Oct. 13 to 15 under the direction of the hotel's wine consultant Ron Georgiou, who holds the qualification of "Master of Wine."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 31, 2009

Escape from propaganda

Artist, architect, designer, photographer, curator, writer, editor, activist — Ai Weiwei is many things. This multiplicity of means all serve a united end that centers on the existential question: What does human freedom mean in China today?
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 17, 2009

Go swim with fishes high in the sky

Does the ocean glitter like a cool mirage in your overheated mind this summer? Rather than trek out to the real thing, all you have to do is dive up to the "Sky Aquarium III" exhibit running through Oct. 4 at Tokyo City View on the 52nd floor of Roppongi Hills' Mori Tower.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Jun 28, 2009

Creative boho blooms in Jingumae

The area known as Jingumae, literally "shrine front," hugs central Tokyo's Meiji Shrine and is bifurcated by chic Omotesando street, the shrine's main approach. Roiling with well-heeled fashionistas, foreigners and photo hounds chasing the hottest new looks, Omotesando's stores showcase global mega-brands...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 14, 2009

Finding hope in the meaning of numbers

The beauty of figures plucked from an infinite numerical pool forms part of the theme of Yoko Ogawa's novel, which is also a celebration of an improbable friendship.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 5, 2009

Discovering an unexpected gem

Skeptic that I am, upon hearing there was an historical exhibition on the lives and art of Japan's Buddhist nuns, I assumed that this would be a drab show of temple artifacts and feminine articles veneered in the dust of incense smoke. As the show is largely curated by Western female academics, I also...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 5, 2009

'I Come With the Rain'

Vietnamese filmmaker Tran Anh Hung has a distinctive, high-contrast track record.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
May 31, 2009

Where whimsy meets wonder

Antiques tell tales of values, past and present. It's a good guess that whatever survives for a century or so in the tight confines of a Japanese home is either a work of art, a tool of cunning design, or an item of great sentimental value.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 8, 2009

Issey Miyake's "U-Tsu-Wa" filled with character and inspiration

In Japanese, the word utsuwa literally means "vessel" or "container," but it can also be used to describe a person's character. Someone said to have a "large utsuwa" ("utsuwa ga ookii") is a person of high caliber or someone with tremendous capacity or generosity. When celebrated Japanese fashion designer...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
May 1, 2009

A rosy way to spend Golden Week

T he rose-blossom season is coming up, and many places are offering visitors a chance to admire the flower seen in many cultures as a symbol of love and beauty at its best.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 24, 2009

Netsuke: delicate treats for the dandies of Edo

Until modern times, Japan seems to have been almost unique in having no tradition of jewelry, apart from the stone beads and gold accessories found in burial mounds from the last few centuries of the prehistoric period until circa seventh century. Elaborate necklaces, bracelets and diadems could be seen...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 10, 2009

A taste for the unusual leads to excellence

Since the Heian Period (794-1185), landscapes have served as the inspiration for generations of Japanese painters. Many followed the standards and styles of a particular school, while other — often encouragingly eccentric — individuals broke with all conventions to wield their brushes in a completely...

Longform

Eme-Ima Kitchen is one of over 10,000 kodomo shokudō in Japan. A term first used in 2012 to describe makeshift eateries offering free or cheap meals to disadvantaged kids, it now refers to a diverse range of individuals, groups and organizations working to provide not only food but a sense of belonging to both children and adults.
Japan’s ‘children’s cafeterias’ are booming — but is that a good thing?