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SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
May 13, 2005

Tsutsumi used culture to amass, retain iron grip on power

"If you want Sundays off, don't be a manager in my company."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
May 10, 2005

What you reading these days?

Lisa Jarvis Student, 21 Harry Potter. The whole series is really great, but I'm a big fan of "Prisoner of Azkaban." I have a lot of friends who like it so it's interesting to sit down and talk about it.
Japan Times
Features
May 8, 2005

It's time to get out there and grrrrrrrill!

Years ago, at a friend's house in Kobe, an intense argument broke out between the Americans and Australians present. It turned into quite a searing row, and for a while it threatened to inflame tempers and disrupt the otherwise festive occasion.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 2, 2005

Coating the truth to make fiction

THE COAT THAT COVERS HIM AND OTHER STORIES, by Michael Hoffman. Authorhouse, 2004, 632 pp., 2,940 yen (paper). Japan, having contrived the image of itself as a manifestly gentle society, the spiritual home of garden gnomes and all that is cute and cuddly, is now awakening to a manifestly dysfunctional...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 2, 2005

Sexual, visual politics: from shunga to shojo

GENDER AND POWER IN THE JAPANESE VISUAL FIELD, edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson and Maribeth Graybill. Honolulu: Hawai'i University Press, 2003, 292 pp., 7 color plates, 106 b/w illustrations, $36.00 (cloth). The original impetus for this interesting volume came during the 1994 Kyoto Conference...
COMMENTARY / World
May 2, 2005

Strong apology needs a willing recipient

HONOLULU -- The issue of Japan's apology for invading China from 1931 to 1945 and occupying Korea from 1910 to 1945 just won't go away, for two reasons:
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 30, 2005

Are dress codes key to global warming?

Just as a 1,000-km journey begins with a single step, it seems that the arduous process of reducing Japan's greenhouse gas emissions starts with the simple removal of a few neckties.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 24, 2005

It's not cartoons, it's education

JAPANESE THE MANGA WAY: An Illustrated Guide to Grammar & Structure, By Wayne P. Lammers. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2005, 312 pp., 500 b/w illustrations, $24.95 (paper). Wayne Lammers is among the best of the younger translators of Japanese to English. He has rendered such classical texts as Fujiwara...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 24, 2005

Documenting hell on Earth: At a theater near you

Because of the dangerous situation there, none of the commercial Japanese TV networks have staff correspondents in Iraq. On-site reporting that's shown on Japanese TV is from either other countries' news organizations or freelance Japanese reporters, the most prominent of whom is probably Takeharu Watai,...
JAPAN
Apr 24, 2005

N.Y. Times bureau chief honored

Internationally recognized journalist and author Howard W. French was awarded an honorary doctorate Saturday in Tokyo in recognition of his years reporting on Asia as chief of The New York Times' Tokyo and Shanghai bureaus.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 24, 2005

Time for some Showa trivia and Heisei melodrama

GEISHA -- HARLOT -- STRANGLER -- STAR: A Woman, Sex & Morality in Modern Japan, by William Johnston. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, 245 pp., $29.50, (cloth). ISOLATION, by Christopher Belton. New York: Leisure Fiction, 2003, $6.99, 372 pp., (paper). To be honest, I've never really understood...
JAPAN
Apr 19, 2005

History not key issue: Chinese in Japan

OSAKA -- The current tensions between Japan and China have less to do with history textbooks and more to do with a long-term political and economic rivalry, according to some knowledgeable Chinese living in Japan.
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Apr 17, 2005

'Man Friday' recalls time in line at Japan's first record expo

With the 2005 World Expo Aichi in full swing until September in Nagoya, it may come as a surprise to some that Japan's first world exposition was to have taken place as long ago as in 1912. But that was cancelled due to the death of Emperor Meiji. Another one, to have run in conjunction with Tokyo's...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 10, 2005

Impermissible surrender and its consequences

THE ANGUISH OF SURRENDER: Japanese POWs of WWII, By Ulrich Strauss. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004, 282 pp., $27.50 (cloth) It is well known that in World War II Japanese soldiers rarely surrendered, and fought to the death rather than bring dishonor to their families. Their having been...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 3, 2005

Religious liaisons: A voice from the void

LETTERS OF THE NUN ESHINNI: Images of Pure Land Buddhism in Medieval Japan, by James C. Dobbins. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004, 261 pp., with b/w illustrations, $60 (cloth). In 1921 a cache of papers was found in the archives of the Nishi Honganji temple in Kyoto. They were written by a...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Apr 3, 2005

Ryu Murakami: Straight-talking wordsmith wields his pen like a sword

For nearly three decades since his seismic debut with "Almost Transparent Blue," which delved into the sex- and drug-fueled lives of Japanese youths in a town hosting a huge U.S. military base, author Ryu Murakami has often used his trademark explicit, offensive and guiltlessly cheerful language to dig...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 3, 2005

So much food that we don't know what to do with it

The media didn't quite know what to make of that bizarre story last month about the elderly Sapporo man who allegedly killed his wife following a dinnertime spat. One might expect a husband to become angry over not getting enough food, TV commentators implied, but in this case the situation was the opposite....
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 31, 2005

No exception for Pyongyang

HONOLULU -- No issue more clearly illustrates the chasm in public perceptions that has developed between the United States and South Korea than the issue of human rights in North Korea.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 30, 2005

The influence of a literary titan lasts for 200 years

Renowned as a poet, novelist, dramatist and critic, Victor Hugo was a figure of legendary proportions whose funeral procession through Paris in 1885 attracted more than 2 million devotees.
Features
Mar 27, 2005

Mrs. Matsui

It was an open secret in my husband's course on modern Japanese literature at Radcliffe in the 1960s that his inspiration came not directly from the prose and poetry of Japan but from his absolute devotion to me.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 27, 2005

First, stop, look and listen

THE SINGLE TONE: A Personal Journey into Shakuhachi Music, by Christopher Yohmei Blasdel, Tokyo: Printed Matter Press, 2005, 168 pp., with photographs and glossary, 1,500 yen (paper). In the summer of 1972 Christopher Blasdel first came to Japan. He was from West Texas, "a landscape dominated by strip...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 22, 2005

Fresh foreign angles

Japan has been a magnet for foreign writers and journalists since opening to the West.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 20, 2005

The earnestness of being important

THE HEREDITY OF TASTE, by Natsume Soseki, translated by Sammy I. Tsunematsu, introduced by Stephen W. Kohl. Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 2005, 201 pp., 1,300 yen (paper). MY INDIVIDUALISM and THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LITERATURE, by Natsume Soseki. Translated by Sammy I. Tsunematsu, introduced by...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 20, 2005

Expectations in the Sundarbans

THE HUNGRY TIDE, by Amitav Ghosh. HarperCollins, 2004, 403 pp., £10.99 (paper). Piyali Roy, the daughter of Bengali immigrants to the United States, is spotted standing on a railway platform. She is dressed in the clothes "of a teenage boy." The man who distinguishes her from the crowd, as a stranger...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 19, 2005

Experts trade conflicting views on how to handle U.S. beef

Japan's 15-month-old import ban on U.S. beef has become a major diplomatic issue between Tokyo and Washington, and U.S. lawmakers are increasing pressure on Japan to lift the ban as soon as possible.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Mar 10, 2005

"The Whispering Road," "The Pig in the Spigot"

"The Whispering Road," Livi Michael, Puffin Books; 2005; 336 pp. If you haven't read Charles Dickens yet, what could be a better introduction than Livi Michael's "The Whispering Road"? Michael's first novel for older children imbibes Dickens' influences, dramatic storytelling and colorful characterization...
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Mar 9, 2005

Legal action gives new definition to 'The Meaning of Ichiro'

Well, I must say, this one really takes the cake.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 8, 2005

Creating laws out of thin air

With terrorists striking fear into governments worldwide, Japan too is currently considering its own version of America's Patriot Act, to be passed in a year or two.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Mar 8, 2005

Meditation, body work and TAC fundraising

Thanks to Vipassana Rose kindly sent a postcard after completing her most recent Vipassana course in Kyoto.

Longform

A man offers prayers at Hebikubo Shrine in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. The shrine is one of several across the country dedicated to the snake.
Shed your skin and reinvent yourself in the Year of the Snake