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Features
May 9, 2004

Translators' icon with rhythm writ large in his lexicon

When people decide to read a book by a foreign author, they may be drawn by what they know of the writer, or by an intriguing title. But for many Japanese readers, the attraction is that a book was translated by Motoyuki Shibata -- and will therefore likely be to their taste as well as his.
JAPAN
May 8, 2004

Katayama's teen love story now top selling novel

A novel published in 2001 depicting the love between two teenagers became the all-time best-selling novel by a Japanese author Friday, with 2.51 million copies sold.
JAPAN
May 8, 2004

Katayama's teen love story now top selling novel

A novel published in 2001 depicting the love between two teenagers became the all-time best-selling novel by a Japanese author Friday, with 2.51 million copies sold.
JAPAN
May 7, 2004

Takarazuka groupies do it by the book

Akiko Okawara, 37, comes to Tokyo Takarazuka Theater almost every day to catch a stage-door glimpse of Sumire Haruno, a top star who plays a male role in the Takarazuka all-female theater troupe, even when she is not taking in the show.
EDITORIALS
May 2, 2004

A passion for punctuation

What's the biggest and most inspiring British export since the latest volume of "Harry Potter"? Not embattled football star David Beckham. Not a young prince, dutifully inspecting misery in the Third World. Not even another eloquent apologia for the fiasco in Iraq by Prime Minister Tony Blair. No, the...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 2, 2004

More than a name in the game

THE MEANING OF ICHIRO: The New Wave From Japan and the Transformation of Our National Pastime, by Robert Whiting. New York: Warner Books, 2004, 318 pp., $25.95 (cloth). "The Meaning of Ichiro" is gathering deserved acclaim as a great book on baseball, but it would be a pity if it was not also appreciated...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 28, 2004

Afloat in Mount Koya's spiritual sea

Mention Mount Koya, a highland in the north-central part of the Kii Peninsula in Wakayama Prefecture, and most people think immediately of the priest Kukai (774-835). Also known as Kobo Daishi, Kukai was the founder of the Shingon sect of esoteric Buddhism, and Mount Koya became the new sect's headquarters....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 27, 2004

Does comic relief hurt kids?

'Cuteness, eroticism, and violence are the essence of Japanese pop culture," says Ichiya Nakamura, executive director of the Stanford Japan Center and ex-government policy maker.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 25, 2004

Frank Gibney's league of Japanese gentlemen

FIVE GENTLEMEN OF JAPAN: The Portrait of a Nation's Character, by Frank Gibney. D'Asia Vu Reprint Library, Eastbridge, 2002, 356 pp., $24.95 (paper). Fifty years ago, a young American writer named Frank Gibney, fresh out of the U.S. Navy where he had been a Japanese-speaking intelligence officer, published...
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 23, 2004

Collins affair rocks Australia

SYDNEY -- Punch-drunk is how one Canberra insider describes the current state of Australia's security intelligence services. Never before in their roller-coaster history have the government's spying and spy-catching bodies been held in such public disrepute.
COMMENTARY
Apr 20, 2004

Campaigns fail education role

MANILA -- Ideally, an electoral campaign in a democracy offers the voter the chance to study the available alternatives before deciding which options are most compatible with his or her individual preferences. In this sense, electoral campaigns should be exercises in political education.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Apr 18, 2004

Revisiting an evil stereotype

MOSCOW -- Each country has a reputation. For France, it is wine and food; for Italy, wine, food and the pope; for Holland, canals; for Austria, skiing; for Russia vodka, snow and bears.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 18, 2004

Beijing Ripper goes chop-chop; New York whodunit has a rap

CHINESE WHISPERS, by Peter May. London: Coronet Books, 2004, 402 pp., £6.99 (paper). MURDER IN CHINA RED, by Dean Barrett. New York: Village East Books, 2003, 260 pp., $11.95 (paper). Honolulu Detective Charlie Chan made his literary debut in Earl Derr Biggers' 1925 novel "The House Without a Key."...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 13, 2004

No room for 'outsiders'

In "The Japanese," Japanologist and former U.S. ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer wrote that "no people have committed themselves more enthusiastically to internationalism than the Japanese or have so specifically repudiated nationalism."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 11, 2004

Religion of the East through the eyes of the West

THE BUDDHA AND THE SAHIBS: The Men Who Discovered India's Lost Religion, by Charles Allen. John Murray, 2003, 322 pp., £8.99 (paper). The story begins with a botanist. At the end of the 18th century, a Scottish doctor named Francis Buchanan was employed to carry out surveys of Burma and Nepal, neither...
Events
Apr 11, 2004

KANSAI: Who & What

Major exhibit features Miffy the bunny: A big event featuring Miffy the bunny is being held until April 18 at ATC Museum in Suminoe Ward, Osaka.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 11, 2004

The struggle to find a collective identity

JAPAN UNBOUND: A Volatile Nation's Quest for Pride and Purpose, by John Nathan. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004, 271 pp., $25 (cloth). In this engaging book, largely based on extensive interviews, John Nathan probes the pathologies, contradictions and search for identity in contemporary Japan. He ranges...
CULTURE / Books / THE BOOK REPORT
Apr 1, 2004

Losers, winners in contemporary Japan

Bridget Jones in London, Ally McBeal in Boston, Carrie and her friends in New York City. Now Sakai Junko has published a best-selling volume of essays on singletons in Tokyo over the age of 30, like herself, whom she calls -- in a mix of ruefulness and pride -- makeinu (losers). In "Makeinu no toboe"...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 21, 2004

A different kind of matrimony

TWINKLE, TWINKLE, by Kaori Ekuni, translated by Emi Shimokawa. New York: Vertical Inc., 2003, 172 pp. $19.95 (cloth). This is an excellent translation of Kaori Ekuni's 1991 novel, "Kira Kira Hikaru," a popular best seller that was made into a very good film by Joji Matsuoka the following year.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 21, 2004

The claustrophobia of a criminal mind

NO REASON FOR MURDER, by Ayako Sono. ICG Muse Inc, 2003, 422 pp., 3,000 yen (cloth). Reading crime stories can be a claustrophobic experience. Entering the criminal mind is not unlike squeezing into the airless tunnels of a rodent.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 21, 2004

Wrong ways to a Shanghai potboiler thriller

SHANGHAI, by Donald G. Moore. Lincoln, Nebraska: iUniverse Inc., 2003, 218 pp., $24.95 (cloth). ROBERT LUDLUM'S THE ALTMAN CODE, by Robert Ludlum and Gayle Lynds. New York: St. Martin's Paperback, 2004, 496 pp., $7.99 (paper). Brand-name thriller "Robert Ludlum's The Altman Code" is part of a growing...
COMMENTARY
Mar 14, 2004

Elections are not enough for democracy

MANILA -- In most countries, elections attract enormous public attention. This is not surprising as these political exercises constitute the heart of democratic order. Translated into English, the originally Greek word "democracy" means "rule of the people."
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 13, 2004

The obstruction to Sri Lanka's evolution

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- The continuous conflict between Sri Lanka's two main leaders has been covered from nearl every angle. What have been largely ignored, though, are the complications and contradictions arising on that beautiful island from a political system of "cohabitation." At present, public...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 15, 2004

The politics of sex: How a government stays on top

COLONIZING SEX: Sexology and Social Control in Modern Japan, by Sabine Fruhstuck. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, 217 pp., 15 illustrations, $50.00 (cloth), $19.95 (paper). Philosopher Michael Foucault has written that sexuality is the most useful tool in any power relationship. It is...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 13, 2004

New subway signals start of a new era

At 4:57 on the morning of Feb. 1, a navy-blue and yellow train pulled out of Motomachi-Chukagai Station bound for Yokohama Station, connecting with through services from there to Shibuya via the Tokyu Toyoko Line.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Feb 6, 2004

Media blames 'coach killers'

NEW YORK --Byron Scott's firing encouraged an irresistibly, hysterical deduction by the player-hating segment of the media: The NBA is a (cancerous) cluster of coach killers.
CULTURE / Books / THE BOOK REPORT
Feb 5, 2004

Japan mulls its future with Koizumi

What stance should Japan take in a world dominated by the American superpower? Is Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi no more than an errand boy for bullyboy George W. Bush, as a Shukan Gendai headline implied last March? Is he an incompetent know-nothing who has casually thrown away Japan's precious pacifist...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 1, 2004

Japanese Mafia struggles

THE JAPANESE MAFIA: Yakuza, Law and the State, by Peter B.E. Hill. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, 323 pp., $35 (cloth). In this superb book Peter Hill challenges prevailing interpretations of the yakuza and, in doing so, explores the pathology and dynamism of contemporary Japan. He dismisses...
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 19, 2004

Argument without contempt

CHIANG MAI, Thailand -- Without entering the notorious, unending controversy surrounding Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, I would like to examine peripheral issues arising from it and to question the inability of some campaigners to respect the views of others. While I fully understand the fury of many observers...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 18, 2004

'Losing dog' believers are barking up the wrong tree

In last week's column I mentioned that the media now likes to divide people and things into winners and losers (kachigumi, makegumi). This device is mainly used for economic-related matters, but it has trickled down into other social spheres.

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.