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Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Aug 21, 2003

"Toad Heaven," "Ada Lovelace"

"Toad Heaven," Morris Gleitzman, Puffin Books; 2002; 192 pp. Humans are always complaining about how unfair life is. Limpy is a cane toad, but he thinks it's unfair, too. For starters, no one likes him (except his family). Female cane toads don't think he's much of a looker. (Cane toads are ugly enough,...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Aug 7, 2003

Taking your mate for a ride

Now here's a heartwarming tale for all readers. It involves a partner who provides free transport, free food and, as a nice bonus, unlimited sex. Our story is about an insect, but it starts thousands of years ago.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 6, 2003

O, what a tangled web we weave

Though nowhere near as all-encompassing as the Renaissance in Europe, the closed, feudal world of shogunal Japan did throw up a few periods of vigorous artistic expression in the more than two and a half control-freak centuries it lasted. One of these was about 200 years ago, from 1804-1830, during what...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 27, 2003

So much to soak up in Yamagata

OK, let me put this out there: Yamagata-ken, just like any sensible prefecture in Japan, loves tourists. But you get the feeling that Yamagata Prefecture Tourist Division tries a little harder to promote its treasures. They even occasionally invite journalists up for a spin around the countryside.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Jul 24, 2003

"Fox," "Stravaganza: City of Masks"

"Fox," Matthew Sweeney, Bloomsbury; 2002; 176 pp. Every city has its ghosts. I don't mean spirits of the dead, I mean real people who might as well be invisible because no one takes notice of them.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 20, 2003

Summer suspense and nuclear intrigue

PROJECT KAISEI, by Michiro Naito. Indiana: 1stBooks Library, 2003, 321 pp., $19.95 (paper). THE INUGAMI CLAN, by Seishi Yokomizo, translated by Yumiko Yamazaki. Tuttle Shokai Inc., 2003, 300 pp., $14.95 (paper). Unless the dire warnings of electric power shortages that were raised earlier this summer...
MORE SPORTS
Jul 18, 2003

New bilingual paper ready to launch

SportZone, an English-Japanese bilingual weekly sports newspaper, will make its debut on Friday, July 18.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 17, 2003

Japan must think outside the box if it hopes to get ahead: creativity guru

Japan needs to set up a "Ministry of Creativity" to think its way out of the economic slump it has endured for a decade, according to the world's leading authority in the field of creative and conceptual thinking.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Jul 10, 2003

"Big George and the Seventh Knight," "Bang on the Door Animals"

"Big George and the Seventh Knight," Eric Pringle, Bloomsbury; 2002; 200 pp.
JAPAN
Jul 8, 2003

Wartime killing contest trial starts

The daughter of an Imperial Japanese Army soldier sentenced to death by a military tribunal for engaging in a contest to kill Chinese soldiers in 1937 said during a defamation suit hearing Monday she and her family still suffer stigma because of the "accusations."
JAPAN
Jul 7, 2003

Kim Jong Il's sushi chef pens tell-all book

A Japanese chef who prepared sushi for North Korean leader Kim Jong Il for 13 years has recently published a book that claims to give a firsthand account of Kim's luxurious lifestyle.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 6, 2003

For the visiting guests of honor

Togo Heihachiro, fleet admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy, dealt a huge blow to the Russian armed forces when he sent the czar's Baltic Fleet to the bottom of the Tsushima Strait in May 1905. It was a stunning victory for Japan in the Russo-Japanese war: A bamboo land had vanquished a Western power....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 6, 2003

The rich visit the poor to teach us a lesson

The fate of the Japanese economy may still be up in the air, but one thing is certain: We are living in an age of reduced expectations. Regardless of what happens to the GDP and unemployment rates, the public does not believe that things can only get better.
EDITORIALS
Jun 29, 2003

Harry Potter and the perfect storm

No doubt about it, this past week has been the week of Harry Potter -- a fireworks-and-champagne phenomenon not seen in the publishing industry for three years. "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," the long-awaited fifth volume in a series, has been flying off the shelves like so many Firebolts...
COMMUNITY
Jun 29, 2003

Going it alone 'to lift the gloom'

Reiko Togo has been very dissatisfied with Japan's magazine industry for a very long time. "Magazines have become just vehicles for advertisements, and there are none I want to read," she says.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 29, 2003

A hot-headed female voice

EMBRACING THE FIREBIRD: Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Poetry, by Janine Beichman. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2002, 352 pp., $23.95 (paper). Vivid, rich, suggestive, imaginative -- with these words, writer Janine Beichman aptly describes the extraordinary early poetry...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Jun 26, 2003

"Follow Me Down," "Frank and the Chamber of Fear"

"Follow Me Down," Julie Hearn, Oxford University Publishing; July 2003; 224 pp. Strange things are happening in the basement of an old house in East London -- and not for the first time. The floor has parted, forming a kind of channel, and faces from the past are floating in it in an endless stream....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 25, 2003

An all-star cast -- but if only they'd let 'Hamlet' be

As the Beckham typhoon swept through Japan last week, so Japan's theater world was taken by storm by its biggest event of the year to date.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 22, 2003

Evil war crims had it cushy

From behind a wooden lectern in Princeton University's Department of East Asian Studies last month, 85-year-old Tokio Tobita, a Japanese World War II veteran and convicted war criminal who served 10 years in Sugamo Prison, surveyed the intently focused faces of scholars, artists, students, American war...
CULTURE / Books / THE BOOK REPORT
Jun 19, 2003

Top-selling authors go abroad

Once again, the Japanese tax office has issued its annual list of top taxpayers for the previous year. Not surprisingly, it reflects the continuing economic slump, with a contraction in the amounts paid. What's more, six of the top 100 taxpayers are Wall Street bankers -- and five of them are foreigners....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Jun 18, 2003

Stark Reality: "Now"

It's a good thing the guardians of our children's tender morality are mainly obsessed with vexing lyrics and not intensely trippy jams. Otherwise, "Now" would have a big sticker across the front: WARNING -- The psychedelic children's music on this album will scramble your child's mind.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 15, 2003

Sunshine: It's enough to make you blanch

An extinction of sorts has taken place in Tokyo's Shibuya district over the last couple of years. The area was once a happy hunting ground for herds of skimpily clad young girls with tans so deep they were known as the ganguro (black-faced) girls. But go to Shibuya today and you'll hardly find any trace...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 14, 2003

From a 'potato' in Hokkaido to a poet in Shiga

Shizue Ogawa is so nervous it takes her an hour to stop trembling and another 30 minutes to take off her glasses. Then she can't stop talking, smiling and laughing. As she explains: "I'm from the countryside. I'm not used to the big city and places like this," and she indicates the lobby of the Imperial...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Jun 12, 2003

"Ned Mouse Breaks Away," "The Devil's Toenail"

"Ned Mouse Breaks Away," Tim Wynne-Jones, Groundwood Books; 2003; 192 pp. If you were caught playing with your spinach -- or worse, using long, stringy bits of it to write "I hate what Mom makes me eat" -- what would happen? You'd probably get grounded for a few days, right? But imagine if you got locked...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jun 5, 2003

Losing your mind may produce great art

Inevitably, we learn a lot about ourselves when something goes wrong. By studying what happens to people afflicted by various forms of brain degeneration, for example, we have learned a lot about how the brain works. This generally means that by understanding what goes wrong when specific parts of the...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 29, 2003

Best to remember this

A couple of years ago the British artist Damien Hirst explained why he now lays off alcohol: "Blackouts. I used never to get blackouts. . . . I was walking around in the morning, and they'd be going, 'You did this.' Did I? I couldn't even remember the violence."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 11, 2003

Koreans make good moves

THE KOREAN DIASPORA IN THE WORLD ECONOMY, edited by C. Fred Bergsten and Inbom Choi. Washington D.C.: Institute for International Economics, Special Report 15, January 2003, 180 pp., $25 (paper) In recent years, increasing attention has been given to the social and economic role of diasporas -- communities...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 11, 2003

English 'samurai' feted in a hostile land

Anyone who's read James Clavell's "Shogun," or seen the TV mini-series of the same name, is already indirectly acquainted with William Adams, the first Englishman to settle in Japan after a solitary ship of the Dutch trading fleet he was piloting drifted ashore in present-day Oita Prefecture in April...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 11, 2003

Changes in consumer concerns

CONSUMER POLITICS IN POSTWAR JAPAN: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen Activism, by Patricia Maclachlan. Columbia University Press, New York, 2002, 270 pp., $18.50 (cloth) This excellent study richly evokes the struggle and frustrations of Japanese consumer organizations in the post-World War II...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
May 7, 2003

One door opens, another one closes

"The closing of a door can bring blessed privacy and comfort -- the opening, terror. Conversely, the closing of a door can be a sad and final thing -- the opening a wonderfully joyous moment."

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.