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CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 1, 2001

Eye-openers for the new year

GREETINGS FROM EROS!: Hokusai and the Erotic Calendar-Print. Richard Lane, bilingual (Japanese/English) text. Tokyo: Kawade Shobo, 2000. Unpaginated, profusely illustrated -- color plates, b/w photos, 3,800 yen. Sending calendar prints as New Year salutations was one of the amenities of traditional...
COMMENTARY
Dec 28, 2000

The fight for liberty continues

WASHINGTON -- We are entering a new year, the true third millenium. Unfortunately, the prospects for liberty do not burn bright. Human history is largely one of tyranny. The history of the last couple thousand years has been largely one of combatting tyranny.
LIFE / Digital / SURFERSPUD
Dec 27, 2000

Reay for the end of the year?

www.nenga.co.jp One of the biggest New Year's traditions is entering your friends in a lottery by sending them special nengajo greeting cards printed by the post office. This year it moves to the Internet. Sort of. You're not gonna make any of your friends a millionaire, and the prizes come from the...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 26, 2000

Don't retreat from the sunshine policy

SEOUL -- Government transitions are good times for political analysts. Before the new team moves into office, these experts share their knowledge, make evaluations and sometimes even predictions. These days the newspapers are full explanations of what the new U.S. leadership might do and should not do....
CULTURE / Books
Dec 26, 2000

Cold War roots of a noisy marriage

AMERICA AND THE JAPANESE MIRACLE: The Cold War Context of Japan's Postwar Economic Revival, 1950-1960, by Aaron Forsberg. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. 332 pp. $45. Recurring Japan-U.S. trade disputes have hogged the limelight for way too long, forcing assiduous readers...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 25, 2000

Flexibility the key to success of alliance

Foreign policy focuses on change. New leaders, new technologies, new conditions -- all create the need for new policies. Experts are always planning for contingencies -- the crisis to come -- and when they hit it's usually because governments failed to recognize the new realities that created them. ...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 19, 2000

Ordinary life made transcendent

EVENING CLOUDS: A Novel, by Junzo Shono, translated by Wayne P. Lammers. Stone Bridge Press, 2000, 222 pp., $12.95. I remember being startled when I read Wayne Lammers' translation for the first time. That was when, back in 1985, I was reading for review the two-volume "Showa Anthology," a collection...
BUSINESS
Dec 13, 2000

Brewers must beat problems to diversify, Moody's reports

While Japanese brewers will diversify into other beverage products to cope with the new dynamics of the domestic market, numerous obstacles to becoming comprehensive drink providers could undermine this reorientation and hurt credit quality, Moody's Investors Service Inc. said Tuesday in a special report....
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 10, 2000

The Japanese language goes international

This is the ninth of a 10-part series on contemporary Japan.
BUSINESS
Dec 8, 2000

Sakaiya stays on as adviser to Mori

Taichi Sakaiya, who declined to stay on as chief of the Economic Planning Agency during the recent Cabinet reshuffle, was appointed Thursday as a special adviser, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda said.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Dec 4, 2000

Judging history's 'single most violent act'

At a midtown bar, Wolcott Wheeler, whom I call a historian without portfolio, tells me a story about Robert Oppenheimer: how the physicist, meeting President Harry Truman in the Oval Office, said, "Mr. President, I have blood on my hands."
COMMUNITY
Nov 23, 2000

What's so great about the mod cons?

About two years ago, Hiroko Nakamura, a 40-year-old Tokyo housewife, decided she wanted only truly essential items in her home.
COMMUNITY / BODY AND SOUL
Nov 23, 2000

You gotta know when to fold 'em

One evening 20 years ago, Kiyomi Takahashi (not her real name) happened to stop at a coffee shop on her way home from work. She found a computer poker game machine in the corner of the shop, and started playing it just for fun. Little did she know this would be the beginning of a decade-long nightmare....
LIFE / Food & Drink / NIHONSHU
Nov 23, 2000

The man who never forgets a sake

Haruo Matsuzaki raises the small glass to his nose, sniffs for but a couple of seconds, and takes in a small sip. Slurping in a bit of air, he scribbles for a few seconds into his ever-present tiny notebook, finally expelling the sake into the spittoon next to the table. On to the next.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 21, 2000

From the mouths of babes: a myth

SPITTING IMAGE: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam, by Jerry Lembcke. New York University Press, 2000, 280 pp., $18.95 (paper). My most lasting memory of the Vietnam War is the divisiveness it created in the small American town where I grew up. The nation was divided at every level. Even junior...
JAPAN
Nov 19, 2000

Rodent population thrives on Tokyo's misfortunes

Noisy activists and girl-harassing scouts are not the only pests in Shibuya's Hachiko square. The presence of another rapidly flourishing group at this popular meeting place is about as welcome as the plague.
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Nov 19, 2000

Poetry readings in Okinawa

In Itoman, Okinawa Prefecture Oct. 15, Shuntaro Tanikawa read such scatological, contemporary poems as "Onara (Fart)" and "Unko (Crap)" from his collection "Hadaka" (the English edition, "Naked," is jointly published by Stone Bridge Press and Saru Press).
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Nov 15, 2000

Whassup on the Web

It hasn't made it into Webster's Dictionary yet, but you already know this word. In fact, it's already in your head. It's that jingle, that logo, that look, that idea. It's called a meme, and there's a whole branch of social science devoted to it. Richard Dawkins, the man who coined the word in his book,...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 8, 2000

A chance to reshape U.S.-Japan ties

Foreign policy is never a cutting-edge issue in U.S. presidential elections, and this year's campaign is no exception. Even when the candidates have ventured into the territory, the focus has been on China, North Korea or the role of U.S. forces in Europe or Africa or even Haiti. When Japan makes the...
COMMUNITY
Nov 2, 2000

Healthy diet, healthy mother's milk

Last in a series
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Oct 28, 2000

Coal-crusted, ash-glazed, long-fired

From aspiring lawyer to automatic washing machine salesman to master potter, life has been an interesting but rocky road for Shigaraki ceramist Shiho Kanzaki.
EDITORIALS
Oct 22, 2000

Libraries without limits

We human beings, especially those of us who are getting on in years, are always complaining that "anything goes these days." It's a habit that defines the species. Elderly Neanderthals probably tottered about fretting that the cave was going to the dogs and it was time for tighter standards and firmer...
JAPAN
Oct 17, 2000

Tanaka to investigate bid for Nagano Games

Gov.-elect Yasuo Tanaka NAGANO (Kyodo) Nagano Gov.-elect Yasuo Tanaka said Monday he will question officials responsible for destroying account books for this city's successful bid to host the 1998 Winter Olympics.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 17, 2000

Calm rejoicing in simple, ordinary things

OLD TAOIST: THE LIFE, ART, AND POETRY OF KODOJIN (1865-1944), by Stephen Addiss, with translations of and commentary on Chinese poems by Jonathan Chaves, Columbia University Press, 2000, 173 pp., $27.50. The photograph of Kodojin inside this book is very much what the title leads us to expect -- an elderly...
COMMUNITY
Oct 15, 2000

Here she is . . . Miss Stereotype

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Miss America Pageant may aim to represent the ideal of U.S. womanhood, but it's got its problems; it's about as internally conflicted as Al Gore trying to act like respects George W. Bush's intelligence.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 9, 2000

Japan shattered stereotypes in the '60s

ANGURA: Posters of the Japanese Avant-Garde, by David G. Goodman, with a foreword by Ellen Lupton. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999, 92 pp., 90 color plates, 17 b/w, $19.95. The 1960s was a time of extraordinary creativity in the arts in Tokyo. As Alexandra Munroe has said, it was "undoubtedly...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Oct 9, 2000

When micropower comes of age: an alternative to nuclear power?

Two weeks ago Taiwan's economic minister, Lin Hsin-i, proposed that his nation give up plans to build a fourth nuclear power plant, despite having already spent several billion dollars on the project.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 9, 2000

From nothingness, a celebration of life

A DREAM LIKE THIS WORLD: One Hundred Haiku, by Nagata Koi, translated by Naruto Nana and Margaret Mitsutani. Tokyo: Todosha Publishers, 2000, 147 pp., 2,381 yen (cloth). Dream and waking life. Reality and illusion. Where does one begin and the other end? This question radiates at the heart of Nagata...

Longform

Visitors to Kyoto walk along a street near Kiyomizu Temple in April. A popular tourist spot, Kyoto has seen what locals feel to be an overwhelming amount of tourists in 2024.
Is Japan ready for 60 million tourists?