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JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Aug 30, 2001

We can't stay young forever, but why not age gracefully?

Following recent reports of a mammal able to regenerate after injury, science continues to imitate fiction, with a discovery in Boston that recalls the search for the philosopher's stone. The stone, the subject of the first Harry Potter book, was long sought after by medieval alchemists, who believed...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 29, 2001

Marshall Crenshaw

With its encyclopedic array of early rock 'n' roll hooks and a spare guitar sound that anyone could duplicate, Marshall Crenshaw's eponymous 1982 debut was the perfect primer, the kind of record mainstream acts could plunder for material to plug into the already ebbing New Wave. The fact that the record...
COMMUNITY
Aug 26, 2001

Living on the edge

It's 6 a.m. on Saturday, and Teruyuki Kato is woken at home by the beeping of his government-issued pager. The University of Tokyo professor of geophysics knows he must act fast. He calls the local police, who arrive within minutes and transport him, sirens howling, red lights whirling, to the Meteorological...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 26, 2001

Hope for the best . . .and prepare for the worst

Think about how difficult it would be if all our lifelines -- water, gas and electricity -- were suddenly cut off. In the event of a major earthquake, we would have to do more than just ponder these hardships. And it would go on for longer than you might think. After the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 26, 2001

Hell on earth in '23

"The pillars of the house made groaning sounds and began to crack. An earthquake! The wall clock stopped, and the electric fan went flying." That was how Hisamatsu Yamato, then an 18-year-old living in Tokyo's Honjo district, recalled the moment.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 19, 2001

Uniformly stylish Japanese

WEARING IDEOLOGY: State, Schooling and Self-Preservation in Japan, by Brian J. McVeigh. Berg, Oxford, 2000, 231 pages, $19.50 The Japanese are some of the most fashion-conscious dressers in the world. They spend large amounts of their discretionary income on clothes, have a strong preference for designer-made...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 19, 2001

Politico battled clans, bureaucrats

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF OZAKI YUKIO: The Struggle For Constitutional Government in Japan. Translated by Fumiko Hara. Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2001, 455 pp., $35 (hardback) Well into this fascinating account of Japanese politics, which spans the period from the beginning of the Meiji Era...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Aug 18, 2001

Joe Grace

"To all those who remember me in Tokyo, be certain that there is life after retirement. You've just got to find your niche," Joe Grace said.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 12, 2001

Book bites

LETTERS FROM THE END OF THE WORLD: A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF THE BOMBING OF HIROSHIMA, by Toyofumi Ogura. Kodansha, 198 pp., 2,000 yen. The first eyewitness account ever published of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, "The End of the World" is a devastating record of the horrors history professor Toyofumi...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Aug 9, 2001

Injunction process hopeless; fate of Bullfrog Pond sealed

The fate of Bullfrog Pond now rests in the hands of a Tokyo District Court judge, but the wheels of justice turn slowly in Japan. The court has yet to grant a crucial injunction, and hearings have dragged into their third month. Meantime, the pond in Tokyo's Minato Ward, known as Gama-ike, is being destroyed....
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Aug 8, 2001

Treasures to be hoarded

Here's an odd request: have a look in my closet.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 5, 2001

From the outside looking in

THE DONALD RICHIE READER: 50 Years of Writing on Japan. Compiled, edited and with an introduction by Arturo Silva. Stone Bridge Press, 2001, 238 pp., $19.95 (paperback). Full disclosure: I've known Donald Richie for more than 20 years and, like many people who have known him for a long time, I count...
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENING FOR ALL
Jul 26, 2001

So much to see despite the cedars

Earlier this year, I hired a car at Miyazaki Airport and drove along the coast to Kagoshima.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 22, 2001

Fighting the good fight for all

In the pantheon of Japan's fictional action heroes, it would be hard to find one better known or loved than Ultraman.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 19, 2001

Biased history helps feed U.S. fascination with Pearl Harbor

SAN FRANCISCO -- Why does America continue to nurture a deep preoccupation with Pearl Harbor, 60 years after the Japanese attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii? The makers of Disney's blockbuster $135 million film "Pearl Harbor" said the movie is primarily a love story, but its title, climax and cinematic...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jul 12, 2001

Jaws was born a rambling shark

A dark dorsal fin breaks the surface of a gleaming seascape. A ghost-faced killer glides silently through the water . . . the theme tune to "Jaws" automatically plays in the brain.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 8, 2001

In the pink

When Yokohama hosts the final and three other games in the soccer World Cup next June, foreign visitors will be spared a full-frontal view of the city's sleazier side by the waterfront, where a campaign to lessen any shock to their systems has been under way since last year.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 8, 2001

Wright the dealer, not the builder

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND THE ART OF JAPAN, by Julia Meech. New York: Japan Society/Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001, 304 pp., 229 illustrations, including 89 color plates. $49.50. Toward the end of his long and successful career as an architect, Frank Lloyd Wright remembered Japan, the scene of so much of...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 8, 2001

Survey offers solid treatment of history

THE MAKING OF MODERN JAPAN, by Marius B. Jansen. Harvard University Press, 2000, 896 pp., $35 (hardback). "The Making of Modern Japan," Marius Jansen's last work, is a reliable, solid and authoritative interpretation of Japan's recent past. It is a fitting testament to a learned man whose scholarly...
CULTURE / Film
Jul 4, 2001

To shoot up, perchance to dream

Requiem for a Dream Rating: * * * * 1/2 Director: Darren Aronofsky Running time: 102 minutes Language: English Opens July 7 at Cine Saison in Shibuya An AP report the other day told of a Beijing teenager who jumped four stories to his death while attempting to sneak out to a local Internet cafe. His...
JAPAN
Jun 30, 2001

Kids' haiku published by JAL Foundation

More than 210,000 haiku from 22 countries and in 16 languages were submitted by children aged 15 and under to a recent international competition organized by the JAL Foundation.
COMMENTARY
Jun 25, 2001

Another blast from Mr. Bix

To more than 80 percent of Japanese voters, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi looks like a populist reformer. But to the American winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction, Koizumi is a "rightwing nationalist."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 17, 2001

The bright side of bamboo

BAMBOO IN JAPAN, by Nancy Moore Bess, with Bibi Wein. Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 2001, 224 pp., 160 color prints and duo-tone photographs, 5,800 yen. Bamboo, the ancient, ubiquitous grass, is everywhere in Japan. Of the over 1,500 species worldwide, nearly half are found here. It...
CULTURE / Art
Jun 13, 2001

Sculpture for speed freaks

A scant six months since it opened and Tokyo's Rice Gallery is looking less like a contemporary art space and more like a fantasy car showroom.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 3, 2001

Housing for human beings

THE JAPANESE HOUSE: Architecture and Interiors. Photographs by Noboru Murata, text by Alexandra Black. Boston/Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing, 2000, 216 pp., copiously illustrated, 4,500 yen. Though the architect Le Corbusier learned a lot from Japan, he could not have been thinking of this country when he...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 3, 2001

Past obscures Korea's nuclear future

SOLVING THE NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR PUZZLE, edited by David Albright and Kevin O'Neill. Washington, D.C.: ISIS Press, 2000, 333 pp., $29.95 (paper). We may never know how close the world came to war in 1994, but most accounts suggest the margin was slim. Suspicions about North Korea's nuclear program...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 31, 2001

White lines, blowin' through my brain

Until 1903, a bottle of Coca-Cola contained around 60 mg of cocaine -- enough, it has now been shown, to trigger long-lasting changes in brain activity. According to a report in today's issue of Nature, giving a single dose of cocaine to mice changes the way that nerve connections transmit signals in...
CULTURE / Film
May 30, 2001

The ecstasy and the agony

Quills Rating: * * * * Director: Philip Kaufman Running time: 123 minutes Language: EnglishShowing at Hibiya Scalaza and other theaters The face of a beautiful woman appears in intense close-up, her fair skin offset by the clear blue sky behind her. The faint sighs of her soft, heavy breath are amplified...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 27, 2001

Who says that women can't have it all?

Several weeks ago, this column covered TBS's romantic comedy series "Love Story," in which Miho Nakayama plays a not-so-successful book editor whose employer tries to force her to quit by assigning her to its most difficult author. Though, as with all "trendy dramas," this one is mainly about love, Nakayama's...

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.