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COMMENTARY / World
Nov 9, 2003

APEC future rests on political relevancy

SEOUL -- Another APEC summit has come and gone but has anything really changed? The question that needs to be asked is whether the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum is still relevant? No one attending the recent APEC summit in Bangkok really wanted to leave -- especially after the magnificence...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 29, 2003

An artist in a land of ice and snow

Jorg Schmeisser traveled to Antarctica on the icebreaker Aurora Australis in 1998. The result was a series of works -- etchings, drawings and paintings -- that became "Breaking the Ice," a major exhibition showing in Kyoto and scheduled for Tokyo and Yokohama, that explores the majesty and uncanny beauty...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Aug 13, 2003

The pot is mightier than the sword

As brutal as they may have been, many feudal Japanese warlords were passionate about the Way of Tea. In the midst of battle they would pause for a "tea break," appreciating the fleeting moment and simple joys of tea -- with bits of strategy tossed in.
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 7, 2003

Golden 'weeds' of wondrous ways

It was a breezy day at Cape Notoro overlooking the Sea of Okhotsk on Hokkaido's north coast. The sun was glinting on the waves below the cliffs and a skylark singing somewhere above was producing a cascade of summer sound.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 24, 2003

Enough nonsense about the liquidity trap

Tokyo's cutting interest rates was once the response to borrowing costs being too high or credit too tight. Despite no indications that the financial system is deprived of liquidity, the Bank of Japan and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board continue to hold or push down interest rates.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 20, 2003

Scents of slimness

For most people, losing weight is about as easy as climbing a mountain on all fours. It's tough work. But for those who still want to try shedding calories (however daunting that might seem), there are any number of dieting methods and theories -- from simply exercising to becoming vegetarian; from eating...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
May 14, 2003

A 'smashing' place for pots

It was 20 years ago today . . . that the famous Kikuchi Collection of Modern Japanese Ceramics was shown to "smashing" reviews at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The 300-piece collection sparked a great interest in modern and contemporary Japanese ceramics that has continued to this day. The...
JAPAN
Apr 26, 2003

Is Koizumi's political star waning?

Last weekend, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was on the campaign trail alongside Liberal Democratic Party candidates fighting Diet by-elections in Tokyo and Ibaraki Prefecture.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Mar 28, 2003

Goodness gracious, great balls of rice

Just 60 years ago, preparing food was a time-consuming process that for some — mainly the suburban housewife — could occupy much of the day. Though we had long since progressed from hunter-gathering and industrialization had created a class of consumers rather than producers of food, keeping the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 29, 2002

Hideki Togi out to gagaku your world

He is the man responsible for bringing gagaku back into the Japanese lexicon. He is to gagaku (classical Japanese court music) what Ayumi Hamasaki is to J-Pop. Since Hideki Togi left the Imperial Household Agency in 1996, armed with his hichiriki, black leather pants and cool charm, he has been on a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 18, 2002

'Red Demon' to claim British souls

Acclaimed in Japan for the last quarter of a century as a drama director, writer and actor, Hideki Noda is set to become a major player on the world stage from Jan. 31, when his "Red Demon" opens for a near-monthlong run at the famed Young Vic in London's West End.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 13, 2002

The garden of Escher delights

"Mathematicians," wrote M.C. Escher in a 1958 essay, "have opened the gate leading to an extensive domain, but they have not entered this domain themselves. By their very nature they are more interested in the way in which the gate is opened than in the garden lying behind it."
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Oct 10, 2002

Giving you something to stretch your head round

Modern American anthropology owes a lot to one man: Franz Boas, widely regarded as the father of the discipline.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Aug 25, 2002

Mad Max: Beyond the laptop

Postmodern hijinks have become such a staple of contemporary pop music that genre bending and blending are hardly news anymore. What artist hasn't ransacked the back catalog of some long-lost funk or soul label, or lifted grooves from obscure jazz hepcats or, for the even more adventurous, modern classical...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 19, 2002

Repent of Western ways to see the light

A BURDEN OF FLOWERS, by Natsuki Ikezawa. Kodansha International, 2001, 239 pp., 2,400 yen (cloth) A story of two Japanese siblings' rejection of Western values, one eloquent on the dangers of being "too Cartesian in your thinking, too tied up in Western rationalism," is hardly an obvious candidate for...
LIFE / Lifestyle / LEARNING BY HEART
Feb 15, 2002

Shitamachi schoolmates still together at 70

What is the secret of lifelong friendships that form in elementary school? I would never have thought to ask myself that question until my father-in-law announced he wouldn't be home for Sunday's family dinner because he was attending a party. Though he put it quite casually, the amazing thing to me...
Japan Times
JAPAN / WORKING IT OUT
Feb 6, 2002

Middle-aged job seekers facing age discrimination

When Masao Suzuki heard his company was offering an early retirement program that paid out 2.5 times the regular amount, he figured it was time to move on. But first he has to find a new job.
BUSINESS
Jan 16, 2002

UFJ Bank makes shaky debut

UFJ Holdings Inc. decided Tuesday to dip into its reserves to the tune of 1 trillion yen to make dividend payments, indicating that the group's new bank, which officially began operations the same day, is already desperately low on capital.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Dec 13, 2001

When sex roles reverse

Why don't men do more to help raise their children?
LIFE / Lifestyle / LEARNING BY HEART
Dec 7, 2001

New b-boys and b-girls on the block

The hippest of hip-hop dancers perform pure magic. They do somersaults, cartwheels and flips. They're dramatic, eccentric, funny and highly creative. They slide in any direction, send electric shock waves through their limbs, glide across the ground like moonwalkers and twirl into body-punishing spins....
JAPAN
Oct 30, 2001

Single mothers left out in financial cold

Every morning, Yuko, a 33-year-old resident of Kanagawa Prefecture, gets up at 4 a.m., does the housework, prepares the evening meal, takes the three children to a nursery, and then goes to work.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Oct 16, 2001

Where turtles swim in the slow lane

It is one of the prettiest boat trips in Central America: up the mangrove canals north from the Costa Rican port town of Limon to Tortuguero National Park.
SOCCER / J. League / ON THE BALL
Sep 25, 2001

Antlers veteran Soma back on his old stomping ground

And now he's back.
BUSINESS / THE WRITERS' SPIN
Aug 30, 2001

Internet bank's accidental author is by no means an accidental Sony man

Staff writer Hiroki Totoki is a Sony Bank director and an accidental author.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 22, 2001

Dead-end lives in the suburbs of Tokyo

LIFE IN THE CUL-DE-SAC, by Senji Kuroi. Translated by Philip Gabriel. Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, 2001, 231 pp., $12.95. To read this version of "Life in the Cul-de-Sac" is to experience two conflicting emotions. On the one hand, there is admiration for the storyteller, as the dozen linked...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 15, 2001

Comic ambassadors

A rather naive man decides to nip off to Hokkaido to enjoy the Sapporo Snow Festival without booking a place to stay. Wandering the snowy streets, he eventually comes across a solution to his problem -- a love hotel.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 17, 2001

Sounds of a poet who writes to live, and lives to write

COLLECTED POEMS OF SHUNTARO TANIKAWA, CD-ROM. Iwanami Shoten Publishers, Tokyo, 2000, 19,000 yen. It's been a recent trend in the music industry to come out with boxed sets commemorating the work of some of our most celebrated musicians, from John Coltrane to the Beatles. That such a trend has spread...
EDITORIALS
Jun 7, 2001

Move ahead on postal privatization

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is a longtime advocate of postal-service privatization. This week his dream has taken a first step toward coming true. At its first meeting on Monday, the postal committee, an advisory panel to the prime minister, confirmed that the three postal services (mail, savings...
COMMENTARY
May 5, 2001

Racism loses its grip in Britain

LONDON -- "Britain risks becoming a mongrel land"; "Britain will become a foreign land to most of the British": two thoughts from the Tory Party uttered in the past few weeks, one from a back-bench MP of little repute (John Townend), the other from the Tory Party leader, William Hague, whose reputation,...

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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.