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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 27, 2011

Dispatches from the labor front line

This timely and excellent analysis of the changing employment system in Japan greatly improves our understanding of what it is like to be a dispatched worker (haken) in contemporary Japan and discourse about nonregular employment, of which haken is only one of various categories such as temporary, contract,...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 6, 2011

'American Jesus'

Iwas thrilled when, around Easter this year, I received an email from a leading American publishing house.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 5, 2011

Hokkaido roots spur woman to bring folk tales to masses

For Deborah Davidson, Hokkaido is not only home, it is a door to other worlds. As a child, she played with Ainu children and watched them care for the frolicking cubs of the "iomante" (bear ceremony). As a translator, she now focuses on bringing Ainu folk tales to an English-speaking audience.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 30, 2011

'No Impact Man'

An important factor in "No Impact Man" the book is that the author reveals himself as having Zen Buddhist beliefs. What's missing from "No Impact Man" the documentary is this bit of personal information. Charting a year in the lives of the book's author, Colin Beavan, and his family — who decided to...
JAPAN
Sep 20, 2011

Masses turn out to protest nuclear power

Tens of thousands of people including musicians, a Nobel laureate and Fukushima residents converged on Meiji Park in Tokyo Monday to vent their anger about the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant crisis and demand the abolition of atomic power.
COMMENTARY
Aug 31, 2011

China's economy not a model for emulation

At a time when the United States and Europe are beset by economic crises, it is natural that the Western model of economic development, including a democratic political system, should be viewed with some skepticism while China's growth model is greatly enhanced.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 21, 2011

Poetry as stimulating as a stun gun

THE NEW YURI AND SELECTED YURI: Writing From Peeling Till Now, by Yuri Kageyama. Ishmael Reed Publishing Company, 2011, 134 pp., $19.99 (paper) In the babbling cosmos of contemporary literature, there have been a handful of distinguished cross-cultural writers who have made the English language their...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jul 17, 2011

Green is good for you — and the Earth

My work often takes me away from my home in Hokkaido, and with every absence I am irked to be missing out on some part of the inexorable seasonal advance. So, each time I return I make a beeline for my local forest to reacquaint myself with the resident and migrant birds, to trace the tracks and signs...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jul 17, 2011

Tezuka on iPad represents shift in manga biz

Manga is an integral part of the entertainment industry in Japan, and has been for decades. There are numerous weekly and monthly manga anthologies. Series carried in those magazines often become bestsellers in paperback form and are adapted into anime, live-action TV shows and films. However, with fewer...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 3, 2011

Murakami puts a bomb under his compatriots' atomic complacency

"The Japanese will someday outgrow their nuclear allergy." I've never forgotten futurologist and Cold War military strategist Herman Kahn saying this to me on his visit to Japan in 1969, when I was his guide and occasional interpreter.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 15, 2011

Japan's mammalian riches

I came across my first bumblebees of the season as they were busily draining the nectar from a broad swath of Blue Corydalis. The delicate flower stems nodding in a light breeze looked delightful in the sunshine, while above them frothy willow catkins were yellow with pollen and here and there birches...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 13, 2011

'Okike no Tanoshii Ryoko: Shinkon Jigoku-hen (The Oki Family's Fun Trip: Newlywed Hell)'

What is marriage, anyway? Whatever it is for you personally, it traditionally starts with that brief delirium of carefree joy and erotic delight called a honeymoon. But these days, with more couples marrying after years of living together, honeymoons are becoming just another excuse for a trip, exotic...
COMMENTARY
Apr 22, 2011

Latest word from Mahathir

Before the prime ministry of Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, not that many people had ever heard of Malaysia, outside of adjacent Singapore, which shared a common border as well as an intense mutual antipathy that entertained the rest of Southeast Asia for decades.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 17, 2011

Shining a light on Korean sorrow in Japan

INTO THE LIGHT: An Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan. Edited by Melissa L. Wender. University of Hawai'i Press, 2011, 226 pp. $22 (paper) The eight stories in this anthology span nearly 60 years, from 1939, when Korea was a resentful and mutinous Japanese colony, to 1997, when South Korea was...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 20, 2011

Black ink, red blood

THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE PRESS NETWORKS OF EAST ASIA, 1918-1945, by Peter O'Connor. Global Oriental, 2010, 381 pp., £61 (hardcover) In the pre- and early war years, the big three newspapers at the center of the networks in Japan were The Japan Times, Japan Advertiser and the Japan Chronicle.
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Feb 26, 2011

Foreign sumo fans have their say on yaocho

In reaction to the yaocho (bout fixing) fracas enveloping sumo at present, many journalists in Japan and overseas have recently jumped on the sumo coverage bandwagon. Many have criticized the sumo association, the participants and their lifestyle and called for punishments, suspended basho and the like,...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Feb 20, 2011

The green heart of Tokyo

An unexpected whickering whistle had me mystified. I circled, trying to pinpoint the direction it was coming from, and puzzled over its origin.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Feb 13, 2011

Japan's favorite mushrooms spark a quest far away

Author Stieg Larsson, the second biggest-selling novelist in the world in 2008 (behind Khaled Hosseini), left three-quarters of an unfinished book on his laptop when he died in 2004.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Feb 1, 2011

Naturalized Japanese: foreigners no more

In Dec. 28's Japan Times, Charles Lewis wrote a respectful Zeit Gist column asking three fellow wise men (sumo wrestler Konishiki, musicologist Peter Barakan and Diet member Marutei Tsurunen) about their successful lives as "foreigners" in Japan. Despite their combined century of experience here, the...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 30, 2011

Korea's haunted honeymoon island

THE CURIOUS TALE OF MANDOGI'S GHOST, by Kim Sok-pom. Columbia University Press, 2010, 114 pp., $24.50 (paper) Like the Indian novelist R.K. Narayan, who repeatedly set his characters down in the kitchens, back alleys and yards of his very own magical creation — the city of Malgudi — Korean writer...
COMMENTARY
Jan 16, 2011

Political biases trash lauded Ph.D. research

SEATTLE — Deepak Tripathi's most recent book, "Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism" (Potomac Books) raises several issues, both within and outside of its content. It is based on research for a doctoral dissertation that did not qualify.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jan 11, 2011

Dual citizens, tokenism, Futenma, the case against rants: responses

A right to dual citizenship Re: "Japan loses, rest of the world gains from 'one citizenship fits all' policy" by Glenn Newman (Hotline to Nagatacho, Dec. 9):
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 31, 2010

Japanese art has come a long way: a curator's top five 2010 exhibitions

This year's art scene was largely dominated by two new major events, the Aichi Triennale and the Setouchi International Art Festival, both of which not only utilized gallery space, but showed a large number of works outside of the "white cube." They indicated a trend in Japan of art tourism merging with...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 29, 2010

Novel based on late management guru Drucker resonates to the top

Five years after his death, management guru Peter Drucker has shot to newfound fame — as one of Japan's biggest pop culture icons of 2010.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 19, 2010

Final word on the year's best reading

In making available this account of Japanese who are forgotten, by an author who, in English, is unknown, translator Jeffrey Irish has done us a tremendous service. Anyone interested in how things used to be in rural Japan will want to read ethnologist Tsuneichi Miyamoto's tales of his travels on foot...
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Dec 19, 2010

The explosion of life: demise

Second of two parts
CULTURE / Books
Dec 19, 2010

Final word on the year's best reading

Kicking his heels while waiting for a design commission to materialize, English architect Ralph Adams Cram might easily have frittered away his time getting pickled at the bar of the Rokumeikan, or in the perfumed chambers of Yoshiwara, but he chose instead to take to the byways of Meiji Japan on a survey...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 5, 2010

Erotic destiny, palace intrigue

Based on apparent "past-life memories," this historical novel by shamanic witch, priestess and time-traveler Cerridwen Fallingstar takes place in 12th- century Japan in the period leading up to the Genpei War between the Taira (Heike) and the Minamoto (Genji) clans.

Longform

A man offers prayers at Hebikubo Shrine in Tokyo's Shinagawa Ward. The shrine is one of several across the country dedicated to the snake.
Shed your skin and reinvent yourself in the Year of the Snake