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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.
CULTURE / Film
Dec 3, 2010

Higashi gets melodramatic (but not too much)

Born in Wakayama Prefecture in 1934, Yoichi Higashi graduated from Waseda University's Department of Literature in 1958 and entered Iwanami Film Production, a documentary and educational film company. After making his feature debut with "Okinawa Retto (Okinawa Archipelago)" in 1969, he won the Directors...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 31, 2010

Odd tales, torments

In the 120 years since Lafcadio Hearn first arrived on these shores, Japan has traded superstition for Super Mario. Were Hearn to disembark in Yokohama today and travel through the country, would he be able to compile contemporary "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" or "Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 15, 2010

'The Vintner's Luck'/'Bitch Slap'

New Zealand director Niki Caro made a name for herself with 2002's "Whale Rider," a canny mix of Maori myths and naturalistic performances, driven by a gifted young actress, Keisha Castle-Hughes, who was only 12 years old at the time. After going Hollywood with the sexual-harassment lawsuit drama "North...
Japan Times
LIFE
Sep 12, 2010

Aging through the ages

"If only, when one heard That Old Age was coming One could bolt the door Answer 'not at home' And refuse to meet him!" (Anonymous, "Kokinshu" Imperial poetry anthology, 10th century)
CULTURE / Books
Sep 12, 2010

Japan's future: prolonged malaise or muddling through?

"Japan's best days are behind it," or so the common wisdom goes, and by reading Tokyo-based academic Jeff Kingston's latest work, it is easy to see why.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 5, 2010

Glass ceiling has not budged for many of Japan's working women

As we enter the third decade of the "lost decade," there is much to despair about the state of Japan. There has been a sharp increase in the number of working poor, mostly due to the spread of nonregular employment, which now involves 34 percent of the workforce, nearly double the level of the asset-bubble...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 29, 2010

Twin tours de force offer insights into Japan not lost in translation

The year 2010 may come to be seen as a landmark in terms of literature written in English that draws on Japan as a setting.

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.