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JAPAN
Aug 11, 2010

Budget cutters target JET

Every year for the past two decades, legions of young Americans have descended on Japan to teach English. This government-sponsored charm offensive was launched to counter anti-Japan sentiment in the United States and has since grown into one of the country's most successful displays of soft power.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 8, 2010

Discerning Japan's future journey through the prisms of its past

LAST IN A THREE-PART SERIES — T he French revolution in 1789 revolutionized more things than one. It changed the very definition of the word "revolution," which until then — as can be guessed from the literal meaning of its root words, "to turn back again" — meant to revert to something that existed...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 25, 2010

Savoring the wisdom of some Japanese predictions about Japan

FIRST IN A THREE-PART SERIES — I was 8 years old when we got our first television set, a 10-inch Admiral. That was in 1952, still early days for the new and exciting medium. It wasn't long before I was glued every week to my favorite program, "Criswell Predicts."
CULTURE / Books
Jul 25, 2010

Wartime confessions

Donald Keene, the foremost scholar of Japanese literature, mines the wartime diaries kept by some of the most prominent writers and intellectuals of the day in a book brimming with insights. Readers discover a gold mine of personal observations that deepen our understanding of what life was like when...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 23, 2010

Reflections of Chekhov's Russia in modern-day Japan

"People compare me with Bertolt Brecht, and I am glad to hear that — but why won't anyone call me Anton Inoue?"
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 27, 2010

Where's the spirit of Japan's troublemaking coffee-house Hobbits?

There was a time, in the 1960s and early '70s, when the people of Japan were not apathetic about what was being done on their soil. The opposition here to the U.S. invasion of Vietnam and Japan's support of it was large scale and vocal. Mass demonstrations were frequently held across the nation, participated...
CULTURE / Books
May 23, 2010

Murder, mayhem and brain eaters abound in two Thai thrillers

Thailand, as I write this, is stepping back from major civil unrest. And Canadian author Christopher G. Moore has been blogging frontline dispatches from his home in central Bangkok.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 16, 2010

Antics of 'shadow tail' lead the great spring show

The summer birds are here! They arrive travel-weary yet eager — telling, in their courtship songs, tales of months spent in insect-filled forests far to the south, remembering the lazy droning of sweat bees, the buzz and saw of cicadas, the whine of mosquitoes, the flashing colors of tropical butterflies...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 15, 2010

Fatalist follows music to find his niche in life

Life can veer abruptly, in mere seconds, from the way it was to the way it is. Occasionally, change occurs so gradually that metamorphosis is under way before you can even detect the unfamiliar wind.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 2, 2010

Downed in her prime, a beacon of Japan's emerging new culture

The formative culture of a country is its subculture. Mainstream culture is about the present; subculture creates the future.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 25, 2010

Whaling whoppers debunked

Ever wonder why landlocked nations such as Mali, Mongolia and Laos with no tradition of whaling are members of the International Whaling Commission (IWC)? According to Jun Morikawa, the Japanese government sponsors the membership of third-world countries in the IWC to boost support for Japan's pro-whaling...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Apr 13, 2010

'Sambo' racism row reignites over kids' play

"Little Black Sambo, Sambo, Sambo/His face and hands are completely black/Even his butt is completely black."
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 11, 2010

Under the volcano, Iwate's capital keeps its rich history alive

The signs of boredom on this first morning in Morioka are manifest. Arriving ill-equipped for the pouring rain, there is a limit to how much interest can be squeezed from the otherwise admirable station facilities. After two hours of window- shopping and an over-surfeit of canned coffees, I'm ready for...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 21, 2010

From the edge of darkness, a diary of wartime Burma

"Theippan Maung Wa" is the pen name under which a Burmese member of the Indian Civil Service wrote stories about his work for the British administration in the 1930s. The 150 tales that he composed, in a new and simple style, were popular contemporary reading and are still admired, some having been translated...
JAPAN
Feb 24, 2010

Shinjuku gay enclave in decline but not on the surface

Nothing outside Tokyo's 24-Kaikan hotel hints at what goes on behind its gray concrete walls.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 7, 2010

Different folks, different strokes

Can Japan's corporate system withstand globalization? Once considered the source of the nation's competitive strength, traditional practices such as lifetime employment and seniority-based pay have in recent years been increasingly attacked as contributors to poor performance. The postbubble slump eroded...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jan 25, 2010

What if Clarke had embarked on an economic odyssey?

The movie "2001: A Space Odyssey," Arthur C. Clarke's epoch-making science fiction masterpiece, was first published in 1968. Its sequel "2010: Odyssey Two" came out in 1982. To put "2010" more precisely in its place, it was actually the first sequel among three. The ultimate resolution, if such it may...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jan 24, 2010

Saving the planet through its trees

Negotiators at the COP15 conference in Copenhagen didn't see eye to eye on much last month, but almost everyone agreed on one thing: To protect the planet we need to save its forests.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 17, 2010

Mystery made of a rationalist's nightmares

A blood-soaked woman, clutching a child, stands on a barren moor. This is the image of the ubume of the title. This creature, or figment, who may or may not exist, but who haunts the narrative of this novel, is defined as the visible form of the regrets experienced by a woman who has died during childbirth....
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jan 17, 2010

Some detect a racist theme in 'Avatar'

PHILADELPHIA — Near the end of the hit film "Avatar," the villain snarls at the hero, "How does it feel to betray your own race?" Both men are white — although the hero is inhabiting a blue-skinned, 2.75-meter-tall, long-tailed alien.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 16, 2010

Calm reflections on a turbulent life

In a diminutive wooden house tucked behind the tile-topped white walls surrounding Tenryuji Temple, a World Heritage site in Kyoto's Arashiyama district, lives Henry "Seisen" Mittwer, 91, a Japanese-American Buddhist priest, author, ikebana and ceramic artist.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 15, 2010

Days of being wild

HOLLYWOOD — 'I think 'Where the Wild Things Are' is a fantastic book," says writer-director Spike Jonze.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 10, 2010

How do writers come up with this stuff?

Reading Mieko Kanai's stories is an unsettling experience, like swimming underwater, existing in a new and shimmering medium, and coming up for air between stories just to make sure everything is still real — or as real as you remember it. Concurrently, it feels as if one were skating on a slippery...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 8, 2010

' Where the Wild Things Are'

My parents bought me plenty of books as a child, and thinking back on it now, a lot of them — "Gerald McBoing Boing," "Harold and the Purple Crayon" or "A Wrinkle In Time" — were pretty strange. (That might explain a few things.) But one book I never got was Maurice Sendak's "Where The Wild Things...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 3, 2010

Tale of toxic morality

Minamata disease was named after a fishing port on the island of Kyushu where it was discovered in 1956. Chisso Corp. had been dumping methyl mercury directly into the bay since before World War II, but sharp increases in production in the early 1950s increased the flow of contaminating effluent. People...
LIFE / Digital / Japan Pulse
Dec 24, 2009

Trends in Japan 2009: virtual love

In 2009, a lot of hype surrounded human's attachment to virtual and 2-D characters. Was it just hot air, or a sign of things to come?
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 20, 2009

Stunning book speaks volumes about the ravages visited on Tibet

Ten years ago, near the end of 1999, the Chinese author Wang Lixiong received a package from a young woman of Tibetan origin named Tsering Woeser. It contained several hundred black-and-white negatives.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 20, 2009

David Burleigh: Best books of 2009

"The road of excess," said the English poet William Blake, "leads to the palace of wisdom," which might serve as an epigraph for this skillfully assembled, sharp and witty book about the drug-fueled quest of certain American poets for enlightenment in India in the 1960s. The sweetness of the whole experience...
Reader Mail
Nov 29, 2009

Don't pin the fall on globalization

Regarding Ramzy Baroud's Nov. 21 article, "Globalization: a culture killer": I completely disagree with the premise. In my opinion, globalization is the best thing that has happened in global politics and economics for a long time. The development of communications, transportation and information technology...

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.