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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 16, 2008

Japan shines at Asia's top film festival

Acknowledged as the most important annual film event in Asia, Korea's Pusan International Film Festival (PIFF) opened its 13th edition on Oct. 2 under several clouds. The glittery opening ceremony, stuffed to the rafters with Korean celebrities, was more subdued this year owing to the same-day suicide...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 12, 2008

Lack-of-rage rage is all the rage in apathetically raging Japan

A few weeks ago a Sydney radio station held a phone-in about rage. I was floored as I sat and listened to the people who called in to vent some spleen.
Japan Times
Features
Oct 12, 2008

1,000 years of 'Genji'

"Genji Monogatari," known as "The Tale of Genji" in English, is believed by many scholars to be the first full-length novel in world literature. Marking the 1,000th anniversary since its creation, today's Timeout introduces this masterpiece that draws readers into a beautiful world gone by full of passion,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Oct 12, 2008

Murasaki Shikibu glimpsed behind the screens of time

"Genius" is one of those overused words, but few would argue that it is rightly applied to Murasaki Shikibu, whose book "The Tale of Genji" is not only the world's first novel, but is a work that has delighted and perhaps even guided countless millions of people in the 1,000 years since she wrote it....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 10, 2008

Morning Musume: Japan's TV talents

Hearing the buzz surrounding TV programs such as "American Idol," "The X Factor" and "Britain's Got Talent" (all originating in the U.K. but franchised internationally), it is clear that TV talent shows are booming.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 10, 2008

Physics laureate Maskawa back in class, albeit tardy

KYOTO — Toshihide Maskawa returned Thursday — albeit a few minutes late — to the lecture hall at Kyoto Sangyo University to teach a freshmen physics class after winning the Nobel Prize in physics.
CULTURE / Music
Oct 10, 2008

Girl Talk "Feed the Animals"

Unveiled digitally this summer using a Radiohead-style "pay-what-you-like" model, the CD release of mashup artist Gregg Gillis' fourth Girl Talk full-length, "Feed the Animals," has been issued just in time to be rightfully included on critics' end-of-year lists.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Oct 7, 2008

'Gaijin' mind-set is killing rural Japan

Allow me to conclude my trilogy of columns regarding the word "gaijin" this month by talking about the damage the concept does to Japanese society. That's right — damage to Japanese society.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 4, 2008

Music firm goes to seed for a rockin' good future

Last year, all too aware that sales of CDs were dropping, Douglas Allsopp of Buffalo Records went along to the annual fair of promotional goods at Tokyo's Big Sight to look for a possible additional venture.
Japan Times
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Oct 4, 2008

Brought together by fate — and a whim

Rajesh and Kayo Prasad have no doubt they were destined to marry.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 3, 2008

'Goya's Ghosts'

Milos Foreman's "Goya's Ghosts" significantly lowers the bar of the creative biography, a bar that Foreman himself had raised to unprecedented loftiness in "Amadeus." It's still the one film whose robe most aspire to touch, even fleetingly, before falling to the knees in abject worship.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 3, 2008

Classical maverick tackles pop music

"In about 20 years, we will rarely hear Brahms in the concert hall; we will mostly hear contemporary music." A bold prediction, particularly as dwindling audiences for classical music have most orchestras keeping to the tried and true, with only the occasional token nod to the obscure or challenging,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 2, 2008

Seeking photographic destinies

His figures cut through the sky, crisply suspended, on their way into the water. Sometimes they are immersed, or watching from a shore, but most often they hang in the air, about to split the drink in two. For Lithuanian photographer Vidas Biveinis, water represents a changing emotion, expressive of...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 2, 2008

Web society opts to stay anonymous

Like a lot of 20-year-olds, Kae Takahashi has a page on U.S.-based MySpace, and there is no mistaking it for anyone else's.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Oct 1, 2008

Matsushita gives way to Panasonic

A famous corporate brand name will disappear Wednesday when Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. abandons the name of its founder in an attempt to evolve into a truly global corporation.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Sep 30, 2008

What are the key issues new Prime Minister Taro Aso needs to tackle?

Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Sep 30, 2008

Designer wine racks, light bulbs, place mats and more

Northern hangers
CULTURE / Books
Sep 28, 2008

Did Koizumi and Bush really destroy Japan?

CURING JAPAN'S AMERICA ADDICTION by Minoru Morita, Chin Music Press, Seattle, 2008, 224 pp., $15 (paper) Minoru Morita is one of Japan's most prominent and respected political analysts. And he's mad as hell at what he believes are the social and economic crimes committed by former Prime Minister Junichiro...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 27, 2008

Ties that bond though cultures apart

With a wry but happy smile, Jennifer Rose DiLaura recalls the day she and her husband first met their daughter, adopted from China.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 26, 2008

Something fishy going on

I 'm just your average fish, so cormorants are a pretty scary prospect — even at the best of times.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 26, 2008

'Be Kind Rewind'

How much cute can a straight man generate (and we're not talking about his looks here) without getting thwacked on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper? If the man happens to be French filmmaker Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "The Science of Sleep") the answer is: TONS. During...
COMMENTARY
Sep 25, 2008

Will bankers ever learn?

PARIS — For a week it looked as though banking was not "as safe as houses" (a phrase that has seemed singularly inappropriate recently), but instead would turn into a "house of cards" that might be blown down with a puff of wind.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 25, 2008

Misuse of the inaction argument

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — One commonly repeated argument for doing something about climate change sounds compelling, but turns out to be almost fraudulent. It is based on comparing the cost of action with the cost of inaction, and almost every major politician in the world uses it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 25, 2008

An incomprehensible answer for modernity

Check the film listings and you'll find Akira Emoto cast in at least 10 movies playing this autumn. Since winning the Japan Academy Awards prize for supporting actor in 1983 and '97 and for leading actor in '98 — for his role in "Kanzo Sensei (Dr. Liver)" — Emoto has become one of Japan's most well...
CULTURE / Art / INSIDE ART
Sep 25, 2008

Papers big players in the canvas game

Japan's largest Pablo Picasso exhibition ever opens in Tokyo next month. It's so big it occupies not one but two venues — the National Art Center, Tokyo, and the Suntory Museum of Art in Roppongi.

Longform

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.
Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat