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COMMENTARY / World / SENTAKU MAGAZINE
Dec 14, 2007

A tycoon's field of dreams

On Oct. 16 a Japanese media tycoon was awarded the Newspaper Culture Prize by the Japan Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association (JNPEA) at its 60th general meeting in Nagano.
Reader Mail
Dec 13, 2007

Pay the price of social harmony

It seems a lot of readers are of the opinion that Japan needs an influx of immigrant workers or it will perish. I think "become extinct" is how one reader put it. I admit to not having the economic background to fully comprehend the declining population issue, but it would seem to me that countries like...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 13, 2007

The printer who wished to paint

Masuo Ikeda's polymath abilities in the arts — ranging from printmaking to writing and ceramics — is mirrored in his diverse depictions of feminine eroticism. Posed provocatively in Ikeda's works are his versions of Venus, virgins, brides, generic types and femme fatales, the Madonna of the Annunciation...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 13, 2007

'What is Hollywood anyway?'

Ken Watanabe's latest film opens with an image of a polar bear resurfacing into the brilliant spring sunlight after months living underground. It's tempting to see the scene as a metaphor for a career that has alternated between stretches of intense, highly acclaimed work and long periods of hibernation....
COMMENTARY
Dec 12, 2007

Protection and punishment

WATERLOO, Ontario — Dec. 9 and 10 marked the anniversaries of the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). Both were an acknowledgment of the dark side of European history and embodied the determination to ban vices that had been let loose with terrible consequences...
Reader Mail
Dec 9, 2007

Japanese seem easy to brainwash

I agree with Jeffrey Snow's remarks in his Dec. 2 letter, "The media's view of foreigners" -- about the media's successful role in brainwashing the Japanese public about immigrant foreigners. Politics, the media and the public are awash in mistaken notions about foreign crime, the relationship between...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Dec 9, 2007

A moment of opportunity for Australia's new PM

The election of Kevin Rudd as prime minister of Australia last month gives that country an excellent opportunity to broaden the base, and redefine the tenor, of its ties with Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 9, 2007

A country defined by fish

Culture and cuisine are closely intertwined in Japan, and especially as regards seafood.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 9, 2007

Finding the self and losing others

Losing Keiby Suzanne Kamata. Wellfleet, Mass.: Leapfrog Press, 2007, 196 pp., $14.95 (¥1,554) Like France, after World War II Japan has hosted a varied group of expatriate writers. Though no Hemingways or Gertrude Steins have yet emerged, expectation remains.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Dec 9, 2007

Time for Ando to look beyond ice at reasons for inconsistency

For those who have watched her perform for years, through good times and bad, it seemed almost inevitable.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ROAD
Dec 9, 2007

Japan's 'fix'ation with a risky ride

A group of young men huddle around a bicycle in a small shop named Carnival on the second story of a cream-brick building peering over the Yamanote Line in Shibuya.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 8, 2007

Remembering those who fell in a 'field of spears'

Greg Hadley — or professor Gregory Hadley, as he's known in academic circles — is on his way home to Niigata. He has just completed the weekend JALT conference at Tokyo's National Olympic Center.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / WALKING THE WARDS
Dec 7, 2007

Winging it in Ota Ward

Ota Ward is totally fly. For starters, it hosts Haneda, the only airport actually situated in Tokyo's 23 wards. Although a plane would come in handy in navigating this southernmost and largest of the city's wards, you'd miss out on roasting wieners at Ota's weekend barbecue hot spot, Jonanjima Seaside...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 6, 2007

Out from under noh's shadow

'F or kyogen actors, Japan losing the war in 1945 was a wonderful event as it liberated kyogen from its long subjugation to noh," actor Shigeyama Sennojo says. "For the first time in 400 years, kyogen was recognized as an independent form of theater."
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Dec 4, 2007

Skin-deep success

It started with an e-mail from my editor: "Get yr (sic) camera ready. Online Dating Minus Ugly People is coming to Japan. Thinking Lifestyle page trend piece. Ready for the money shot?"
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Dec 4, 2007

Digital terrestrial TV coming but work remains

More than half a century has passed since commercial television debuted in Japan, and now TVs are a main component of the mass culture.
Reader Mail
Dec 2, 2007

Tradition continues amid apathy

Janet Kenny's Nov. 22 letter, "The sadness in knowing their fate," made it clear why the whaling issue hasn't seen much progress in recent years. There is a fundamental difference in perception. The Japanese don't revere whales as "beautiful giants"; whales are viewed traditionally as another seafood....
Reader Mail
Dec 2, 2007

Homegrown emissions say a lot

Regarding the Nov. 22 article "Fukuda, Singh eye FTA deal by mid-'08": I believe that global warming and recent natural calamities worldwide have sensitized people to natural-gas emissions and pollution. Japan has been preaching to the rest of the world about natural-gas emissions, but it forgets itself:...
Reader Mail
Dec 2, 2007

Whale hunt reinforces stereotype

I've always believed that each nationality has the same capacity for good and bad. Previous generations of English and Americans have portrayed the Japanese as coldhearted people with little concern for the suffering of others. In my family this was partly a result of experiences in Japanese prisoner-of-war...
EDITORIALS
Dec 2, 2007

Internationalizing high schools

While the government stumbles around with new educational policies, a quiet revolution in high schools has already happened. The number of foreign students enrolled in Japanese high schools has hit an all-time high of nearly 2,000, with a new peak of over 100 schools nationwide now instructing children...
COMMENTARY
Dec 2, 2007

Stateside view of Australia's landslide

LOS ANGELES — In a parliamentary system of government, there are no guarantees. You can be in one day and out the next.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Dec 2, 2007

Dalai Lama: Ocean of wit and wisdoms

Lhamo Thondup was born on July 6, 1935 in Taktster, a small village in the Amdo region of northeast Tibet. But neither his parents — farmers who grew barley, buckwheat and potatoes — nor his three elder brothers and one elder sister (a younger sister and brother came later) were to discover his true...
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Dec 1, 2007

Stigma from arrest will linger for Redknapp in near future

LONDON — The problem with being arrested for anything is that the person is immediately seen as guilty by association by many.
Japan Times
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Dec 1, 2007

Bond forged in Nepal still going strong

Praveen Lama and Kazuko Tanikawa have lived in a bustling shopping street in Tokyo's Kita Ward since July 2003, when the Nepalese married his Japanese wife after a long-distance love affair that lasted several years through e-mails and phone calls.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 30, 2007

In touch with his inner Tommy Lee

"It wasn't so much the style of music as the attitude toward performing and doing shows. That's what we wanted to bring back from America to Japan," says Yasuaki Sakai, reminiscing about his immersion in America's Pacific Northwest music scene that began nearly a decade ago as the singer/guitarist of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 30, 2007

'Beowulf'

'Beowulf" is the epic poem dating from the 8th or 9th century that every high-school English Literature student has learned to dread. With good reason too — try getting your head 'round lines like "I ween with good he will well requite offspring of ours, when all he minds that for him we did in his...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 29, 2007

Translator of the universal and the local

In his 1987 book "Ireland Kiko (Travels in Ireland)," the renowned historical novelist and essayist Ryotaro Shiba (1923-96) observed that "the typical Irish character could easily be dramatized," and that "Ireland is one of the richest countries for the literary arts, with people whose daily lives are...

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?