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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 5, 2010

'Kazura'/'Boys on the Run'

The odds of two brilliant Japanese comedies opening the same day are high but not impossible, somewhat like the odds of the same director (James Cameron) making two all-time worldwide box-office hits ("Titanic" and that other film about blue aliens).
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Nov 24, 2009

Emperor — poise under public spotlight

This year marks Emperor Akihito's 20th year on the Chrysanthemum Throne.
CULTURE / Film
May 29, 2009

It was a year of gore galore at Cannes

A surgeon's smock replaced the customary tux or evening gown at this year's Cannes Film Festival as the most appropriate attire, so drenched in blood and gore were many of the major entries. To walk the red carpet became a wade in viscera, film after film offering all manner of mutilation and dismemberment....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Mar 26, 2009

Makeup artist Yukiko Takeda

Yukiko Takeda, 37, is chief makeup artist for Watosa, a skincare line created by famous beauty guru Sablo Watanabe. For the past 15 years, Yukiko has been making women look and feel so beautiful that over 80 percent of her first-time clients turn into hardcore fans who need their fix of "Yukiko magic"...
Japan Times
LIFE
Feb 22, 2009

Refuge . . . of a sort

The main character of the one-act play that follows is loosely based on the few known facts concerning a Russian nobleman-refugee named Semyon Nikolaevitch Smirnitsky. Born in St. Petersburg in 1879, Smirnitsky fled the Russian Revolution in 1919 and spent the rest of his life in Japan, mostly in Otaru,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 10, 2008

Potts' luck: the rise of a superstar

It's a cliche to say "don't take things for granted" or "you never know what's going to happen in life." But it sounds more convincing from the mouths of certain people.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 25, 2008

Lindsay Kemp's Virgin Queen comes to Japan

It was a scorching day in July and the air in Tokyo's concrete jungle was shimmering in the heat. But on a visit here prior to next month's opening of his voluptuous production "Elizabeth I: the Last Dance" at Theatre Cocoon, avant-garde performance-art icon Lindsay Kemp — a self-described "stranger...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 9, 2008

Tackling the 'Zainichi' experience

Sitting across from best-selling New York author Min Jin Lee in a Tokyo expat cafe, I can't help thinking that the heroine of her debut novel "Free Food For Millionaires" is the one sipping ice tea and talking sex. Like Lee, protagonist Casey Han is unusually tall, refined in speech, and deeply interested...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Dec 11, 2007

Tamegoro Sudo

Tamegoro Sudo, 50, is a movie producer and actor whose many friends in Tokyo's downtown Asakusa area provide him with the hilarious characters and plots in his movies. His five "Dekotora no Shu (Shu, the Dekotora Man)" movies star his favorite decorated trucks and his buddies, actors Sho Aikawa and Shingo...
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Nov 16, 2007

Tokyo couple share humor, love of rock-climbing

To provide more coverage of topics closely related to non-Japanese residents, The Japan Times is launching the series "Mixed Matches" about international couples.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 5, 2007

Angelina Jolie true to her 'heart'

The Japan Times gets close and personal with Hollywood's hottie-cum-humanitarian on making films with a message, being hounded by the media — and life with Brad Pitt.
Japan Times
LIFE
Apr 29, 2007

Japan's love affairs with sex

Michael Hoffman delves deep into the carnal history of these islands from the Age of the Gods to the lovelands and soaplands of today
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 12, 2006

Restoring our connections with the world

"The cloud-seas of the heavens are riled by waves.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
May 14, 2006

Home and away

AUSTRALIA Respect brings harmony without being workaholic
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 18, 2005

What did you read about Asia this year?

Donald Richie THE COLUMBIA ANTHOLOGY OF MODERN JAPANESE LITERATURE, edited by J. Thomas Rimer and Van C. Gessel (Columbia University Press) This new take on Japanese modern classics -- old standbys and lots of recent writing as well -- is big (864 pages and it's only the first volume). It includes examples...
Japan Times
Features / WEEK 3
Oct 17, 2004

Drawing on love

She is a Japanese manga artist with a piercingly sharp eye for human traits and foibles. He is an American writer and language buff who can chat with equal ease in four languages. Together, they make for a magnetic -- not to say a "mangaetic" -- couple.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 29, 2004

Rhapsody to the bohemian lifestyle

More than a century has passed since the first performance Puccini's "La Boheme" in 1896, yet it remains one of the most widely performed operas in the world. That may be because the opera, a dramatization of the French writer, Henry Murger's 1849 novel "Scenes of the Bohemian Life" , seems to celebrate...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 10, 2004

Two sides to every epoque

They called it the Belle Epo^que, the "Beautiful Age": France's brief period of grace after concluding peace with Prussia in 1871 and before the horrors of World War I turned her pastures into killing fields in 1914.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 30, 2003

Now (and forever) a girl's best friend

Once the home of a prince, the Teien Art Museum is now playing host to a king's ransom in jewelry comprising a truly sparkling survey of the bijoutier's art in the four centuries spanning 1540-1940.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 5, 2003

Artists in search of absolute painting

"We call together all young people and -- as young people who bear the future -- we want to acquire freedom for our hands and lives, against the well-established older forces. Everyone belongs to us who renders in an unfalsified way everything that compels him to be creative."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 12, 2003

Drinking in the delights of men

It was after 2 a.m. and I was on a mission in Kabukicho. The assignment involved two things: alcohol and men. As dangerous a combination as that is, what woman could resist such temptation? Certainly not this one.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 27, 2002

At last, a family cartoon playing it for real

Since virtually everyone has grown up in one, "family" is one of the few dramatic themes that can safely be called universal, even if no two families can ever be the same. Nevertheless, the popular arts, television in particular, are filled with families who are meant to represent all families.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 13, 2002

You're never too old to read a good self-help book

The best-seller list currently features three volumes on living and aging well: "Oite Koso Jinsei" (Nothing Is More Human Than Aging), by novelist/politician Shintaro Ishihara; "Unmei no Ashioto" (The Footsteps of Approaching Fate), by novelist Hiroyuki Itsuki; and "Ikikata Jozu" (How to Live Well),...
JAPAN / WORKING IT OUT
Feb 8, 2002

Calls mount for work-sharing as jobless ranks soar

KOBE -- Hatsue Okada, a 33-year-old nurse, works between 9:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. three days a week at a day-care center for elderly people in Kakogawa, Hyogo Prefecture.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 24, 2001

Escape to Allen's New York

Small Time Crooks Rating: * * * * Director: Woody Allen Running time: 95 minutes Language: English Now showing
CULTURE / Books
Oct 14, 2001

Kenzaburo Oe: Bridging the generation gap

In the wake of the terrorist attacks in America, large bookstores have put together special displays on Islam and terrorism, while the cult idolization of the prime minister continues with the publication of a coffee-table book of Koizumi photos (Jun-chan lounging in a robe!). However, as always in recent...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 23, 2001

Fact and fiction meet in re-creation of Ainu past

HARUKOR: An Ainu Woman's Tale, by Katsuichi Honda. Translated by Kyoko Selden. University of California Press, 2000, 315 pp., $19.95 (paper). When I was a university student in Kyoto during the 1960s, Katsuichi Honda was the most glamorous adventurer-journalist of the day.
COMMUNITY
Sep 16, 2001

Divination business thriving, for the foreseeable future

Head bowed, eyes closed, silently intoning my birth date and a prayer-like plea for good fortune; I feel a little silly, but I'm doing as I've been told.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 20, 2001

Globalization does its work on Japan

GLOBALIZATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN CONTEMPORARY JAPAN, edited by J.S. Eades, Tom Gill and Harumi Befu. Trans Pacific Press, Melbourne, 2000. 295 pp., 3,250 yen (paper). The word "globalization" is used with increasing frequency these days. It is variously employed to describe the increasing degrees...

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