Search - culture

 
 
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2001

Symposium discusses African conflicts

The key to resolving and preventing conflicts in Africa is empowering citizens and decentralizing political systems currently controlled by power elites, participants at a two-day Tokyo symposium on African conflicts agreed Thursday.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Feb 16, 2001

Keeping it pure and personal

There are people who have character and there are people who are characters. Coppe, the coolest musician you've never heard of, is both.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 12, 2001

Into the heart of darkness

What is it about deeply rural places and deeply strange religion and sex? In the United States, one has the stereotype of the hills of Appalachia as refuges for snake-handling preachers and cousin-marrying hillbillies. In Japan, one has the mountains of Shikoku in Masato Harada's "Inugami," where ancient...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 12, 2001

Forget Big Brother -- it's little brothers that count

ORDER BY ACCIDENT: The origins and consequences of conformity in contemporary Japan, by Alan S. Miller and Satoshi Kanazawa. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2000, 156 pp., $25/17.99 pounds(cloth). The title of this book is misleading, although it captures the main idea of the authors, two social...
JAPAN
Feb 11, 2001

Bar 'problem pupils' from classrooms: draft bill

A government-sponsored draft bill to revise the School Education Law calls for elementary and junior high school students who inflict either physical or mental injuries on teachers or other students to be kept out of schools.
JAPAN
Feb 11, 2001

Bar 'problem pupils' from classrooms: draft bill

A government-sponsored draft bill to revise the School Education Law calls for elementary and junior high school students who inflict either physical or mental injuries on teachers or other students to be kept out of schools.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 11, 2001

Christopher Hughes

Bath in southwestern England, his birthplace and home for his first 18 years, played its part in the makeup of Christopher Hughes. Several generations of his family have lived in that beautiful town of squares, crescents and terraces. Set in a bend of the River Avon and famed since Roman times, Bath...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 11, 2001

Israeli contemporary art: The endless game

With the election Wednesday of hardliner Ariel Sharon as prime minister, Israel is once again in the news. This can only help focus interest on the excellent exhibition featuring contemporary Israeli art at the Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, and the complementary exhibition featuring older Israeli modern...
CULTURE / Music
Feb 10, 2001

Traditional bamboo basics

The shakuhachi, Japan's end-blown bamboo flute, is gaining international popularity and few play it better than American-born John Kaizan Neptune.
COMMENTARY
Feb 9, 2001

Which 'global standard'?

At the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland last month, Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara reportedly attracted more attention than Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Feb 8, 2001

Ichiro deserves a break today

Ichiro Suzuki is a beef tongue enthusiast. He likes it so much that the owner of a Japanese grocery store in Seattle is stocking up on the tasty treat. In fact, Ichiro recently gave the proprietor a list of his favorite Japanese delicacies. Soon the major leaguer will be drinking Pocari Sweat, chewing...
JAPAN
Feb 6, 2001

Kabuki debuts at middle school

It is nothing new for kabuki actors to go out of Tokyo to perform, but Nakamura Kichiemon recently took an unprecedented step to provoke interest among young schoolchildren in the traditional theater.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 6, 2001

Japan must open the doors if it is to survive

JAPAN AND GLOBAL MIGRATION: Foreign Workers and the Advent of a Multicultural Society, edited by Mike Douglass and Glenda Roberts. London: Routledge, 2000, 306 pp., 63 British pounds. Japan's demographic time bomb is ticking away. In the coming decades, the nation faces a labor shortage and insolvency...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 4, 2001

Shizuo Mochizuki

Shizuoka, the warm, sunny prefecture known for its peaceful hillsides where tea bushes grow, has always been home to Shizuo Mochizuki. His father kept a shop in Shizuoka where he sold Japanese cakes. Mochizuki says that neither tea bushes nor sweet cakes especially influenced him in choosing to make...
BUSINESS
Feb 3, 2001

Taiwan-Japan IT confab set for next week

A symposium on information technology will be held Feb. 8 and Feb. 9 in Tokyo, gathering academics and industry officials from Taiwan and Japan, the Taipei Economic and Culture Representative Office in Japan said Friday.
JAPAN
Feb 3, 2001

Mori wants Japanese out of efforts to clone humans

Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori instructed two Cabinet ministers Friday to ensure that Japanese doctors and researchers do not participate in an international project to clone humans, government officials said.
COMMENTARY
Feb 3, 2001

Bush can win over African Americans

WASHINGTON -- America's 2000 election was essentially a tie. President George W. Bush won among whites, but received only about 10 percent of black votes. What he should do to reach out to minorities has generated a torrent of political commentary.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 3, 2001

A passionate embrace of Nihon

Shinsui Ito (1898-1972) was a central figure during Japan's artistic identity crisis in the 20th century. As wave after wave of artistic movements from overseas broke upon these shores, native artists felt compelled to either abandon their own artistic traditions or embrace them even more strongly.
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2001

Keio president set to lead new education panel

An advisory panel to Education Minister Nobutaka Machimura selected Keio University President Yasuhiko Torii as its leader Thursday at its first meeting since the central government was realigned in January.
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2001

Keio president set to lead new education panel

An advisory panel to Education Minister Nobutaka Machimura selected Keio University President Yasuhiko Torii as its leader Thursday at its first meeting since the central government was realigned in January.
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2001

Treaty to outlaw child labor to go to Diet to fend off critics

In a move aimed at warding off possible international criticism, especially from human rights groups, the government is considering submitting a key treaty banning the worst forms of child labor to the current ordinary Diet session for ratification, government sources said Thursday.
JAPAN
Feb 2, 2001

Treaty to outlaw child labor to go to Diet to fend off critics

In a move aimed at warding off possible international criticism, especially from human rights groups, the government is considering submitting a key treaty banning the worst forms of child labor to the current ordinary Diet session for ratification, government sources said Thursday.
JAPAN
Feb 1, 2001

Colleges brace as fewer apply

Tadataka Koide, president of Aichi Gakuin University in Nagoya, is awaiting this month's entrance exams with anticipation and anxiety.
MULTIMEDIA / SPORTS SCOPE
Feb 1, 2001

FIFA's football family is fatally dysfunctional

Sepp Blatter, the head of soccer's world governing body FIFA, invariably refers to the world's soccer community as "the football family." Unfortunately, it's a terribly dysfunctional family.
JAPAN
Jan 30, 2001

Funeral rites held for men killed in failed station rescue

Funeral rites were held for two men who were killed by a train Friday night when trying to rescue a drunken man who had fallen off the platform onto the tracks at JR Shin-Okubo Station on Tokyo's Yamanote Line.
CULTURE / Film
Jan 30, 2001

Otaku loose in a noirish world

Dark future movies are, by now, as established an SF subgenre as creature features or space operas. Their world view is usually a cross between an Orwellian nightmare and a Jean Paul Gaultier fashion show: grim, oppressive and dangerous but sexy, radical and cool. In other words, you wouldn't mind visiting,...
JAPAN
Jan 30, 2001

Universal Studios theme park opening to coincide with start of spring break

OSAKA -- Universal Studios Japan, a theme park under construction on Osaka's waterfront, will open March 31, USJ Co. President Akira Sakata announced Monday.
JAPAN
Jan 28, 2001

Egalitarian values stifle creativity: researcher

The egalitarianism embedded in Japanese society deprives researchers and scholars of the economic incentives to pursue creative and innovative studies, according to 46-year-old Shuji Nakamura.
COMMUNITY
Jan 28, 2001

Float, crab, shrimp and base

There was something profoundly shocking about sitting on the sidelines to watch a hefty adult male throw himself between the legs of a teenage girl and then try forcibly to get into her underwear. How could this be right? Self-defense techniques for women are to be applauded, but this was too close to...

Longform

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