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CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 5, 2003

Essay collection by master haiku poet wins high praise

THE NICK OF TIME: Essays on Haiku Aesthetics, by Paul O. Williams. Edited by Lee Gurga and Michael Dylan Welch. Foster City, CA: Press Here Books, 2001, 112 pp., paper ($12) What is a haiku, really? How do we know one when we see it? Are English-language haiku less authentic than Japanese haiku? And...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
May 9, 2002

Prices keep Electronic Toll Collection system from catching on

The Electronic Toll Collection system was introduced in March 2001 amid great expectations that it would ease the notorious traffic jams on Japan's expressways as it allows vehicles equipped with a transponder to pass through toll gates without having to stop to pay.
JAPAN
Aug 18, 2001

Kansai Koreans angry at probe

The Public Security Investigation Agency has collected alien registration data on some 150 Korean residents of Kyoto and Osaka as part of an investigation based on the Subversive Activities Prevention Law, sources close to the case said Friday.
BUSINESS
Jun 6, 2001

Collection firms set to get tougher

The House of Representatives approved an amendment at a plenary session Tuesday to give more scope to loan-collection companies.
JAPAN
Nov 1, 1999

Nichiei execs to be questioned on collection methods

The Financial Supervisory Agency and the Kinki Regional Finance Bureau will question senior officials of Nichiei, the leading nonbank lender of commercial loans, later this week in connection with allegations that the firm has excessively harsh loan-recollection methods, sources said Monday.
COMMUNITY
May 2, 1999

Not just a fancy rock collection

Kiyosumi Gardens' overgrown rock collection and pristine pond are a haven for the elderly who frequent it -- lunch box and camera in hand.
Though Haruki Murakami's trademark whiff of offbeat existentialism is threaded throughout NHK's "After the Quake," the final episode — conceived as a sequel to the story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" — is the most stylized, featuring an anthropomorphic talking frog (voiced by Non) and his erstwhile associate Katagiri (Koichi Sato).
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Apr 3, 2025

Haruki Murakami TV adaptation revisits 30 years of watershed moments

NHK's new four-episode miniseries, “After the Quake,” probes the ripple effects of past major disasters across Japanese society.
Yoshiharu Kanai speaks during an interview in Fuchu, Hiroshima Prefecture, on March 6.
JAPAN
Mar 30, 2025

Son of soldier killed on Iwo Jima continues collecting remains

Yoshiharu Kanai, 80, has been working to collect remains for over 20 years, wishing to return them to mainland Japan swiftly.
Waight Keller, who designed Meghan Markle’s wedding dress, finds a different kind of luxury at a mass market brand.
LIFE / Style & Design
Oct 22, 2024

A designer moves easily from royal gowns to Uniqlo

Clare Waight Keller, who designed Meghan Markle’s wedding dress, finds a different kind of luxury at a mass market brand.
An apartment block that was heavily damaged by a Russian missile strike in Dnipro, Ukraine, on Jan. 18, 2023. Housing, transportation networks and various types of other infrastructure facilities across the nation have suffered substantial damage in the wake of Russia's invasion.
JAPAN
Jan 2, 2024

Japan sharing reconstruction lessons with Ukraine

Ukrainian officials have reportedly said reconstruction efforts will draw inspiration from successful examples in Japan.
Utagawa Hiroshige produced several highly successful series of landscape prints over the course of his career, including “One Hundred Famous Views of Edo” — the largest collection of his career.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 8, 2024

The definitive guide to Utagawa Hiroshige's masterwork is a feast for the eyes

Ukiyo-e expert Andreas Marks' new book is a rare compendium of the Japanese artist’s landscapes, even by local standards.  
GU's first overseas flagship store opens in SoHo, New York.
LIFE / Style & Design
Sep 30, 2024

How to own something by the punk poet designer Jun Takahashi

GU, Uniqlo’s trendier sibling, is opening its first store outside Asia in SoHo, collaborating with the subversively witty Jun Takahashi of Undercover.
Makoto Nakae, a researcher of swallowtail butterflies
JAPAN / Regional Voices: Fukushima
Dec 9, 2024

New museum set to bring butterflies of the world to Fukushima

The collection includes Japan’s only display of an extinct butterfly species native to South America.
A model wears items that are part of Takashi Murakami's collaboration with MLB.
BASEBALL / MLB
Feb 28, 2025

Famed artist Takashi Murakami partners with MLB for Tokyo Series

The new collection includes t-shirts and sweatshirts adorned with Murakami’s signature style, along with hats, baseballs and gloves.
The Cards series of aluminum statement earrings, designed by Kanako Matsuo and manufactured by Marushin Industrial Co. Ltd’s in-house brand Alart, each comprise five pieces that can be hung on loops in any combination.
LIFE / Style & Design
Jul 22, 2023

Summer is the season of playful design debuts

June's Interior Lifestyle Tokyo international trade fair was filled with objects designed to spark a little joy in life.
A new high-rise is erected in Beijing in October 2021. The same year, 41% of the assets in China’s banking system were accounted for by property-related loans and credit.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 1, 2023

Is Japan’s economic past China’s future?

China is facing a long period of low growth similar to Japan’s experience since the 1990s.
A performer going by the name “Tanefukube” leads shishi-odori dancers during Tono Meguritoroge’s grand finale at Rokko-shi shrine.
LIFE / Travel
Sep 30, 2023

Dancing with ghosts at Tono’s rural folk festival

The Tono region is Japan’s go-to setting of scary stories to tell in the dark.
Adal’s Look into Nature brand, on show at Salon del Mobile 2024, rethinks "igusa" (Japanese rush grass), traditionally used for tatami, as a sustainable material for furniture.
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Apr 13, 2024

Japan’s best and brightest designers set to shine in Milan

The Salone del Mobile trade fair and its accompanying SaloneSatellite exhibition of up-and-coming talent attracts a pool of talented Japanese designers.
An exterior view of Qasr al-Basha in 2021 in Gaza City, where Napoleon Bonaparte slept for several nights during his campaign in Egypt and Palestine.
WORLD
Apr 15, 2024

Gaza's historic treasures saved by 'irony of history'

Invaluable artifacts remain intact thanks to the blockade that made life in the Gaza Strip such a struggle for the past 16 years.
Japan’s custody system may soon change with the introduction of joint custody, though issues like a lack of protection against domestic violence and abuse must also be tackled.
COMMENTARY / Japan
May 10, 2024

Joint custody alone won’t fix Japan’s flawed system

Japan could be on the verge of adopting joint custody. While to some this is a step in the right direction, it may not be enough to protect families.
With brightly colored hair and equally colorful attire, the 48-year-old Maaya Orii certainly stands out in a crowd.
LIFE / Style & Design
Jun 1, 2024

Paging Dr. Maaya, the neurosurgeon doubling as a fashion designer

Maaya Orii works as a neurosurgeon in Tokyo on weekdays and as a doctor in Kushiro, Hokkaido, on weekends. In her spare time, she’ll shift gears and focus on fashion.
U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan
BUSINESS / Tech
Sep 20, 2024

U.S. accuses social media giants of 'vast surveillance'

Tech companies "harvest an enormous amount of Americans' personal data," says FTC chief Lina Khan.
Visitors look at a painting of late Chinese Communist Party leader Mao Zedong at an exhibition held by Mao memorabilia collectors in Beijing on Sept. 21.
ASIA PACIFIC
Sep 29, 2024

China's 'red collectors' cherish bygone Maoist era

Recent decades have seen a resurgence of nostalgia for the Mao era — despite its horrors — due in part to its utopian official outlook and fervent patriotic spirit.
Dul Saroth (left) and Soeum Samrach, deminers with the Cambodian Mine Action and Victim Assistance Authority, practice using the Advanced Landmine Imaging System in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province in August.
JAPAN / Longform
Oct 7, 2024

The Japanese tech that could one day make Southeast Asia landmine-free

The Advanced Landmine Imaging System being tested in Cambodia promises to speed up landmine clearance work and save lives.
Donald Trump in West Palm Beach, Florida, on July 27. A sophisticated breach of American telecommunications systems has extended to the presidential campaigns, raising questions about the group behind the attack and the extent of its efforts at collecting intelligence.
WORLD / Politics
Oct 27, 2024

What to know about the Chinese hackers who targeted the 2024 campaigns

The far-reaching operation has been linked to the Chinese government and attributed to a group experts call Salt Typhoon.
"Butter," Asako Yuzuki’s thrilling novel inspired by a real-life femme fatale, was named the Waterstones Book of the Year in 2024.
CULTURE / Books / 2024 in Review
Dec 15, 2024

Women are writing a new chapter in Japanese literature in the 2020s

From the deadly serious and deeply weird to the fluffiest of diversions, a bounty of Japanese fiction in translation has delighted readers and critics this decade so far.
Kaz Shiomi is looking forward to the Osaka Expo this year, which will be held from April 13 to Oct. 13.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Jan 10, 2025

Kaz Shiomi: ‘I want to show people … how to color outside the lines’

Producing toys under her kiko+ & gg* brand, the business owner hopes to encourage children to find their own unique paths in life.
Tokoro Ruins Museum Director Yuuki Nakamura says that 'most Japanese people don’t know' the history of the Okhotsk culture, but he and others are betting that travelers might be intrigued enough to visit and find out more.
LIFE / Travel
Feb 22, 2025

Bear skulls and pit dwellings: Hokkaido aims to sell ancient history

The Okhostk culture thrived in northern Hokkaido from the fifth to ninth centuries and may have provided the Ainu with some of their best-known rituals.

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan