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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 13, 2009

An abandoned history of Chinese influence

Edo Period (1603-1868) paintings from Osaka have been relatively neglected in comparison with paintings from Tokyo and Kyoto. A canonical list of works and a historical framework were written up in Tokyo in the 1890s in a series of influential lectures by scholar Okakura Tenshin, setting the directions...
Reader Mail
Feb 12, 2009

Who is responsible for the past?

Regarding the Feb. 7 article "Aso Mining POWs seek redress": Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker Yukihisa Fujita is quoted as saying, "As a prime minister of a nation who represents the country, (Prime Minister Taro) Aso needs to take responsibility for the past as well as the future."
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 12, 2009

U.S. expert urges death penalty rethink

While 80 percent of the Japanese public is in favor of capital punishment, support for executions would drop if life without parole sentences were also an option, according to an American criminologist who visited Tokyo recently.
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 12, 2009

Japan as the catalyst for improving global public health

What place should Japan occupy in the world? This existential question has troubled Japan's leaders for the past two decades. Military leadership is restricted by the Constitution. Economic might has lost its glimmer. Cultural influence, epitomized by "cool Japan," has yet to take center stage.
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA / STYLE WISE
Feb 12, 2009

Fashion inspired by imaginary destinations, the 1950s and naughty Polaroids

Your visa to Fugahum "Fugahum is our imaginary country. Yes, it's also our brand, but I always wanted to create a nation and write its history," says Akiyoshi Mishima, the philosophical half of the fashion unit Fugahum that the designer has formed with partner Asuka Yamamoto. "Isn't that what a fashion...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Feb 12, 2009

State minister Seiko Noda

Seiko Noda, 48, is Japan's state minister in charge of science and technology policy, food safety, consumer affairs and space policy. As a member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and of Prime Minister Taro Aso's Cabinet, she is entrusted with running 21 different departments. Not one to crack under...
Reader Mail
Feb 12, 2009

Any foreign tongue gets short shrift

I agree with many of the comments made by Gregory Clark in his Feb. 5 article "What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan." Based on my own teaching experiences, lack of motivation on the part of students and teachers is a driving force for poor English-language ability. That said, I've also...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Feb 11, 2009

Clearing up digital photography

Look sharp: In digital photography, cameras that are small and easy to use tend not to take good pictures in low light and to have a crimped dynamic range. A camera's dynamic range defines how much detail it can capture in shadowy areas of the picture and brightly lit parts at the same time. The better...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Feb 10, 2009

A young life in legal limbo

For years, Arlan and Sarah Calderon fretted over when to tell their daughter, Noriko, that she was different.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Feb 8, 2009

Horne fired up about playing for Benoit, Broncos

The Japan Times will be featuring periodic interviews with players in the bj-league, Japan's first professional basketball circuit. Steve Horne of the Takamatsu Five Arrows is the subject of this week's profile.
Reader Mail
Feb 8, 2009

Why limit worldwide broadcasts?

Regarding the Feb. 3 article "NHK goes global with all-English broadcasts": As has been the case with all articles concerning this subject, we are told that "The broadcasts will not be aired in Japan." Am I the only one to ask, "Why not?"
BASKETBALL / INSIDE LOOK
Feb 7, 2009

Playing in Ivy League presents challenges

NEW YORK — Team update: The senior shooting guard helped the Columbia University men's basketball team record back-to-back home victories over Yale and Brown last week. It was the Lions' first sweep over those schools since 2004.
Japan Times
JAPAN / MIXED MATCHES
Feb 7, 2009

Long-shot meeting, longtime love

After training under a dyer for six months in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture, art student Satoko Yamagishi decided she needed a break. In October 1998 she went to Montreal, where she met Philippe Lavoie, a Canadian computer chip designer studying Japanese.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 7, 2009

Stripped of stereotypes

If you ever have the chance to meet Lu Nagata, you will never forget her style and determination.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 6, 2009

'20-seiki Shonen Dai-2-sho: Saigo no Kibo'

Movies based on popular long-running manga commonly cram in too much, from story lines to characters. This confuses nonfans, while often failing to satisfy fans, who complain about omissions — though the original comic may have run for thousands of pages in dozens of volumes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 6, 2009

Western Japan's eclectic master

A matter of temperament was said to distinguish the two major regional centers of nihonga (Japanese-style painting), Tokyo and Kyoto, at the turn of the 20th century. Tokyo painters imbued their works with "brain" by way of complex content, while Kyoto artists held firm to their "brush" in a looser style...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 6, 2009

Simple beauty

Fashion photographer Aram Dikiciyan recognizes that his work is hard to define. "I can't really decide if I'm a fashion photographer or an artist," he explains over coffee in Tokyo's fashionable Omotesando district.
MULTIMEDIA
Feb 6, 2009

Simple beauty

Fashion photographer Aram Dikiciyan recognizes that his work is hard to define. "I can't really decide if I'm a fashion photographer or an artist," he explains over coffee in Tokyo's fashionable Omotesando district.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 6, 2009

Primary approach adds up for GO!GO!7188

"Last year we toured Japan with bands such as Mongol800, and while we were messing around with the other bands on stage, we came to rediscover how much fun it is to just make a noise," says Akiko Noma, better known as Akko, bassist with off-kilter rock band GO!GO!7188.
Reader Mail
Feb 5, 2009

High road to physical fitness

Regarding the Jan. 27 Hotline to Nagatacho article " 'Marathon' ritual must change": While I understand the author's intent in asking for change, I must respectfully disagree with him on the "need" for things like his son's "marathon" to be discontinued. I myself was much like the author's son. As a...
COMMENTARY
Feb 5, 2009

What's wrong with the way English is taught in Japan

The good news is that Japan's education bureaucrats realize that despite six years of middle and high school study many Japanese are still unable to speak English well. The bad news is that the bureaucrats plan to solve this problem by giving us more of what caused the problem.
Japan Times
SOCCER / World cup
Feb 5, 2009

Japan crush Finland ahead of qualifier

Japan gave national team manager Takeshi Okada a welcome tonic ahead of next week's World Cup-qualifying match against Australia with a resounding 5-1 win over Finland on Wednesday night.
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE PLAYERS OF THE MONTH
Feb 5, 2009

Holm earns defensive award for big January

Sendai 89ers center Chris Holm has become the bj-league's chairman of the boards.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL: KEYES' POINT
Feb 4, 2009

Offensive compliments: A drinker's sober lesson

Of all the stupid, idiotic . . . sumimasen. Stuart Keyes is my name. I'm not in the best of moods, though you mustn't judge me by that. I'm good-humored enough most of the time, but . . .
COMMENTARY
Feb 4, 2009

Will Afghanistan turn into Obama's Vietnam?

You aren't really the U.S. president until you've ordered an airstrike on somebody, so Barack Obama is certainly president now: two in his first week in office. But now that he has been bloodied, can we talk a little about this expanded war he's planning to fight in Afghanistan?
COMMENTARY
Feb 4, 2009

Protectionism not the answer

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has rejected protectionist measures to mitigate the effects of the present world economic crisis and has condemned the anti-globalization lobby as ignorant and misguided. He and Lord Mandelson, the minister responsible for business affairs and a former EU commissioner,...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Feb 4, 2009

No respect for Love from assistant coaches

NEW YORK — Stumblebum that I am, I have stumbled across a situation whose level of egregiousness falls somewhere between Bernie Madoff and Bernie Goetz.

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