Search - author

 
 
JAPAN / History
Dec 11, 2015

Fifty Japanese scholars attack McGraw-Hill, U.S. academics on 'comfort women' issue

The “comfort women” dispute heats up as 50 Japanese scholars chide the author of a U.S. textbook and his backers for “errors” they claim no Japanese scholar would support.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 5, 2015

Literature critic John Nathan dissects Japan's Nobel Prize laureates

There is one critic of Japanese literature that towers above the rest: professor John Nathan, erstwhile associate of Yukio Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe and Kobo Abe. But he's not only a respected critic, Nathan's extraordinary career has seen him in the roles of film director, scriptwriter, novelist and memoirist,...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 29, 2015

Mishima, Murakami and the elusive Nobel Prize

Will he or won't he? It's about the time of year when the Japanese media descends into a frenzy of speculation about whether Haruki Murakami will land the Nobel Prize in literature, becoming the first Japanese literary laureate since Kenzaburo Oe in 1994.
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Feb 27, 2015

'The Anime Encyclopedia' goes full digital

"The Anime Encyclopedia, 3rd Revised Edition: A Century of Japanese Animation" will be released March 3.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Jan 11, 2015

We need to talk about Japan — in English

What commentators who write about Japan in English are doing is not necessarily criticism and could instead be a genuine attempt to understand.
JAPAN / Science & Health
Aug 28, 2014

Efforts to replicate STAP cells fall flat

The Riken research institute said Wednesday that ongoing efforts to reproduce so-called STAP cells — whose existence was first claimed by scientist Haruko Obokata in the British journal Nature — have failed.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 1, 2014

The cost of corporate kowtowing to Beijing

American general interest family magazine, Reader's Digest, is alleged to have censored stories for its worldwide English edition to maintain a cheap printing deal in China.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 27, 2013

Incredible stories that should not be forgotten

Foreign journalists charged with covering Japan's devastating March 2011 disasters faced an enormous challenge: sensitively expressing the human tragedy while accurately assessing the vast amount of real-time data on the crisis.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 20, 2013

Murky backstory of 'Gatsby'

What is it about 'The Great Gatsby'? The dark star of F. Scott Fitzgerald's unquiet masterpiece draws writers, critics and filmmakers into its force field, drives them a little mad, and hurls them back into the darkness. The book and its author add up to a mystery whose fascination never fades.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 24, 2013

Beyond a shadow of doubt in new Higashino mystery

SALVATION OF A SAINT, by Keigo Higashino. Little Brown, 2013, 376 pp., £12.99 (hardcover)
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Jan 27, 2013

You read about them here first

Ever since 1897 The Japan Times has reported daily in English on people, places and goings-on in and beyond this country. During those 116 years, our articles have often included information that never made it into the Japanese-language press — as in 1934, when the Society Page carried an interview...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 27, 2012

Social awareness takes center stage

Japan's calamities of March 2011 — the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and the start of an ongoing nuclear disaster — changed not only the social awareness of the general public who make up theater audiences, but also how dramatists approached their work. Many questioned why so many mistakes...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 30, 2012

Born guilty: child of a North Korean gulag

Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West, by Blaine Harden. Viking, 2012, 224 pp., $26.95 (hardcover) While reading "Escape from Camp 14," be prepared for horrifying passages that plumb the depths of viciousness to which both the jailed and their jailers...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 26, 2012

Another strange tale from east of the river

River Road: a Novel of Six Stories, by Hillel Wright. Printed Matter Press, 2012, 146 pp., $15.00 (hardcover) Writer Hillel Wright's seedbed of ideas, fertilized in the work of American giants like Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe and William Burroughs, also owes something to the English sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock....
CULTURE / Books
Jul 22, 2012

Written out of history: a female Edo master's story

The Printmaker's Daughter, by Katherine Govier. Harper Perennial, 2011, 512 pp., $14.99 (paperback) In this story of Katsushika Oei, the little- known daughter of the late Edo Period printmaker Hokusai, the author examines not only the constraints of politics and censorship under which artists worked,...
CULTURE / Books
May 6, 2012

Mistakes that line a successful road

An Unprogrammed Life: Adventures of an Incurable Entrepreneur, by William H. Saito. John Wiley & Sons, 2012, 241 pp., $24.95 (paperback) William H. Saito has enjoyed many successes in his short career as an information technology entrepreneur, but he is keen to stress the importance of failure.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
May 1, 2012

Debito takes on Donald: readers' responses

Some readers' responses to Debito Arudou's April 3 column, "Keene should engage brain before fueling 'flyjin,' foreign crime myths":
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 15, 2012

Wild Watch turns 30 this month

As April 2nd's 30th anniversary of my first Wild Watch column in The Japan Times neared, I was in India — teeming Delhi to be precise, with its cacophony of people, honking traffic and barking dogs, though a tailorbird would stop and call outside my window, where a palm squirrel never tired of chattering....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Apr 10, 2012

Book is behind bullying of mixed-race children

Dear Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Hirofumi Hirano,
CULTURE / Books
Apr 1, 2012

An email memoir on a life in Japan

Life and Nihonjin: Dispatches From Japan, by Alex Kahney. Portland Books, 2011, Japan, 290 pp., $16.00 (paperback) Japan's habit of technological innovation alongside tradition has surfaced in recent literary fads such as the "Densha no Otoko" (Train Man) phenomenon. What started as an urgent plea for...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Mar 18, 2012

Ryunosuke Akutagawa in focus

Though he died by his own hand at the age of 35, novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa's accomplishments were such that, even after so brief a writing career, Japan's most prestigious literary accolade — the Akutagawa Prize — now bears his name.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 12, 2012

Commuter love affair, Tokyo tales

TOKYO COMMUTE: Japanese Customs and Way of Life Viewed from the Odakyu Line, by A. Robert Lee. Renaissance Books, 2011, 214 pp., $22 (paper) Arrive in Tokyo via airport train, as most travelers do, and it quickly becomes apparent that the city's lifeblood is its world-class railway network, each line...
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Dec 25, 2011

Time for Japan to realize it really is the canary in the mine

This Christmas Day column is a book review, but it is also a wish and a prayer.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jul 5, 2011

Disunited 'English-speaking diaspora' bites back

The Community Page received a large number of emails in response to Debito Arudou's June 7 Just Be Cause column, headlined " 'English-speaking diaspora' should unite, not backbite."
COMMENTARY
Jun 22, 2011

Kissinger analysis key to understanding China

It is very tempting to proclaim "On China" as the most important new nonfiction book of 2011. But that it may well be.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 9, 2011

Adoor: India's master storyteller of the silver screen

ADOOR GOPALAKRISHNAN: A Life in Cinema. The Authorized Biography, by Gautaman Bhaskaran. Penguin, 2010, 281 pp. (hardcover) Celebrating the centenary of Akira Kurosawa last year, Donald Richie, the noted writer on Japanese films, observed that Kurosawa believed that he existed only through his films....
Reader Mail
Dec 30, 2010

Let abductor-moms have their say

Regarding the Dec. 23 AP article "U.S. may up child custody pressure": While I fully agree with the rights of a child to live with both parents, I have a few questions for the author of this article. How can a non-U.S. parent become an outlaw and an abductor just because she does not obey a U.S. court...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 26, 2010

Shikoku shrines: journey through a lost world

Itsue Takamure, born in 1894, grew up to become a remarkable woman: a pioneering feminist scholar — one whose work remains controversial — and an anarchist, though her progressive thinking did not prevent her from collaborating with Japan's militarist government during World War II.
LIFE
Nov 14, 2010

Bali beckons 'literary tourists'

Ubud, an enchanting town in tropical Bali's undulating hills, has arrived with panache on the global literary scene.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 29, 2010

How Japan embraced the advent of cinema

Japanese cinema was different from the very start. In the days of the silent movie, recitators called benshi, took it upon themselves not only to interpret the action, but to add their own vocal and acting embellishments as self-appointed supra-dramatists.

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