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CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 25, 2005

Corruption and intrigue in high places

THE ASSASSIN'S TOUCH, by Laura Joh Rowland. New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2005, 312 pp., $24.95 (cloth). BEAUTIFUL GHOSTS, by Eliot Pattison. New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 360 pp., 2004, $24.95 (cloth). A day after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast, I fired off an e-mail message...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 25, 2005

Help the disabled, but don't deny them

Several years ago, the government discussed state-sponsored care for people with disabilities. The idea was to assist mentally and physically disabled people in leaving publicly-funded facilities and entering society; or, at least, that was how it was presented.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 24, 2005

Cambodian envoy to Japan on three-point mission

"Hello, hello," Pou Sothirak greets warmly as he enters the reception room of the Cambodian Embassy in Akasaka, central Tokyo. Then as a staff member follows on behind, with a camera: "Now stand here with me for a photo. Right, we're done. We have to let him take these official pictures, otherwise he...
COMMENTARY
Sep 23, 2005

Chinese show commendable patience

LOS ANGELES -- In very important negotiations, the Chinese tend to work things in a manner different from the West. Their diplomats generally dislike framing positions in an edgy, confrontational, take-it-or-leave-it style. That approach strikes them as too risky. They tend to process an initial rebuff...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Sep 22, 2005

Becoming Japanese to satisfy the American eye

The elegant and enigmatic new exhibition at the Mori Art Museum, "The End of Time," is a retrospective on four decades of work by Hiroshi Sugimoto. One of Japan's most internationally acclaimed artists, Sugimoto uses photography to condense events in celebrated time-exposure series such as "Seascapes"...
JAPAN
Sep 22, 2005

New, returning lawmakers step onto Diet's red carpet

Lawmakers elected Sept. 11, some under a cloud of scandal, started their first official duties Wednesday, attending a House of the Representatives special session.
BASEBALL / MLB
Sep 21, 2005

Swallows offer Furuta manager's job

Yakult Swallows club president Yoshikazu Tagiku said Tuesday he has already offered the manager's job for next season to veteran catcher Atsuya Furuta.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Sep 21, 2005

Putting people back into ecology

Peter Berg is singularly passionate about his vision for a better world. He is convinced that towns and cities can move beyond the limitations of environmentalism and create vibrant communities that are economically and ecologically sustainable, and he believes bioregions are the key.
JAPAN
Sep 18, 2005

DPJ picks Maehara for top spot

The Democratic Party of Japan elected young conservative Seiji Maehara as its new president Saturday, passing over veteran former party leader Naoto Kan after suffering a devastating defeat in the House of Representatives election last week.
Japan Times
Features
Sep 18, 2005

Complexities of beauty

The tall, handsome foreigner took a seat next to a Japanese woman. Drinking in her delicate beauty, he leaned over and asked in a gentle voice: "Would you mind if I talk to you?"
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 18, 2005

Japan in the doldrums needs a lot more than hot air

It is not every election in Japan that raises questions about the direction of the nation and the identity of its people. It was natural that last week's poll was a polemical one. After a "lost decade" now well on the way to becoming a "lost double-decade," Japanese people have been asking themselves:...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 18, 2005

Sweet Mysteries of the Orient

THE ASIAN MYSTIQUE, by Sheridan Prasso. Public Affairs Books, 437 pp., 2005, $27.95, 2,850 yen (cloth). Apparently, there are still Western men who believe that the East is an obliging seductress, mass producing an endless line of voluptuous women, whose laconic sexual pliancy is only exceeded by their...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 18, 2005

Trying to keep the train-groping perverts out of touch

Earlier this year when some Japanese train lines inaugurated women-only cars the Western media picked the story up as yet another example of Weird Japan, a place, they implied, where sexual deviancy was so culturally grounded that the only thing railway companies could do to protect female passengers...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Sep 17, 2005

Play it again, Sam . . . but with these lyrics

His name is Joe. And Joe says: "If you can't walk, dance. If you can't talk, sing. And you can't hear . . . just make things up."
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Sep 16, 2005

Negiya Heikichi: Peace of mind can be yours, even in Shibuya

Looking for a peaceful, adult place to eat in central Shibuya is about as easy as finding a street without a karaoke box. So when you come across the understated, almost quaintly retro entrance to Negiya Heikichi, in a back street close to Tokyu Hands, it seems too good to be true.
COMMENTARY
Sep 14, 2005

Major hurdle remains in six-party talks

KYOTO -- The fourth round of six-party talks aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear-weapons aspirations resumed Tuesday in Beijing after a five-week recess. One main sticking point, seemingly still unresolved, centers around North Korea's "right" to have a peaceful nuclear-energy program.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Sep 14, 2005

Taking it slowly to savor eco-exploring

These days, "eco" has become something like a random, loosely attached, brand name. Not associated with any particular company, nor with any particular product, eco -- which "Webster's" defines as a combining form meaning "environment or habitat" -- is applied seemingly indiscriminately.
EDITORIALS
Sep 11, 2005

The unfriendly skies

A s the vacation season fades into fall, travelers have wended their weary way home from far-flung destinations such as Hawaii, Queensland, Europe and beyond. The problem is, the farther-flung the destination, the wearier the returnees are likely to be -- and the angrier. Not because they didn't enjoy...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 11, 2005

The curious Mr. Longfellow

LONGFELLOW'S TATTOOS: Tourism, Collecting, and Japan, by Christine M.E. Guth. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2004, 256 pp., 123 illustrations, $29.95 (paper). After the new Japanese government was officially installed in 1868, only a decade or so after the country had been, more or less, forcibly...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 11, 2005

Desperate drones are content to be 'conned' into buying a condo

As long as I've lived in Tokyo I've received phone calls from condominium salespeople. In the past, these solicitations seemed accidental, as if the salespeople had dialed my number at random. But in the last five years the calls have been more deliberate. The salespeople know where I live -- not just...
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Sep 11, 2005

Here comes the naughty and the nice

Antony and the Johnsons (who?, I hear you say) may have won the Mercury Music Prize last Tuesday, but when the far more prestigious Fuzzy Logic awards are announced at the end of this year then the two bands profiled here are going to be in the running to get at least a gong apiece. Falsies on Heat must...
Japan Times
Features
Sep 11, 2005

What's the Point?

Fabrice Blocteur may not be as well known as Marco Polo, Vasco da Gama, Ferdinand Magellan or Sir Francis Drake. But like explorers of old, this French-Canadian resident of a rural Kyoto village is on a quest to rewrite the maps through new discoveries.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2005

Upper House postal rebel would change stance if LDP wins

Yoshitada Konoike, former state minister for disaster management who voted against the postal privatization bills in August, on Friday told the Liberal Democratic Party, to which he belongs, that he would support resubmission of the bills if the LDP-New Komeito coalition wins a majority in Sunday's election....
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2005

Labor unions ask Canada to stop exporting white asbestos

Three Japanese unions, including one for construction workers, requested in a joint action Friday that Canada, the biggest single supplier of asbestos to Japan, stop exporting the carcinogenic mineral, labor officials said.
JAPAN
Sep 10, 2005

Family-bred politicians fan out

KURASHIKI, Okayama Pref. -- Japanese politics is often a family affair, with the offspring of Diet members winning seats originally held by their fathers, and in some cases, grandfathers.
SPORTS / SPORTS SCOPE
Sep 9, 2005

Despite troubles, Gooden blessed

I got a bit choked up the other day.
JAPAN
Sep 9, 2005

Seiko Noda and Yukari Sato in desperate battle in Gifu

GIFU -- A showdown between two female candidates has all eyes fixed on this sleepy conservative city in the Chubu region.

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