Tag - media-mix

 
 

MEDIA MIX

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 11, 2004
It's best to be aware of this big trucking problem
The crimes of Mitsubishi Motors Corp. have made the media a little more attentive to vehicles that blow up. In the past several weeks, it seems an awful lot of MMC products have spontaneously combusted. Whenever they do, it's reported in the newspapers, and the frequency of such reports (at least four...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 4, 2004
Imaginative filmmakers shed light on dark side of humanity
At the end of May the Cine Pathos movie theater in Ginza was scheduled to run "Concrete," which is based on a "nonfiction novel" that itself is patterned after an incident that took place in Tokyo's Adachi Ward in 1989. Four teenage boys abducted a high-school girl and kept her prisoner for 40 days,...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 27, 2004
Korean wave may help erode discrimination
Though a lot of people are tired of the guy by now, there's something encouraging about the inexhaustible, Beatlemaniacal attention being paid to Korean star Bae Yong Joon. Bae's popularity is merely the most prominent feature of the current kanryu (Korean wave) boom, but the attraction that many Japanese...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 20, 2004
Talent agencies enjoy the biggest laugh
Yoshimoto Kogyo, one of the biggest talent agencies in Japan, recently announced that it plans to build a new 1,000-seat comedy theater in Shinjuku. The company already operates a 458-seat theater in the Shinjuku Lumine building, and like that one the new venue will present only Yoshimoto acts. The company's...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 13, 2004
Murakami's job guide for teens lights the pipe of dreams
In mid-May, NHK's nightly news feature "Closeup Gendai" looked at the current post-university recruitment situation from the viewpoint of the recruit. For the past decade, the main story with regard to this issue has been the difficulty of finding work as more and more companies restructured along nontraditional...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jun 6, 2004
Japan is back to the Stone Age when it comes down to transplants
Is Japan still in the medical Stone Age? A look at American depictions of the medical profession might make you think so. Last Tuesday, NHK had a bunch of celebrities sitting around and rapturously discussing the American hospital soap opera "ER" and its mature take on the physician-patient dynamic....
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 30, 2004
Media leave Imperial family forgotten, lonely, and in a corner
The excitement last weekend over North Korea's release of some of the Japanese abductees' children overshadowed another news story about prisoners of the state -- the Japanese Imperial family. Crown Prince Naruhito returned from his whirlwind wedding tour of Europe to a tense Imperial Household Agency...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 23, 2004
Foreign markets fail to grasp soul of anime
If, as many people claim, Japanese pop culture is sweeping the globe, then anime is the hand that wields the broom. A number of recent big-budget Japanese animated features, including Mamoru Oishii's "Innocence," currently in competition at Cannes, have attracted funding from Hollywood without the usual...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 16, 2004
Shooting politicians in a barrel more fun than addressing pension problem
In the past two weeks the pension scandal that has touched so many lawmakers has progressed from a political embarrassment to pure farce. The offered reason for regret is that the people's "trust in politics" has been damaged, a suggestion that's risible even under normal circumstances.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 9, 2004
If only divorces were scripted by TV writers
It's easier to get a divorce in Japan than anywhere else in the world. If both parties agree, all they have to do is affix their seals to a document and their union is instantly dissolved -- no trial separation period, no grounds, no mess.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 2, 2004
Japan welcomes students, but you might end up majoring in crime
The controversy over the increase in crimes committed by foreigners in Japan is centered mainly on appearances and interpretation. The National Police Agency's use of statistics to show that "foreign crime" is on the rise has given the agency license to initiate policies that many people, both Japanese...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 25, 2004
Shame lies with government and media over Iraq hostage crisis
Last week, the Asahi Shimbun ran an opinion piece by writer Genichiro Takahashi that was in the form of an advice column. The anonymous advice-seeker professed to having suffered the same fate as the three Japanese hostages who returned from Iraq to a chorus of derision. After all I went through, said...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 18, 2004
Media favors Al-Jazeera over government
In his new book, "The Unconquerable World," Jonathan Schell explains how "people's war" came to be the dominant form of international conflict in the nuclear age. People's war subordinates all aspects of warfare to politics, because only through politics can the strength of the people be harnessed to...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 11, 2004
Chosuke Ikariya: the professional amateur
In his autobiography, Chosuke Ikariya, who died two weeks ago at the age of 72, mentions that when he won a Japan Academy Award in 1999 for his performance in "Odoru Daisosasen (Bayside Shakedown)" he felt guilty because he had never taken acting that seriously. It sounds like the requisite modesty of...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Apr 4, 2004
A responsible attitude needed toward 'privacy'
Everybody knows what they mean when they say "privacy," but when it's used in a legal context the word turns squishy and slippery. For instance, it's difficult to grasp why Barbra Streisand sued a photographer last year for invasion of privacy because her estate appeared in two aerial pictures he took...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 28, 2004
Freedom is flagging in Japan's public-school system
Few people are probably aware that the national flags of many countries are not, strictly speaking, national flags. There is no law, for example, that designates the Union Jack as the national flag of the U.K. In most countries, the national flag and national anthem are defined, as such, by custom rather...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 21, 2004
'Mister' is a god, but he's not immortal
Former Village Voice media critic Tom Carson once wrote an essay in which he blasted the style imperative subscribed to by American men's magazines. These publications had invested so heavily in a certain male image that they couldn't imagine anything else. "You want to strike terror in the hearts of...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 14, 2004
The twisted terminology in Japan's marriage system
The so-called culture wars that have reignited in the United States over the legitimacy of gay marriage may influence this year's presidential election despite a general feeling that there are more important issues. The problem with gay marriage as a social issue is that both sides work against their...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 7, 2004
Levitation, drug claims and, er, melons blur reality in Asahara trial
The sarin attack on the Tokyo subway system that the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo carried out exactly nine years ago this month is often cited as the first mass terrorist strike against civilians, and like al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, Aum's former guru Shoko Asahara is accepted as the mastermind...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 29, 2004
Takahashi faces uphill struggle in race for gold
As the Summer Olympic Games in Athens approach, the media have begun to speculate on Japan's medal chances. Such speculation tends to become more desperate with each passing Olympics because the number of medals Japan brings home has steadily dropped since 1964 while the size of the media itself has...

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