Economy
Fed to start tapering bond purchases this year: Bernanke
by No Author
The Federal Reserve maintains its $85 billion-a-month asset purchase program, but says it could begin scaling back later this year.
Shaun Mckenna
Shaun McKenna has worked as an editor at The Japan Times since 2007. He currently helms the Music and Events sections at the newspaper. When he isn’t attending concerts in Tokyo, he is often on the hunt for “the perfect iced tea.”
For Shaun Mckenna's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Music | In the Record Bag Jun 20, 2013
In the record bag: Mark Birtles
Born in Nottingham, England, Mark Birtles began DJing in Leeds before coming to Japan in 2008. He is one half of the Tokyo Indie events team, which has hosted DJ gigs with touring bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Metronomy, Mystery Jets and Yeah ...
Concert Preview May 23, 2013
June: Taicoclub, Tokyo Camp kick off festival season
Students are counting down the days till school lets out, while urban commuters are starting to sweat the impending heat. Summer is coming, and a sure sign of that is that music festivals are starting to kick up around the country. The month starts ...
Music May 2, 2013
Pianist Onishi to come out of retirement
Pianist Junko Onishi will come out of retirement to perform one more time, at the finale of this year’s Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture. According to a statement released Friday, the 46-year-old musician was convinced to come back to the stage by ...
Music Mar 29, 2013
Early quake relief project 'Nihon Kizuna' to hold two-year anniversary event
Laurent Fintoni was visiting Japan in March 2011 when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck. The 33-year-old writer and DJ quickly contacted friends in the music scene here and abroad to produce “Nihon Kizuna,” one of the first albums to aid disaster relief. Two ...
Music Mar 28, 2013
Japanese acts play music ambassadors at Canadian Music Week
After rock group Jake Stone Garage hit the final chord of one of their powerful guitar-heavy songs, the crowd let out a few hoots and applauded politely. For a Western band this may have seemed a bit unreceptive, but luckily Jake Stone Garage are ...
Music Feb 14, 2013
My Bloody Valentine hit the decks in Shibuya
My Bloody Valentine bassist Debbie Googe manned the decks for a rare DJ set at a Tokyo Indie event in Tokyo on Friday. The acclaimed alt-rock band was in Japan to play sold-out shows in Osaka and Tokyo in support of its new album ...
Concert Preview Jan 3, 2013
January: Spirit of punk alive as Patti Smith, Death Grips come to Japan
The new year is starting out with a slew of potentially great gigs throughout the country. The most anticipated of these is probably Patti Smith and her Band’s seven-city tour, which starts in Sendai on Jan. 22 (Sendai Rensa; 7:30 p.m. start; ¥7,000 in ...
Music Nov 29, 2012
2.5D wants to change how you see Japan
A crowd much smaller than solo-guitarist Miyavi is accustomed to has gathered to hear an intimate set at the 2.5D studio in Shibuya’s Parco Part 1 building. About a third of the 80 or so people have gathered around the stage so close that ...
Music | In the Record Bag May 17, 2012
A Taut Line
Tokyo-based British DJ/producer Matt Lyne, aka A Taut Line, coruns the record label Diskotopia, with Brian Durr, aka BD1982. A Taut Line’s melodic broken house, garage and techno productions are just as influenced by the Chicago jazz and postrock scenes as by the 1980s ...
Events Outside Tokyo Sep 9, 2011
Sendai to hold jazz festival
In times of trouble music can soothe the soul. And if anyone’s souls needed soothing, it would be the people of Sendai. The capital of Miyagi Prefecture is located 130 km east of the epicenter of the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, and ...
Events Outside Tokyo Jun 17, 2011
Meitoku players give famed kabuki piece the Kurosawa treatment
In 1985, director Akira Kurosawa released “Ran,” a Japanese take on William Shakespear’s masterpiece “King Lear.” Kochi’s Meitoku International Players are taking a similar approach to Namiki Gohei’s 1840 kabuki piece “Kanjicho” by presenting it in an Italian setting and performed in English. Gohei’s ...
Events Outside Tokyo Feb 4, 2011
Yokohama's Chinatown community marks lunar new year
Yokohama’s Chinatown district is ready to get the party hopping. Feb. 3 marks the beginning of the new year according to the Chinese lunar calendar. This year, as the Japanese already know, is the year of the rabbit. Boasting one of the biggest Chinatowns ...