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The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
SHINTO SHRINES: A Guide to the Sacred Sites of Japan’s Ancient Religion, by Joseph Cali with John Dougill. University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 328 pp., $24.99 (paperback) KYOTO MACHIYA RESTAURANT GUIDE: Affordable Dining in Traditional Townhouse Spaces, by Judith Clancy. Stone Bridge Press, 2012, ...
I’m torn. I can’t work out whether the Occupy movements were responsible for their own demise; and I can’t work out whether I’ve had enough of reading tomes about the brave new world of revolutionary consensus-building. THE DEMOCRACY PROJECT: A History, a Crisis, a ...
It is 1936. Daphne Linden, the unworldly, 18-year-old daughter of a priapic Oxford professor, is sent to finishing school in Germany along with a slew of other nice young girls, all of whom unwittingly get caught up in a period of tumultuous political upheaval. ...
Most readers encountering a book called "Under Foreign Eyes: Western Cinematic Adaptations of Postwar Japan" will expect it to contain an interesting claim or claims about these Western representations of Japan, and that the claim or claims will be buttressed by sophisticated analysis of ...
Spring in Japan: a time to re-evaluate, to explore spiritually the choices of the upcoming fiscal year. A season of pilgrimage.
This little book has a purpose that is weightily monumental: It’s a Taj Mahal made of paper, not white marble. LEVELS OF LIFE, by Julian Barnes. Cape, 2013, 128 pp., ￡10.99 (hardcover) Shah Jahan built the minareted tomb for his third wife when she ...
In August 1930, the Norwegian ship Bratvaag, carrying a party of scientists and seal-hunters, moored off the tiny Arctic island of Kvitoya. Few humans had ever set foot there — it is extremely remote and usually surrounded by thick pack ice. A couple of ...
Like Britain, Japan is subject to the polarizing forces of the orthodox and radical, the two balancing the flabby middle.
FRACTURED TIMES: Culture and Society in the 20th Century, by Eric Hobsbawm. Little, Brown, 2013, 336 pp., ￡25 (hardcover) When you call a thinker a “conservative communist,” you sound as if you are making a weak joke. To understand the late Eric Hobsbawm’s peculiar ...
HOME FIRES, by Elizabeth Day. Bloomsbury, 2013, 256 pp., ￡11.99 (paperback) Elizabeth Day’s first novel, “Scissors, Paper, Stone,” a taut, beautifully written drama, won a Betty Trask award. It was about a mother and a daughter who were holding things together by keeping a ...
Donald Richie, prolific author of more than 40 books and longtime contributor to The Japan Times, died in February at age 88. April 17 was his birthday, so this review pays tribute by sharing some of the insights he passed on during an interview, ...
This remarkable book is an autobiography of childhood, written by the poet Mutsuo Takahashi (born 1937) when he was 32, and issued in 1970, although its separate chapters had appeared as a series of essays in a magazine the year before.