Top architects lend their expertise to rebuilding

Sep 25, 2011

Top architects lend their expertise to rebuilding

by Edan Corkill

The involvement of architects in redeveloping the many towns and cities affected by March 11′s Great East Japan Earthquake and the resulting tsunami is not as common as might be expected. Rather, local governments are primarily partnering for such work with civil engineering firms. ...

Students' skills help to forge a new Tohoku

Sep 25, 2011

Students' skills help to forge a new Tohoku

by Edan Corkill

In late July, when the students of Osaka Institute of Technology’s Department of Architecture first arrived at the tiny port of Oharahama, an air of negativity hung over the conversation of the locals. “They were full of questions: Why did this have to happen ...

<em>Theyyam</em>: Trance dances in the Indian countryside

Sep 11, 2011

Theyyam: Trance dances in the Indian countryside

by Jeff Kingston

Watching the two whirling dancers’ straw skirts aflame as they kept their balance under elaborate, 4-meter-high headdresses while circumambulating the central shrine of the village to the beat of drummers amid a buzzing throng, I did not expect a nudge from the local standing ...

The annual Kerala festival in Tokyo

Sep 11, 2011

The annual Kerala festival in Tokyo

by Jeff Kingston

This is the traditional season for the Keralan festival called Onam, the one time a year when the mythical King Mahabali leaves the netherworld where he now rules and visits his people to help them celebrate the harvest and their traditions. It is a ...

Three Mile Island's lessons for Japan

| Aug 21, 2011

Three Mile Island's lessons for Japan

by Winifred Bird

In the early hours of March 28, 1979, human errors and mechanical failures combined to cause a cooling system to stop working at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. One of the station’s two nuclear cores overheated, thrusting the plant ...

Film mines rich seams of history

Aug 14, 2011

Film mines rich seams of history

by Tai Kawabata

Hiroko Kumagai will never forget the day in 1998 when she first stepped inside the red-brick building at the entrance to the closed and shuttered Miyahara shaft in the Miike coal mine in Omuta, Fukuoka Prefecture. “I felt I heard the voices of people ...

Jul 24, 2011

Distribution gridlock restricts renewables

by Winifred Bird

Dial the clock forward a decade or so, and Japan will be getting a lot more of its electricity from renewable resources and a lot less from nuclear power and fossil fuels — that is, if you go by recent government announcements proclaiming 2011 ...