Philip Brasor - The Japan Times

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 21, 2002

Public works projects? Dam them all to hell

The person who said that all politics is local probably wasn't thinking about Japan, where regional officials don't seem to have much purpose in life beyond trying to cadge money from Tokyo.

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 14, 2002

Going to any lengths to avoid giving offense

Weird Tales of Self-Restraint No. 16: Heroes are Hard to Find

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 10, 2002

Skist: 'Ellipsis'

If the purpose of abstraction is to get as far away from representative forms as possible, then the ultimate abstraction is something that's totally unrecognizable as anything. In the 1950s, Abstract Impressionists went to such lengths to avoid even suggesting the use of paint that judgment of their...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jul 7, 2002

We love Korea (we just love Beckham more)

According to an Internet survey conducted by an Osaka polling service, 57 percent of Japanese people ages 18 to 49 feel that the recent World Cup tournament helped improve relations between the two co-hosting countries, Japan and the Republic of Korea. The media, both here and abroad, and FIFA, are making...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jul 3, 2002

The Cato Salsa Experience: 'A Good Tip for a Good Time'

Trash is the new grunge, and every four-piece band worth its automatic garage door opener is being pursued by record labels who only two years ago were asking Moby if he knew any other bald vegans who could write long essays on religious pluralism. Norway weighs in with the Cato Salsa Experience, a group...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 30, 2002

Hear the one about the Japanese comedian?

Last Sunday, on the Fuji-TV show "Warau Inu no Hakken," two comic teams, Neptune and Uchan-Nanchan, attempted to "spread Japanese comedy" to the rest of the world. At a pre-World Cup exhibition match between the Russian national team and Shimizu S-Pulse held in Shizuoka, the five comedians who comprise...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 23, 2002

Make more babies: by any means necessary

About five years ago, a mother in Kansas City started wondering about the paternity of her twins. Becky Peck had recently divorced, and she became more sensitive to what she perceived as the physical and behavioral differences between herself and her two children, Lindsay and Jeremy. Her ex-husband was...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jun 19, 2002

Tom Waits: 'Alice' and 'Blood Money'

On paper, Tom Waits' two new albums, "Alice" and "Blood Money," don't look promising. Without yet listening to them and knowing they were originally written for European theater pieces staged by avant-garde director Robert Wilson, they prompt one of two reactions: Here is obviously another misguided...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 16, 2002

When the World Cup runneth over

How do you say "stereotype" in Portuguese? Every day during the World Cup, an industry association of commercial broadcasters places an ad in newspapers promoting the games that will be shown on TV that day. The matches on June 8 were Italy vs. Croatia and Brazil vs. China. The copy read, "Entranced...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

Jun 12, 2002

Corey Harris: 'Downhome Sophisticate'

At one time, rural folks were thought to possess different priorities from people who lived in cities, a contrast that was made clear by the fact that "country music" was only played and listened to by people who actually lived in the country. These days, you're as rural as you want to be, whether you...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 9, 2002

Japanese tradition that violates privacy rights

The current Self-Defense Forces scandal provides a glimpse into the mechanics of how such stories get reported. It appears that an insider at the Maritime Self-Defense Force sent information to the Mainichi Shimbun about personal data that an officer was compiling on people who made requests to the MSDF...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

Jun 2, 2002

Who's got the scoop on the Shenyang Five?

The disagreement between the foreign ministries of Japan and China over the attempted defection by five North Koreans at the Japanese consulate in Shenyang was intensified by a comment made early on by LDP Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda. During a press conference, Fukuda looked at the assembled...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

May 29, 2002

DJ Shadow: 'Private Press'

When DJ Shadow released his first album, "Endtroducing," in 1996, sample-based music was mostly complementary, designed for MCs or parties, and wasn't generally accepted as a viable creative endeavor by itself. It wouldn't be fair to all the turntablists who inspired Shadow (Josh Davis) to say that "Endtroducing"...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

May 26, 2002

Pro-whalers living on a harpoon and a prayer

The increasing media flurry over the upcoming World Cup must be frustrating to the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry, which had been preparing for a year to make sure that this past week would be their moment in the spotlight. As the de facto hosts of the 54th annual plenary session of the...

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

May 22, 2002

Tara Jane O'Neil and Daniel Littleton

The underground railroad that crisscrosses the United States, connecting the apartments and rehearsal spaces and basement studios of indie musicians who seem to make a living out of thin air, has created its own social dynamic. It seems naive to talk about "scenes" in terms of single cities, like Austin...

CULTURE / Music

May 19, 2002

Swingin' from Paris to Austin

Since authenticity is an important consideration for the Hot Club of Cowtown, the Austin, Texas, trio who play a mix of Western swing and hot jazz, it's easy to locate them on the musical map. Western swing was mostly invented and popularized by the legendary Bob Wills in the '30s and '40s in Texas,...

CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF

May 19, 2002

The inns and outs in the life of okami

O ne of the subsections of TV Tokyo's large selection of food-travel programs is the "Bijin Okami" special. Bijin okami, which translates as "beautiful mistress of the house," are women who run inns and hotels in resort and hot-spring areas. They are usually married to the owners of the establishments...

JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX

May 19, 2002

Credit companies target the debt-ridden poor

Stop me if you've heard this one before. A bored young man answers his telephone and his face lights up. "Diving?!" he says. "I'll be there." In the next scene we see his friends on a pier, happily putting on scuba gear. Then, from the end of another pier, the young man comes running, with only a snorkel....

CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES

May 15, 2002

Cornershop: 'Handcream for a Generation'

Repetition is both the substance and the curse of pop music. It doesn't take much for even the most delicious hook to become a nagging bore once it's had a chance to pass a certain saturation point.

CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF

May 12, 2002

All right, now here's the skinny . . .

People with list fetishes can get off on the new TV Asahi variety show, "Japan's Best 100" (Sunday, 6:56 p.m.), which each week runs down the Top 100 products, services or ideas related to a given topic. The premiere show covered "all you can eat" restaurants throughout Japan. Perhaps as a kind of rebuttal...

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