Stephen Mansfield - The Japan Times

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Stephen Mansfield

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Stephen Mansfield

Photojournalist and author Stephen Mansfield's work has appeared in over 70 publications worldwide, on subjects ranging from conflict in the Middle East to cultural analysis, interviews and book reviews. A longtime Japan Times contributor, his latest book is "Japan's Master Gardens: Lessons in Space & Environment."

For Stephen Mansfield's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

Events / Events Outside Tokyo

Feb 5, 2002

Faith in a tropical Gethsemane

When the Spanish arrived in the Philippines in the 16th century, they found a lush tropical garden ripe for replanting. King Philip II had commanded his soldiers, administrators and religious zealots that there were to be no repetitions of the atrocities committed in the name of the cross throughout South and Central America. The garden and its natives were not to be harmed. But the guardian deities, bug-eyed spooks and phantoms that inhabited the spirit groves of this tropical Eden would be expelled and replaced with the placid features of the saints, the writhing body on the cross and the beatific image of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel / ON THE ARCHIPELA-GO

Jan 1, 2002

Discovering the traditional spirit of Arima

Peel away the suppurating clutter, the shabby, postwar surface of construction that is often passed off as modernity, and there is at the center of most Japanese towns a historical kernel, a core essence waiting to be discovered. Finding these places is a quest of sorts, requiring patience and a cultivated insensitivity to the eyesores that assault those who undertake these hopeful, largely rewarding searches.

Japan Times

LIFE / Travel / ON THE ARCHIPELA-GO

Dec 25, 2001

Marketplace of religion and commerce

Where there are shrines, temples and other places of worship in Asia, invariably there are markets. Japan is no different. Commerce flows in through the temple gates and then back out -- a cordial division of profits ensuing, generally to everyone's satisfaction.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 18, 2001

Revealing the soul of an ancient land

MOTHER'S BELOVED: Stories from Laos, by Outhine Bounyavong. Hong Kong University Press, 1999, 163 pp., $14.95 (paper) It's unlikely that even the most generous evaluation of Lao literature would rank it among the world's great cultural legacies. Part of the problem has been a lack of visibility: Buddhist sutras, poems and epics -- the traditional mainstay of Laotian writing -- were composed on perishable palm-leaf books, while other works existed only in fragile oral traditions such as song and recitation. Preservation and transmission of the few written works that have survived has been impeded by decades of war and the lack of funds and modern printing presses.

CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF

Nov 18, 2001

Aiming for the heart

ONE FOOT IN LAOS, by Dervla Murphy. Overlook Press, 2001, 284 pp., $27.95 (cloth) Dervla Murphy's journeys as a travel writer, usually in the remoter, poorer parts of the world, are made, appropriately enough, in the old manner -- on foot, by donkey or mule, or on decrepit trucks or buses on their last legs. Her favorite mode of transport, however, is the humble bicycle, an attachment that dates from a cycle ride made in 1962 from her native Ireland to India, a journey described in her first book, aptly titled "Full Tilt."

LIFE / Travel

Oct 30, 2001

Where conflict meets contemplation

There is much to be said for Japan's provincial towns. As they rarely host more than a trickle of visitors, the spoils from tourism are never quite enough to disfigure them or completely vulgarize their heritage.

LIFE / Travel / ON THE ARCHIPELA-GO

Oct 8, 2001

Adventures in wine country

For many years, Hakushu village, tucked away in Yamanashi Prefecture, was the venue for a colorful international festival featuring avant-garde performances by musicians, dancers and other artists.

LIFE / Travel

Aug 28, 2001

Whither the mighty Mekong?

"The boat moves off, the river banks remain." -- Old Khmer proverb

LIFE / Travel

Aug 28, 2001

Lower-basin aquaculture: fishing in troubled waters

"Once nature is victimized, so are the people dependent upon it."

LIFE / Travel

Jul 17, 2001

Peak experiences hiking the Japan Alps

KAMIKOCHI, Nagano Prefecture -- In his novel "The House of Nire," Morio Kita writes, "In the already fading light the linked peaks of the Alps were solid and harsh, all ranged there in the early dusk like a huge folding screen."

LIFE / Travel

Jun 26, 2001

Down the Devil's Washboard

When evening falls on Miyazaki, a scarlet and indigo sky drops behind the phoenix palms that line many of the city's roads. You might think you were strolling through a middle-class quarter of Cairo or Marbella.

LIFE / Travel

Jun 12, 2001

Fujiya Hotel: At ease in a Miyanoshita time capsule

Most visits to the Hakone area of Kanagawa Prefecture begin at the heavily touristed town itself, from where numerous well-trodden routes head off through the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park of which it is the official center.

LIFE / Travel

May 29, 2001

France's last wilderness

"No one is born in the Camargue, and no one dies in the Camargue." -- Rhone Delta saying

LIFE / Travel

May 29, 2001

Playing with bulls

T he "course Camarguese," held in local village bull rings throughout the spring and summer, are events unlikely to upset even animal-rights groups.

LIFE / Travel

May 29, 2001

Feeling festive in the company of Gypsies

Pilgrimages provide an extra dimension to the Camargue and a chance to see and participate in some of its surviving spectacles. Many of these events are more popular than religious in character, as the number of tourists attending them testifies. Christian, pagan and secular elements are the ingredients of one of Provence's best-known and most zestful events: the annual pilgrimage to Les-Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the self-proclaimed capital of the Camargue, at the end of May. What makes this event worth attending is the animated presence of thousands of Gypsies who, for the two or three days of the pilgrimage, converge on this normally sleepy village from all corners of Europe.

LIFE / Travel

Feb 28, 2001

Potholes on the road to preservation in China

China's former communist radicals and today's capitalist developers appear, in some respects, to have much in common. During the Cultural Revolution, with its almost visceral hatred of tradition, Red Guards were instructed to destroy anything "bourgeois," or tainted by the past. A decade earlier, Chairman Mao Zedong had already set the tone for a new age of urban remodeling by ordering the demolition of Beijing's imperial arches and city gates and the replacement of its ancient ramparts with a ring road.

LIFE / Travel

Feb 28, 2001

Asia's heritage boom

Call it nostalgia or call it a self-awakening, but Asians are rediscovering the value of their architectural heritage. From ancient police courts in Shanxi, China to forest temples in Thailand, from colonial quays in Singapore to the brick kilns and iron smithies of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward, the word is out that preservation is in.

LIFE / Travel

Jan 3, 2001

Tickets here for Asia

By the time the lunch gong sounded in the great hall of the Heng Yang monastery, I had already placed generous votive offerings at a shrine in the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy, watched a flour-doll and knot maker at work, witnessed minor grievances being aired at the Ancient Courthouse and met a talking Sun Yat Sen in the Wax Museum. Why not slow the pace down, the brochure kindly suggested, with a visit to the Chamber of a Thousand Pleasures?

LIFE / Travel

Jan 3, 2001

Japan in miniature: Edo Period stroll gardens were the original amusement parks

The Japanese tourist, unlike the overseas visitor, may be only mildly astonished to find himself transported to the upper part of a castle donjon by means of a newly installed elevator. Convenience, the Western visitor notes with some bemusement, does not seem to detract from the enjoyment, let alone the "authenticity," of the experience.

LIFE / Travel

Jan 3, 2001

Glimpse an older, more harmonious Korea amid the artifice of a 'living museum'

Two centuries of ice, rain, summer heat and a civil war have reduced the ramparts of Suwon, a city just an hour's drive south of Seoul, to heaps of twisted rubble.

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.

Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

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