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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:

LIFE / Travel

Nov 29, 2000

Pilgrimage to Chiba's stone daibutsu

KYONAN, Chiba Pref. -- Finding the perfect, companionable Buddha can become an obsession. Foreigners living in Asia are often struck by this calm, enlightened face; its features contrast sharply with the figures of Western religious art and their often contrived depictions of the ecstasy of Christian saints or the agony of the cross.

LIFE / Travel

Nov 15, 2000

Hidden fiefdom of Obi in Kyushu

NICHINAN, Miyazaki Pref. -- There can be very few places of historical or cultural interest in Japan that remain positively underexploited for their tourist potential.

LIFE / Travel

Nov 8, 2000

Blood brothers, blood feuds

"In the year Sakalat 185, year of the Horse, the Thai came to tattoo all the inhabitants of the Lao cities." -- Oden Meeker, "The Little World of Laos"

LIFE / Travel

Nov 8, 2000

Cracked earth: A journey through Thailand's arid and impoverished Northeast

"In a bad year, it is not only the plows that break, but the hearts too." -- Pira Sudham, "People of Isan"

LIFE / Travel

Oct 25, 2000

Bubbling with energy

If you can accept its gimmickry and brazen commercialism, the glitzy, neon-lit hot spring resort of Beppu, a melange of pachinko parlors, love hotels, sleazy bars, night clubs and hot baths visited by over 12 million tourists a year, constitutes an amazing thermal and entertainment roller-coaster.

CULTURE / Books

Oct 24, 2000

Portrait of Laos, Asia's 'forgotten country'

LAOS: Culture and Society, edited by Grant Evans. Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books, 2000, 313 pp., $24.95 The colorful volumes of anthropology produced in the past by gifted amateurs, lady travelers of independent means, colonial officers and the like, have been replaced by the works of highly trained professionals, calibrators of infinitesimal change among the ethnic peoples they study. Contemporary writers and anthropologists seem to share a common need to classify Laos, to assign it an unassailable cultural identity. In the absence of an obvious role for the country, they have needed to invent one. The results have been wondrous and mixed.

LIFE / Travel

Oct 11, 2000

In the quiet domain of the stone Buddhas

As you turn into the quiet country road leading to Usuki's Buddhist rock carvings, a stone torii gate, riveted into the earth, deeply corroded by wind and rain, comes into momentary view. Standing in a field of rippling green paddy, it is an unintentional signal that you have entered a different time zone, a different mode of thought.

LIFE / Travel

Sep 13, 2000

Of Zen, scriptures and fireflies

If the Yamaguchi post office were looking for an image to place on a commemorative stamp of their prefectural capital, they would probably choose the city's magisterial five-story pagoda, built on the grounds of the Ruriko Temple. Made from Japanese cypress, the pagoda is typical of the Muromachi Period Kyoto style. It is strikingly situated beside an ornamental pond graced by bushes and topiary, the effect only slightly marred by a twittering tape recording that gives you an account of the building's history.

LIFE / Travel

Aug 30, 2000

Travel in the company of women

"The challenge is to myself and not to the mountain." -- "Clouds from Both Sides," by Julie Tullis

LIFE / Travel

Aug 30, 2000

'A lippy and lewd bunch of women'

Ten or 15 years ago, it seemed as if women travel writers might have become an extinct species. Manuscripts submitted by women were subjected to a special set of rules. Editors expected their accounts to include record-breaking feats, promotional gimmicks or at least the use of some eccentric mode of transport before their work could be seriously considered for publication. Titles like "On Sledge and Horseback to Outcast Siberian Lepers" or "To Lake Tanganyika in a Bath Chair," both written by redoubtable Victorians, are authentic early examples of the genre.

LIFE / Travel

Aug 30, 2000

In the realm of the accidental tourist

While there are women who work exclusively as travel writers, many women writers, journalists and novelists among them, have chosen at one time or another to temporarily commandeer the travel vehicle to get their ideas or dreams across.

LIFE / Travel

Aug 23, 2000

Among the ghosts of the kamikaze

CHIRAN, Kagoshima Pref. -- An aerial view of the Satsuma Peninsula, glimpsed from a light, low-flying craft such as a glider, would reveal a pastoral landscape of striking warmth, with green volcanic peaks, white stucco-faced houses and time-worn hot-spring inns tucked away down leafy lanes. In this emerald garden, the oil refineries and fuel dumps of Kagoshima to the north seem a world away.

LIFE / Travel

Jun 21, 2000

Kumamoto: the fortified city

Like the good residents of Granada in southern Andalusia, notorious for their drastic mood swings, natives of Kumamoto have a reputation for being stubborn and sulky. These durable folk (Kumamoto has one of the country's largest contingents of centenarians) are also reputed to be both easy to anger and generous to a fault, a combustible mix summed up in the local word mokkosu, which roughly translates as "feisty."

LIFE / Travel

May 3, 2000

Historic city is picture perfect

A tattered red lantern swings back and forth on a rusty hook outside Densuke, a small, family-run pub-restaurant on Shiokaze Street. The name of the street means salt breeze, and inside Densuke a gregarious, decidedly "salty" bunch of customers sit on sagging tatami mats whose surfaces, like rough hessian, have seen better days.

LIFE / Travel

May 13, 1999

Myanmar's Chinese connection

To the millions of Myanmar Buddhists who still visit it, Mandalay symbolizes, nominally at least, the Rome of this "Golden Land." It is a royal "City of Gems."

LIFE / Travel

May 13, 1999

The 'red, green and white lines': rubies, jade and heroin

Like most things connected to money and profit in Myanmar, there is a sinister side to the north's resurgent economy, a subtext that generally eludes visitors' attention. Still, at least one travel book, Nicholas Greenwood's original and often very funny "Bradt Guide to Burma," has picked up on it. Not only are the owners of Mandalay's popular Lucky Hotel close relatives of the former Sino-Shan opium warlord Khun Sa, Greenwood tells us, but another "retired" drug kingpin, Lo Hsing Han, is also involved in the Mandalay property market and may even have a hand in the innocuous but lucrative trade in secondhand Japanese cars that are driven to the border and sold to dealers from Yunnan.

CULTURE / Books

Mar 17, 1999

Last glimpses of a vanishing people

THE VANISHING TRIBES OF BURMA, by Richard K. Diran. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 240 pp., $60. Coffee-table photo books are usually too expensive, space-consuming or indistinguishable in content from the art of the glossy postcard for most of us to consider buying. Every once in a while, however, there appears a publication in this cumbersome format that overcomes all such reservations. Richard K. Diran has achieved this rare feat with his book "The Vanishing Tribes of Burma."

LIFE / Travel / ON THE ARCHIPELA-GO

Mar 3, 1999

Kyoto: The 'City of Flowers' defined by its waterways

Ever since Kyoto was founded by the Emperor Kanmu in 794, its temples, garden sanctuaries, artisan quarters, elegant back streets and superb inns and shops have lent credence to the city's nickname, "Hana no Miyako," the City of Flowers.

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

Live like a lord or lady for a night at Ozu Castle

Live like a lord or lady for a night at Ozu Castle

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