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Kim Willsher
For Kim Willsher's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 24, 2014
Francois Hollande: What became of dull Mr. Normal?
However indignant French President Francois Hollande might have been about a glossy celebrity magazine revealing the details of his affair with a French actress, the idea of sitting down and drafting his resignation was almost certainly not among them.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jan 12, 2014
French comedian's gesture divides a nation
On Jan 12, 1944, the Gestapo occupying the French city of Bordeaux despatched its Jews, who had been rounded up and imprisoned in their own majestic synagogue, to the death camps.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Nov 24, 2013
'The Stranger': Nobel Prize-winning author Camus an outsider in France
It is a century since French Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus was born — and more than 50 years since he died in an accident on an icy road — yet the polemics over his legacy and "mysterious" death rumble on.
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 23, 2013
Mystery of Henry IV's missing head divides France
Richard III may have had an ignominious resting place under a car park in Leicester, in England's East Midlands, but spare a thought for Henry IV. First the French monarch was disinterred from the royal sepulchre by revolutionaries and thrown into a mass grave. Then his head was cut off and — allegedly — turned up in the attic of a retired tax inspector.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Feb 2, 2013
Hugo, Manet unveiled Paris' poor and privileged
The iron gates of the short passageway, a stone's throw from the increasingly trendy Montorgueil district of Paris and a brief walk from the prostitutes of Saint Denis, are closed to the public these days. It was here, in what was Passage Saumon off the Rue du Bout du Monde — the end of the world road — that Victor Hugo is said to have sheltered between the stone pillars of the public baths and a ballroom of low repute from a raging battle between republican and monarchist forces on June 5, 1832. The gates were slammed shut then, too, leaving the writer trapped in the crossfire.

Longform

Historically, kabuki was considered the entertainment of the merchant and peasant classes, a far cry from how it is regarded today.
For Japan's oldest kabuki theater, the show must go on