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Rachel Cooke
For Rachel Cooke's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jan 20, 2014
Lego could help girls build their future careers
Writer Rachel Cooke believes that if more girls were encouraged to play with building toys such as Lego, then there may be more female architects and engineers.
COMMENTARY
Jan 12, 2014
Stories that enable us to make sense of our lives
How are we to make sense of ourselves and the world if not by reading stories? For isn't this how we've talked to ourselves — soothed, stimulated and improved ourselves — for thousands of years?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 28, 2013
New survey of art fosters discussion
It goes without saying that giving a book the title "100 Works of Art That Will Define Our Age" is a hostage to fortune. We lack the necessary perspective when it comes to judging what it is about our time that is most important or representative culture-wise, for which reason the work of drawing up grand lists — the creation of a canon of the moment — is best left to those who come after.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 7, 2013
Amusing graphic novel about bipolar disorder
Until she was 30, Ellen Forney, an award-winning Seattle-based artist, took her slightly unusual personality for granted. Her obsession with exercise, her impulsive sexuality, her bouts of ecstasy: she considered these things, however uncomfortable, a major part of who she was. After all, aren't all creative types given to strange moods, to pulling all-nighters, to forgetting to eat?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 3, 2013
The messy, chaotic real life of artists
A couple of years ago, the New Yorker writer Janet Malcolm, who knows enough about journalism to hardly ever give interviews herself, spoke to Katie Roiphe for the Paris Review. Except that she didn't actually speak to her — or at least, not while Roiphe's tape recorder was rolling.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 15, 2013
Time for a fresh look at the life and art of L.S. Lowry
In a somewhat stark meeting room at Tate Britain, the curators of its forthcoming L.S. Lowry show, T.J. Clark and Anne M. Wagner, are attempting, at my request, to extol the artist's virtues to me. It's a complicated business. For one thing, I have the impression that they regard enthusiasm as infra dig. "I'll give it a shot," says Wagner, reluctantly. "But I don't think you're going to be convinced."
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 12, 2008
Leaving the Beijing bird's nest behind
BEIJING — Ai Weiwei, China's most famous living artist, lives and works in Caochangdi, which used to be a village to the east of Beijing but is now, thanks to the city's endless creep — locals call it Beijing Tan Da Bing, or spreading pancake — just another crowded suburb. It takes a long time to get anywhere in Beijing, and in our taxi, April, my translator, is getting more and more excited. "He's like the king," she says (she has met him before). "And we will be like . . . the servants. The people who work for him, they're like his servants, too. If he doesn't want a drink, no one gets one." She smiles. Being received by Ai, you understand, is an honor, no matter how gnomic his pronouncements, nor how desperate you might be for a cup of tea.

Longform

High-end tourism is becoming more about the kinds of experiences that Japan's lesser-known places can provide.
Can Japan lure the jet-set class off the beaten path?