For Sayo Sasaki's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Listening without watching — that is what Chihoko Hiratsuka describes as essential for understanding the concept of her tiny movie house in Tokyo. The theater, Cinema Chupki Tabata, opened last September near JR Tabata Station in Kita Ward as a "universally accessible theater," allowing people ...
"Polka-Dot Princess" Yayoi Kusama illuminated the links between creativity and mental illness with her arrival on the New York pop art scene in 1957. More recently the wave of artistry, called art brut, is catching on in Tokyo, where a number of artists with intellectual ...
In modern times joining the fascinating yet cloistered world of a geisha — even for young Japanese girls — is rare indeed. But if you weren't born Japanese and still harbor aspirations of becoming one of the traditional teahouse entertainers, though it's probably easier than ...
A 41-year-old working father of two recalled the frustration he felt when he was unable to get his younger daughter into any of the nursery schools his family applied to since moving to Tokyo's Koto Ward last year. While the family found a nursery school ...
Babies were crying as their mothers limbered up for something unusual at Tokyo's Yoyogi National Stadium in November. There was good reason for the unease: Five thousand people were in the audience. Over 70 women in red T-shirts cautiously pushed their babies in strollers to ...
The 12 Pacific Rim countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations declared they have made significant progress as they wrapped up a series of meetings Tuesday in Bali, Indonesia, but whether they can meet their target of concluding a deal by the end ...
As a major economy with considerable influence in the Asia-Pacific region, Japan has a key role to play in setting the rules in multiple regional free trade agreements, the head of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation secretariat said. In a recent interview in Tokyo, APEC Secretariat ...
The technology chief of major U.S. robotics firm iRobot Corp. wants Sony Corp. to resume its robot business and hopes more Japanese makers will turn out commercial units to encourage investment in the industry. In a recent interview, iRobot Chief Technology Officer Paolo Pirjanian, whose ...
Japan's entry into the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade negotiations has significantly boosted the economic scale of the envisioned pact, but it has also brought new complexity to the multilateral talks that have been strongly influenced by the world's leading economy, the United States. With Japan, which ...
As the two-day ministerial meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum ended Sunday in Indonesia with calls to promote free-trade initiatives, Japan gained unanimous backing to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks from the 11 APEC economies involved. Yet, the green light obtained on the ...
