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Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Mar 26, 2013

Fashion that makes art more accessible

It is a sartorial surprise of the most poetic variety. Robert Montgomery — artist, writer, fashion collaborator — turns around, slips off his coat and flips up the collar of his crisp white shirt.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 23, 2013

The digital pioneer who became a Web rebel

Jaron Lanier is that rarest of rare birds — an uber-geek who is highly critical of the world created by the technology he helped to create. Now 52, he first came to prominence in the 1980s as a pioneer in the field of "virtual reality" — the development of computer-generated environments in which...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Mar 23, 2013

Photography buff behind Japan Camera Hunter thrives in Tokyo, the capital of cameras

Bellamy Hunt's name is part of his business: Japan Camera Hunter, a one-man enterprise supporting film photo buffs around Asia and the world. His work mainly involves hunting down vintage cameras, whether an elusive early model Nikon or a classic Leica.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / EVERYMAN EATS
Mar 22, 2013

Running with the ramen hunters

Ramen is to Japanese food as school-girl uniforms are to porn — the animating fetish that sustains an entire industry. Helping to scratch the noodle itch is an army of bloggers whose dispatches are consumed with voyeuristic glee. The numbers are against them — with a ramen shop on nearly every street...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Mar 19, 2013

Couple find happiness, plan to settle for life

Joerg Schnackenberg, 51, from Germany, and his wife, Teruka, 59, met in Kamaishi, Iwate Prefecture, in 1995. Joerg, a biochemist who came to Japan right after finishing his Ph.D. at a German university, had been working at a private marine technology institute in Kamaishi for three years. Teruka, a nihonga...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 18, 2013

Best to consult an expert before getting a cryptic kanji tattoo

"Mami," I said, reading the kanji 「真実」tattooed on the bicep of the young man seated beside me last December, aboard a flight bound for Houston, Texas. "Is that the name of your Japanese girlfriend?"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / WEEK 3
Mar 17, 2013

How an American collector brought Jakuchu to Tohoku

Including loans from each of Japan's six national museums as well as the Imperial Household Agency, 'Jakuchu's Here!' represents to a gift from Japan's art establishment to an audience that it has neglected for decades.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 17, 2013

Toddler-toting invaders no match for this castle's defenses

Most visitors are awed by Kumamoto Castle's imposing walls; myself, I am more preoccupied with the stairs. According to the map board just inside the Hazekata Gate, there are many of them, tracing a convoluted path up to the raven-black donjon.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 14, 2013

The diverse works of Asian women artists

I don't normally visit exhibitions in company, but this time I made an exception and press-ganged a female acquaintance to join me. The reason for this was that the show I visited, "Women In-Between: Asian Women Artists 1984-2012" at the Tochigi Prefectural Museum of Art, is an exhibition of female...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 10, 2013

Filmmaker captures the 3/11 stress of Tohoku's deaf

Nobuko Kikuchi, a 72-year-old resident of Iwanuma, Miyagi Prefecture, couldn't hear the emergency sirens that followed the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that struck on March 11, 2011.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 10, 2013

If you do like to be beside the seaside, try Kamogawa

Chiba is a large prefecture, something you notice while traveling from Tokyo to the southern seaside resort of Kamogawa. The journey takes a good two hours — and this by express train.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 9, 2013

Power of poetry penned by survivors of 3/11 is showcased by ASIJ project

Kathy Krauth, a social studies teacher at the American School in Japan, admits she was never a huge fan of tanka, traditional Japanese poetry. "Tanka never really spoke to me. I dismissed it as early Japanese history with cherry blossoms." That all changed when Krauth sat in a classroom at the University...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 8, 2013

'Bel Ami'

If you thought the tsk-tsk antics of the French aristocracy ended when the peasants stormed the Bastille, "Bel Ami" is here to tell you that corruption and debauchery among the upper classes carried on for at least a century more.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 7, 2013

"Ancient Glass: Feast of Color"

In ancient times, when precious stones such as lapis lazuli and carnelian were admired and desired, craftsmen found ways to imitate such beauty by experimenting with decorative glassware techniques.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 7, 2013

'Erwin Blumenfeld: A Hidden Ritual of Beauty'

German-born fashion photographer Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969) was particularly renowned for his cover shoots for fashion magazines such as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. Although his extant works are highly acclaimed by art critics worldwide, they are rarely shown in Japan — mainly because they are housed...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 3, 2013

The days may be numbered for English as a universal second language

How long will English last as a major world language? The answer must be: a very long time.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 1, 2013

'Flight'

Be prepared for the most terrifying flying experience you're ever likely to encounter, expertly created by Robert Zemeckis ("Forrest Gump," "Back to the Future") and engineered on-screen by Denzel Washington. "Flight" may put you off air travel for a while, but on the other hand if the plane you're aboard...
BUSINESS
Feb 28, 2013

Horse-meat scandal dents Europe's culinary esteem

According to folklore, Europeans have always treated their food with reverence, eating grandma's slow-cooked stews concocted with farm-fresh ingredients while Americans wolfed down the genetically modified, chemically preserved junk symbolized by burgers and fries.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Feb 26, 2013

Carpenter Eiichiro Amakasu

Eiichiro Amakasu, 70, is a carpenter who designs and builds traditional Japanese homes and their surrounding gardens. He is an expert of sukiya, a residential architectural style that is typically associated with Japanese tea houses.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 24, 2013

Japan's vegetarians stay in the closet

Last week, entertainment-related media in the U.S. reported that the American Broadcasting Corporation had rejected an advertisement the animal-rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wanted to air during the Academy Awards ceremony, which takes place early tomorrow morning Tokyo time.
LIFE
Feb 24, 2013

An inclined view: The life and work of Donald Richie

It was with a heavy heart that I heard from Donald Richie's longtime friend and editor Leza Lowitz that he had passed away on the morning of Tuesday, this week. He was 88.
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...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / EVERYMAN EATS
Feb 22, 2013

Foodie Media 101: Eat all about it

Every Monday night at 7, Japanese TV viewers are treated to the sight of comedians being locked inside a fast-food restaurant. Formica tables take the place of iron bars, and instead of three square meals a day the cast is fed a steady diet of the shop's specialties — tonkatsu breaded pork cutlets,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 14, 2013

Breathing life into the forgotten and neglected

Painter Daisuke Fukunaga (b.1981) states: "If the world is the stage of a theater, I want to paint the bustle of the things waiting behind the blackout curtain rather than the heroine." His motifs are of things forgotten and neglected, but unlike his earlier works of 2007, which realistically depicted...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 14, 2013

'The Beauty in Everyday Life: Musée Hamaguchi Yozo — Spring Exhibition'

Printmaker Yozo Hamaguchi (1909-2000) is best known for his ground-breaking work in colored mezzotints. His predominant use of soft but dark coloring, which gave the mezzotints a peaceful and serene quality, differentiated his work from other print artists, and led to the global recognition of his aesthetic...
Japan Times
WORLD
Feb 11, 2013

'Good seed' versus 'evil weed': Hemp activists eye legalization

In the cannabis plant family, hemp is the good seed. Marijuana, the evil weed. Michael Bowman, a gregarious Colorado farmer who grows corn and wheat, has been working his contacts in Congress in an attempt to persuade lawmakers that hemp has been framed, unfairly lumped with the stuff people smoke to...
Reader Mail
Feb 10, 2013

Town spoiling for dressing-down

Regarding the Feb. 7 AFP article "Put pants on 'David' replica, locals urge": Who would have thought that there was such a level of modesty in a culture that created such graphic works of erotica as the Shunga illustrated texts for newlywed couples or the modern "adult" manga? What gives?

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic