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Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 27, 2013

Takarazuka dances to a different tune

What happens when Takarazuka, Japan's longest-running all-female theater troupe, takes on Masayuki Suo's hit movie "Shall We Dance?," which won 14 Japanese Academy Awards in 1996 and aired internationally in 16 countries?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 20, 2013

Director Ogawa sublimely cracks Mamet's code

First impressions can, of course, be deceiving, but mine of 65-year-old David Mamet's play "The Cryptogram," whose world premiere was at the Ambassadors Theatre in London in 1994, was simply how unhelpful and knotty a work it was.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 14, 2013

Scottish police corruption has never been so fun

Oftentimes authors whose books are adapted into movies are left to sit at home and simmer as directors make the rounds saying how their "reimagining" of the work was necessary to make it a better cinematic experience, blah, blah, blah, while every fan of the novel knows exactly how it was butchered....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 6, 2013

Wrestling with Verdi's 'foul truth'

Women wearing flashy East-meets-West dresses and men in dark suits frolic drunkenly in a hotel lounge. Behind them can be seen the ends of the hallways for each floor of guest rooms. Couples slip away from the group from time to time, disappear down a hallway and into a room. The whole set is a cylindrical...
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 20, 2013

Ahead of World Cup, inequities ignite ire in Brazil

The night of June 30 was one of intense drama in Rio de Janeiro. Inside the newly refurbished Maracana stadium, still slick with plaster dust, a gladiatorial atmosphere turned to celebration as Neymar scored Brazil's second goal in a 3-0 victory over Spain in the Confederations Cup final, on the cusp...
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Oct 19, 2013

U.S. helped asylum-seeker Wang tell Beijing about Bo in 2012: Clinton

Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has disclosed new information about the United States' role in a major 2012 diplomatic incident in which a Chinese official sought asylum at a U.S. consulate but was turned away. The incident — which helped trigger the downfall of prominent Communist...
Japan Times
WORLD / Society
Sep 29, 2013

Tattoos make inroads with 50 and older crowd

Thirty years ago, a good girl didn't walk into an establishment plastered with images of dragons and flames, hike her shirt up over one shoulder and let her body be injected with ink. Especially not if she was, like Darlene Nash, a 57-year-old grandmother.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics / FOCUS
Sep 18, 2013

Economic disparities center stage in German poll

Germany has near record-low unemployment and a locomotive-strong economy, which leaves Frieder Beckmann with a question: Why can he only get a job that pays $2 an hour?
Japan Times
JAPAN / INTERPRETATION & TRANSLATION
Sep 2, 2013

Focusing on people, not just words

English interpreters in Japan may often be regarded as those who convert English into Japanese or vice versa. However, Mutsumi Katayama, who has worked for more than 20 years as a freelance professional interpreter, focuses more attention on interpersonal communication.
JAPAN
Sep 2, 2013

Animation master Miyazaki to retire; fans in disbelief

The abrupt announcement about film director Hayao Miyazaki's decision to retire triggers tributes and disbelief.
Japan Times
WORLD
Sep 2, 2013

TV figure David Frost, of Nixon apology fame, dies at 74

Sir David Frost, the veteran broadcaster who famously drew a grudging post-Watergate apology out of former President Richard Nixon, died Saturday aboard a cruise ship sailing from England to the Mediterranean. He was 74.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 28, 2013

'Commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the Relocation of the Mitsuo Aida Museum: Even One Simple Thing'

Poet and calligrapher Mitsuo Aida (1924-1991) is well-known in Japan for his tanka poetry and original style of handwriting. He spent his life developing and honing his craft, focusing on the preciousness of the life as a subject.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Aug 24, 2013

Reflecting at leisure on who we are and where we live

My day job as a professor in Japan offers precious few chances to take a step back from work and give the old brain a bit of free rein. But August is one such golden opportunity.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2013

Yuri Nonaka takes viewers on a trip through the imagination

All things weird and wonderful were loved by the Surrealists and there is plenty of the weird and wonderful in the world of their fellow traveler Yuri Nonaka. The Kamakura Annex of the Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura and Hayama, is currently holding an exhibition showcasing works that were donated to...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 3, 2013

Story of the modern Bonnie and Clyde

Like all the best fabled morality tales this one begins in a walk-in wardrobe. The wardrobe belongs to Paris Hilton and the interlopers into that strange fantasy land are a pair of bored high school dropouts who have wandered here in search of adventure (and free designer stuff).
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 27, 2013

NHK drama dives into the 'idea' of idols in rural Japan

When it was announced last year that entertainment Renaissance man Kankuro Kudo would write the script for NHK's spring-summer 2013 "TV novel," a few people probably wondered how the iconoclastic writer-director-actor would respond to the broadcaster's narrative strictures. In a recent interview with...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 20, 2013

Paying a price in Japan for showing up authority

After Japan's defeat in World II, its art world fell into the same flux as the rest of the society, as the rules and values that had governed it for decades suddenly vanished. Styles and movements once censored and banned, from Soviet-style socialist realism to surrealism, were now permitted and even...
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 7, 2013

Giffords tries gentler touch on guns

It was day two of Gabrielle Giffords' whirlwind nationwide tour to revive the push for tougher gun laws. The former congresswoman's husband, Mark Kelly, woke up early, placed his black case of firearms into the car trunk and raced across a vast stretch of Alaskan highway to practice target shooting....
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 9, 2013

A world of flowers and willows in Kyoto's geisha districts

'No matter what happens / I am in love with Gion. / Even when I sleep, / Beneath my pillow / The waters ripple.'
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 2, 2013

Fun with frugality plus competitive money saving; CM of the week: Parinko

On the variety show "Shiawase Bonbi Garu" ("Happy Poor Girls"; Nippon TV, Tues., 10 p.m.), celebrities look at how much fun it is to live the impoverished life. The women who are the subjects of the show grew up during the recession, so saving money is as natural to them as breathing. The point is to...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
May 28, 2013

Want more out of Japan but face doesn't fit? Be TOFITR

I recently served as a "private sector representative" in a panel discussion before an audience of foreign graduate students at the University of Tokyo. Many of the students will soon be seeking employment in Japan; because I have spent 25 years living in or traveling to Japan, the last 10 or so running...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 25, 2013

In front and behind closed temple doors

While largely beneath the contemporary-art radar, painting for Japanese temples by the stars of the postwar art world is a relatively common activity, though largely restricted to nihonga.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Apr 19, 2013

High schoolers dream of Ivy League

One March afternoon in Shibuya Ward, a group of high schoolers earnestly listened as students from Harvard University described life on their campus.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Apr 6, 2013

Irrepressible Irishman promotes Japan culture

Humor may be the hardest genre to translate, but laughter speaks any language. Poet and literary translator Peter MacMillan's recent foray into visual art, "Thirty-Six New Views of Mount Fuji," delights with wry whimsicality, employing mixed-media print-making to reveal a multicultural drollery.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 5, 2013

'Rust and Bone'

A boxer knows how to get back up when knocked down. So when life spins out for French bare-knuckle fighter Ali (Matthias Schoenaerts), he spends his last euros on a train out of town, his 5-year-old son in tow. It's a responsibility this sullen brute of a man barely knows how to deal with, but he does...
Japan Times
LIFE
Apr 2, 2013

Gardening offers original ideas for repurposing goods

Ruthie Mundell opens a door within the warehouse of the nonprofit thrift store known as Community Forklift and eagerly displays the donations of countless gardeners.
Japan Times
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Mar 23, 2013

Are Russian assassins on the streets of Britain?

Shortly after 5:15 p.m. on Nov. 10, a jogger turned into Granville Road in Weybridge, southern England, running along the hedge-lined street of one of Britain's wealthiest enclaves. Then, 50 meters from his home, he staggered into the road and died.
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 11, 2013

Toxic management erodes safety at 'world's safest' nuclear plant

On Jan. 30, 2012, Byron Nuclear Generating Station lost operability to all of its safety-related equipment. At the time, Jim Hazen was the nuclear station operator responsible for the affected reactor, one of two at the Exelon-owned nuclear plant in Byron, Illinois.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 3, 2013

A visit to Usa, the Japanese city that knows how to win

It is the time of the year when many people get nervous about winning and losing. Students are cramming hard to pass entrance exams to get into the high schools and colleges of their dreams.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Feb 26, 2013

Everything you wanted to know about Western women (but were afraid to ask): No-holds-barred guide targets Japanese men

Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.

Longform

Rock group The Yellow Monkey played K-Arena Yokohama in June as part of a nationwide tour. Concerts are increasingly popular in the age of social media as users value in-person experiences.
Inside Japan’s arena boom: Sports, sound and city-building