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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 Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Feb 15, 2013

British photographer documents lives outside the lines

Uchujin, aka Adrian Storey, a British photographer and filmmaker based in Tokyo, drolly explains his rather unusual business moniker: 'I'd rather be an alien than an outsider.'
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Jan 26, 2013

Mining gems in Okachimachi

On early maps of Edo, as Tokyo was known prior to 1868, Okachimachi is rendered as a town (machi) densely packed with the tiny dwellings of okachi — low-ranked, poorly paid samurai infantry.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 25, 2013

I still haven't found what I'm looking for ...

Thinking about Google over the last week, I have fallen into the typically procrastinatory habit of every so often typing the words "what is" or "what" or "wha" into the Google search box at the top right of my computer screen. Those prompts are all the omnipotent engine needs to inform me of the current...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 23, 2013

Miho Hazama starts a journey

It's believed that time spent living abroad can be a journey of self-discovery, and for Miho Hazama that has certainly been the case. Moving to New York to study for a master's degree in jazz composition at the Manhattan School of Music (MSM) was an experience that led to the recording of her debut,...
CULTURE / Film
Jan 17, 2013

Ian Buruma on 'Ai-no Borei (Empire of Passion)'

Nagisa Oshima is the best film director in Japan still making good movies. There are other good directors (Kon Ichikawa), but they are reduced to doing company hack-work. Oshima can still do the films he likes, partly because he gets financial backing in France from Argos Films, the producer of both...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jan 12, 2013

My (attainable) New Year's resolutions: Giving up seiza

Having problems keeping your New Year's resolution? Not me. Because this year I chose resolutions that were easily fulfilled:
SUMO / SUMO SCRIBBLINGS
Jan 8, 2013

Seven sumo stories to look out for in the year of the snake

1. Baruto — make or break
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 1, 2013

Japan's steely resolve suggests nationalism based on fear

More than half a century ago I had dinner in Paris with Arimasa Mori, the grandson of the Meiji Era education minister Arinori Mori, who had set the prewar pattern for a Westernized but intensely patriotic education. The Mori family hailed from Kagoshima, and the part that Arinori had played in the Meiji...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 21, 2012

Hatsune Miku goes highbrow

On her own, Japanese pop superstar Hatsune Miku can't sing. Nor can she rap, dance or DJ. She is drug- and alcohol-free because she can't indulge in either, and she can't have affairs or engage in offstage shenanigans fit for YouTube scandals or tabloid headlines. Now entering her sixth year as a beloved...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Dec 8, 2012

In era of skyscrapers, group lobbies to keep Tokyo's traditional buildings

Sitting at a wooden table in the glass-enclosed sun room of the miraculously preserved 95-year-old Yasuda House, Sumiko Enbutsu, a very youthful 78, radiates enthusiasm.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Dec 8, 2012

In era of skyscrapers, group lobbies to keep Tokyo's traditional buildings

Sitting at a wooden table in the glass-enclosed sun room of the miraculously preserved 95-year-old Yasuda House, Sumiko Enbutsu, a very youthful 78, radiates enthusiasm.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 2, 2012

Translated version of famous Hayashi work has its vicissitudes

FLOATING CLOUDS, by Fumiko Hayashi, translated by Lane Dunlop. Columbia University Press, 2012, 303 pp., $25 (paperback) This novel is one of the most famous of female author Fumiko Hayashi's works. The present translation was done by Lane Dunlop, well-known for his earlier translations of works by writers...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 19, 2012

Plan A: Live long and inconspicuously

Among other things, being Japanese means embracing a distinct and particular weirdness. The Japanese are well aware of this fact, and generations of Nipponjin (日本人, Japanese) have pondered on how hen (変, strange) we are since the country opened its doors to outsiders some 150 years ago. Encountering...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Nov 6, 2012

Violin maker brings traditions of Italian masters to Tokyo

Born in Nebraska, Louis Caporale started playing the violin at the age of 4. By 14 he was building violins. At 18, he was the youngest student enrolled at the Chicago School of Violin Making.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 18, 2012

Kentaro makes hip-hop personal

Almost the whole of Kentaro's life has been devoted to dance — in particular to hip-hop dance — ever since he first saw it on television as an elementary school boy.
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 14, 2012

Farmer plows own antiradiation furrow

At the end of March 2011, a few weeks after the Great East Japan Earthquake, 20 rice farmers affiliated to J-Rap, an agricultural distribution company in Sukagawa, central Fukushima Prefecture, got together to assess the situation.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 12, 2012

Territorial disputes don't rain on Asia's largest parade of cinema

There was very little talk at the 17th Busan International Film Festival, Asia's biggest movie event of the year, of the ongoing conflict between Japan and South Korea over ownership of those rocks in the Japan Sea. It so happens that the festival's Asian Filmmaker of the Year Award was being given to...
COMMENTARY
Aug 7, 2012

Wedding gift for the first couple of North Korea

I guess I am a sucker for old-fashioned romance. When I heard about the stunning marriage of Kim Jong Un, the young new leader of North Korea, to the lovely Ri Sol Ju, apparently a professional singer, I hurriedly buried the ideological hatchet and grabbed the latest BRIDES magazine to figure out what...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2012

'The Rum Diary'

America's infamous outlaw journalist Hunter S. Thompson was, like many of his generation, a bone-deep admirer of author Ernest Hemingway, so much so that he even typed out word-for-word two of Hemingway's novels — "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Farewell To Arms." Thompson wanted to feel the rhythm of...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 26, 2012

Japanese business isn't working: What would Shima do?

A Ponzi scheme. Alleged yakuza ties. Accounting scandals. Executive misuse of company funds for gambling. A record-breaking bankruptcy. Callous disregard of public health and safety.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 25, 2012

Irony of being in the company of '12-year-olds'

In going over my manuscript of the Yukio Mishima biography, my copy editor protested at one point, citing her "liberal Berkeley-influenced sensibilities." That was where I described Japan as a "backward nation." Let me explain.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 1, 2012

Shizuoka eyes theatrical bridge over to Avignon

Stranger things have happened, and in the near future a vibrant cultural bridge across Eurasia may be built between the city of Shizuoka in the beautiful foothills of Mount Fuji, and ancient Avignon in the artists' mecca of Provence in the South of France.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
May 22, 2012

'Cutest' girl counsels 'distinguished' Ohioan to aisle

Nicholas Canalos, 31, from Ohio, and Akiko, 29, who hails from Saitama Prefecture, both studied and aspired at university to become English teachers — in their respective home countries.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 19, 2012

The list of lists

They grace the Internet like snack foods at a cocktail party.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 17, 2012

There is trouble on Kafka's shore

Seventy-six-year-old theater director Yukio Ninagawa is famed and honored the world over for his magnificently visualized stagings of Shakespeare and Ancient Greek tragedies — as well as modern Japanese plays.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 12, 2012

Can Japan's countryside be saved from the edge of extinction?

Once upon a time in Okayama, Japan, lived an old man and an old woman who had no children of their own. One day, the old man went into the forest to cut down bamboo while the old woman went to the river to wash clothes. While at the river, she noticed a giant peach bobbing up and down in the water. She...
CULTURE / Books
May 6, 2012

Mistakes that line a successful road

An Unprogrammed Life: Adventures of an Incurable Entrepreneur, by William H. Saito. John Wiley & Sons, 2012, 241 pp., $24.95 (paperback) William H. Saito has enjoyed many successes in his short career as an information technology entrepreneur, but he is keen to stress the importance of failure.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 5, 2012

The word of words

Sometimes students will ask me, "What's your favorite Japanese word?"

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