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COMMENTARY
Aug 23, 2007

Britain's retreat from Iraq

LONDON — "The British have given up and they know they will be leaving Iraq soon," said Muqtada Al-Sadr, head of the Mahdi army, the country's most powerful militia group, in an interview with the Independent. "They have realized this is not a war they should be fighting or one they can win."
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Aug 19, 2007

Mere death needn't be a barrier to enjoying a nice cup of tea with the deceased

'Tick, tock, tick, tock," goes the clock of human life. Living with regrets is one of the hardest things to do. What if your dad died and you hadn't had that last cup of tea with him? Not much you can do about that — or so you might think.
Japan Times
SOCCER
Aug 8, 2007

Unheralded Giovani leads Barcelona squad past F. Marinos

YOKOHAMA — Japanese fans caught a glimpse of Barcelona's dazzling attacking triumvirate of Thierry Henry, Ronaldinho and Samuel Eto'o, but it was little-known Mexican Giovani who did what the crowd craved from the three superstars with a late second-half goal in a 1-0 friendly win over Yokohama F....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 27, 2007

'Inland Empire'

A man and a woman are glimpsed, in murky black-and-white images, in a Polish hotel room, their faces mosaiced out. "You want to f*** me?" she asks. "Shut up and take off your clothes," he answers. "I'm frightened." she says. Cut to full color and a girl wrapped in a red sheet, crying, and watching TV....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 20, 2007

'Tennen Kokkeko'

Nobuhiro Yamashita scored an international hit in 2005 with "Linda, Linda, Linda," a comic drama about a schoolgirl band whose lead singer drops out just before a big school festival. When it was screened at the Udine Far East Film Festival last year, the audience whooped with laughter at its deadpan...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 13, 2007

'Funuke Domo, Kanashimi no Ai o Misero'

Black comedies about dysfunctional families are common enough in Japan, from Sogo Ishii's anarchic "Gyakufunsha Kazoku (The Crazy Family)" (1984) to Takashi Miike's batty "Katakurike no Kofuku (The Happiness of the Katakuris)" (2001), which also has the distinction of the being the first Japanese zombie...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 3, 2007

Oishi Seinosuke: the trial and its outcome

THE LIFE OF SEINOSUKE: Dr. Oishi and the High Treason Incident, by Joseph Cronin. Kyoto: White Tiger Press, 2007, 128 pp., with photographs and drawings, 1,800 yen (paper) The High Treason Incident (Taigyaku Jiken) was an anarchist plot to assassinate the Meiji emperor, one that led to the 1910 mass...
COMMENTARY
May 26, 2007

Gordon Brown too arrogant?

LONDON — The new tenant of Number 10 Downing Street is now all set to move in. With remarkable ease the new British prime minister, Gordon Brown, replaces the old one, Tony Blair, and life goes on in Britain as before.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 18, 2007

'Pacchigi! Love & Peace'

In 2004, Kazuyuki Izutsu made "Pacchigi! (Pacchigi! We Shall Overcome Someday)," a serio-comic Romeo and Juliet romance set in 1960s Kyoto. Starring Shun Shioya as a naive high school boy and Erika Sawajiri as the cute-but-tough zainichi (ethnic Korean living in Japan) girl whom he falls for, the film...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 12, 2007

The freshman wears Prada

"Because I want to make a statement," says the girl. "And my statement is that I am unique, which my choice of fashion demonstrates."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 3, 2007

Breakthrough women

In 18th- and 19th-century Japan, the presence of female artists in painting circles slowly increased until in the 20th century, social reforms allowed them access to secondary education and vocational schools as well as art training, patronage and chances to compete in national exhibitions.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 26, 2007

Take a peak inside Henry Darger's mind

Outsider artists often present a pathetic spectacle to the world: forgotten inmates of mental institutions; shuffling, muttering loners; or misfits, like Henry Darger, who spent his workdays as a low-paid janitor and his free time writing and illustrating an unpublishable 15,145-page novel about a vast...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 19, 2007

In memory of 'The Blue-Eyed Japanese'

When the American-born artist Clifton Karhu developed an interest in Finland, his parents' homeland, a large-scale exhibition of his art was held at the Retretti Museum in Punkarhajo. The late Prince Takamado, who with Princess Takamado enjoyed Karhu's work so much that a short, scheduled visit to one...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 16, 2007

'Argentine Baba'

Movies about quirky, dysfunctional families are a thriving subgenre in Hollywood, "Little Miss Sunshine" being the most successful recent example. The Japanese make these films as well, but they tend to be more surreal -- or rather manga-esque, as seen in Katsuhito Ishii's "Cha no Aji (Taste of Tea),"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 2, 2007

'Matsugane Ransha Jiken'

Nobuhiro Yamashita is one of the great comic talents working in Japanese films and also one of the most unusual. Unlike the many directors and actors here who equate "funny" with "over the top," Yamashita is low-key, ironic and very sharp. If he were an American he might have written for "Curb your Enthusiasm,"...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 24, 2007

Toyoko Fry

Lady Fry, wife of British Ambassador Sir Graham Fry, is director of the Art of Dining Exhibition on March 7. All proceeds from this event go to Refugees International Japan, a volunteer organization with world-wide relief projects.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 17, 2007

Amy Katoh

Champion of Japan's disappearing traditional crafts, longtime Tokyo resident Amy Katoh is an author and businesswoman. Her famous shop Blue & White testifies to her vision and imagination.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 8, 2007

Rejecting kawaii culture

Momoyo Torimitsu (b. 1967) is a little tired of being remembered for Jiro Miyata, a life-size robot she created based on a middle-aged salaryman in 1994. But who could forget? Miyata, which Torimitsu had crawl around the streets of Tokyo, Paris, New York and other cities, so brilliantly embodied the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2007

Tokyo's dark side

Welshman John Williams first came to Japan in 1988, intending to stay two years, write a script and return to Britain to make a movie. He ended up making eight shorts, a documentary and finally a feature film -- the drama "Firefly Dreams" -- all in Japan and with Japanese casts and crews. Released in...
LIFE / Language
Jan 23, 2007

Translations blunted by discarded 'somethings'

One of the great pleasures of life in a country not your own is savoring its literature in the original language.
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Jan 20, 2007

Toney-El keeps Broncos teammates loose with nicknames

The Japan Times will be featuring periodic interviews with players in the bj-league -- Japan's first professional basketball circuit -- which is in its second season. Marcus Toney-El of the Saitama Broncos is the subject of this week's profile.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 19, 2007

Here lies the lore of the land

Against the backdrop of the Northern Japan Alps, isolated and picturesque Takayama, in Gifu Prefecture, is a welcome retreat from big-city life.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 7, 2007

Through the Terayama looking glass

THE EXPERIMENTAL IMAGE WORLD OF SHUJI TERAYAMA, DVD four-volume box set. Tokyo: Daguerreo Press, Inc./Image Forum Video, 2006, color/monochrome, English subtitles, bilingual menu, audio commentaries (Japanese only) by Nobuhiro Kawanaka, Tatsuo Suzuki, Sakumi Hagiwara and Henriku Morisaki, 346 min., 18,900...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Dec 12, 2006

BOEGE Polos, up-market UNIQLO, blood-free diamonds . . .

Polos reimagined
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 11, 2006

The overrated and the underrated

Several months ago I devoted a column to aspects of Japanese life that I felt received too much or too little attention in the eyes of foreign visitors.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 1, 2006

Temples grope for gimmicks to stay relevant, flush

The Kamiyacho Open Terrace cafe in central Tokyo has all the trappings of a trendy establishment -- good coffee, homemade desserts, an airy terrace.
Japan Times
LIFE
Sep 24, 2006

Koizumi's Shake, Rattle & Roll

Elvis impersonator? Japan's Thatcher? Faction buster? Nah, as the curtain falls on the Koizumi show, he will be remembered above all for his missed opportunities and self-indulgent gestures at Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo -- that, and steamrollering the Constitution's war-renouncing Article 9 into oblivion....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 24, 2006

Monkey business can be serious literature

MONKEY by Wu Cheng-en, translated by Arthur Waley. London: Penguin Books, 2006, 352 pp., £9.99 (paper). After many years out of print, this famous translation, originally published in 1942, is this autumn back in the bookstores. It is a partial rendering of a 16th-century Chinese classic text, otherwise...

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.