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COMMENTARY / World
Aug 14, 2010

North Korea's 'Dear Leader' cleans house

SEOUL — There was a time, not long after the Cold War's end, when almost everyone assumed that North Korea would soon collapse. The sudden death in 1994 of Kim Il Sung, the founder of the tyrannical, economically disastrous North Korean experiment, reinforced this belief. That was then.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 13, 2010

'Caterpillar'

Once an enfant terrible, who as a young filmmaker challenged censors and outraged conservative critics with everything from surreal S&M sex to sympathetic portrayals of Palestinian radicals, Koji Wakamatsu has not mellowed so much as ripened.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 13, 2010

'The Sorcerer's Apprentice'/'How to Train Your Dragon'

There's a bit in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," Disney's shameless attempt to siphon off some of that "Harry Potter" cash flow, where a wizard played by Nicholas Cage is lecturing his young protege on how to conjure magic. The trick to sorcery, says Cage, is to tap all one's mental faculties; most people,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 13, 2010

Man Ray: The bright ideas of an original

"Unconcerned but Not Indifferent" reads the gravestone epitaph of American-born artist Man Ray, who was buried in his adopted hometown, Montparnasse, Paris. The same phrase is used for the title of an exhibition of the enigmatic artist now showing at the National Art Center, Tokyo. It can be applied...
SOCCER / J. League / J. LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Aug 12, 2010

S-Pulse, Grampus prove championship credentials

Neither Shimizu S-Pulse nor Nagoya Grampus have ever won a J. League title, but both clubs are giving off serious signals that this could be their year.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 11, 2010

A lesson in global civics

ISTANBUL — The reality of the world's epic interdependence is well known. We have seen how financial engineering in the United States can determine economic growth in every part of the world; how carbon-dioxide emissions from China end up influencing crop yields and livelihoods in Vietnam, Bangladesh,...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2010

Go tickle yourself and get a financial clue

TOULOUSE, France — If history punishes those who fail to learn from it, financial history also punishes those who learn from it too enthusiastically.
Japan Times
LIFE
Aug 8, 2010

Lost worlds of Japan

The sound of bells echoes through the monastery at Gion Shoja, telling all who hear it that nothing is permanent. The flowers of the sala trees show that all that flourishes must fade. Proud men, powerful men will fall, like dreams on a spring night, like dust before the wind.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Aug 8, 2010

Shock tests reveal rodent intelligence

I once became obsessed with following the Shibuya River as far as I could through central Tokyo. It's hard to explain the fascination, as the river is merely a concrete channel — little more than an ugly drain — and is mostly built over. But that was the key to my interest: The idea that there was...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 8, 2010

Japan's dismal dearth of new heroic figures

"Created in response to deep popular needs, the legendary hero survives long after his death. . . . While the positive aspects of the hero's life and character come to be emphasized (or even created out of whole cloth), less attractive features are passed over in silence and remain forgotten until they...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 8, 2010

Getting high in the highlands

High in the Northern Alps of Japan there are snowfields in August. Up above the tree line, wherever the bare geology dips into cirques, thick blankets of dirty white stretch out between the peaks and jagged ridges like caught clouds.
JAPAN
Aug 7, 2010

Hiroshima urges end of nuclear umbrella

HIROSHIMA — At a memorial ceremony attended for the first time ever by a U.N. secretary general and a U.S. representative, Hiroshima on Friday marked the 65th anniversary of its atomic bombing by calling on Japan to withdraw from the U.S. nuclear umbrella and accelerate the progress made over the past...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 7, 2010

Time to take nuclear disarmament seriously

MELBOURNE — People sometimes forget that the boy who cried wolf ended up being eaten. True, nobody has been killed by a nuclear weapon since the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 65 years ago this month.
BASKETBALL / BJ-LEAGUE NOTEBOOK
Aug 6, 2010

Murry, Takeno give Fukuoka firepower

Since joining the Rizing Fukuoka during their first season, Michael Parker has been one of the league's premier players.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 6, 2010

Hippies and hipsters brave a soggy Fuji Rock

When you're talking about a music festival whose inaugural event was literally wiped out by a typhoon, it can feel a bit petty to complain about the weather. All the same, campers arriving at Fuji Rock Festival in Naeba on Thursday last week might have hoped for a warmer welcome than the torrential downpour...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 6, 2010

'The Men Who Stare at Goats'

Reality, wrote Philip K. Dick, is what's still there even after you stop believing in it. Thus an enlightened man in our age of science may well speculate on the notion that our bodies, like the walls of the room we are in, are all made up of atoms. And atoms, for their part, contain a lot of empty space....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 6, 2010

'Kinako — Minarai Keisatsuken no Monogatari (Kinako — The Story of an Apprentice Police Dog)'

Animal movies are a thriving genre of Japanese films that foreign critics, scholars and viewers by and large cordially detest. It's similar to the typical gaijin reaction to natto (fermented soy beans) — i.e., disgust at a humble, but beloved, made-in-Japan specialty.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 6, 2010

Setouchi: the art of island hopping

Japan's Seto Inland Sea, known for its breathtaking vistas and art-filled island of Naoshima, is the site for the inaugural Setouchi International Art Festival until October 31. Also titled as a "100-Day Art and Sea Adventure," about 78 Japanese and internationally recognized artists and art groups are...
COMMENTARY
Aug 5, 2010

China's claims make waves

Befitting its status as a rising global power, China says it is the third-largest country in the world, after Russia and Canada, with a land area of about 9.6 million square km. However, although China is a continental giant, it is a maritime minnow compared to other big countries.
JAPAN
Aug 5, 2010

'Enryo' video, 'A to Z' Web site win my Japan contest

What if there's only one piece of fried chicken on a plate?
EDITORIALS
Aug 1, 2010

The changing book world

In a time of major uncertainty for the Japanese book world, the latest winners of two major book awards have been announced. The Akutagawa Prize for promising newcomers went to Ms. Akiko Akazome, and the Naoki Prize for more established writers of popular fiction to Ms. Kyoko Nakajima.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Aug 1, 2010

Historic 'pink' theater hopes to put ladies on seats, not just screens

The Kabuki-za theater in Ginza is not the only notable Tokyo structure dating back to the 1950s that has shut its doors this year.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Aug 1, 2010

A fish that knows not time

Recently, a few days before my 70th birthday, I was visited by the beautiful and vivacious actress Mayu Tsuruta. If you watch Japanese television, I'm sure you will know her from the many films, dramas and documentaries in which she has appeared.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 30, 2010

LCD Soundsystem bring some edge to Fuji Rock Fest

Share your experience at Fuji Rock with The Japan Times Be sure to check out our live online coverage of the 2010 Fuji Rock Festival at tokyo.japantimes.co.jp. We'll feature interviews with some of the acts, reviews of all the major performances and lots of visuals.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 30, 2010

'Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Natsu (Japan's Longest Summer)'/'Ishii Teruo: Eiga Tamashi (Teruo Ishii: The Soul of Film)'

August is the season in Japan for a never-ending stream of films and TV programs about World War II. Quite naturally, from the Japanese perspective, most of this outpouring examines the war's closing days, particularly the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some outsiders (including this one)...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 30, 2010

Candide

The life of U.S. conductor Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) is being feted in Japan with the performance of his masterpiece, "Candide," under the baton of Japanese conductor Yutaka Sado, one of Berstein's pupils, in collaboration with Canadian director Robert Carsen.

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear