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Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 6, 2011

Tsumago: Living off its past

Tsumago is, indisputably, a charming place. Low mountains swing the former post-town's main street around in a curve of weathered wooden houses, backdropping the scene with the dark green of the firs that cloak the hills.
JAPAN
Feb 5, 2011

Edano to hold weekly press briefings for all reporters

The top government spokesman's news conferences will be open once a week to reporters outside members of the press club for Prime Minister Naoto Kan's office, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said Friday.
JAPAN
Feb 4, 2011

Three admit to throwing sumo bouts

Sports minister Yoshiaki Takaki told the Diet on Thursday that three people in the sumo world have admitted bout-fixing, further disgracing the Japan Sumo Association and jeopardizing its status as a certified public interest corporation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 4, 2011

A tricky postscript on the art of abstraction

Gauging Torawo Nakagawa's art in "postscript" at Kyoto's Kodama Gallery is no easy undertaking. His paintings resist narrative cohesion and cultivate a certain hermeticism, all the while preserving an attractive visual dimension. Concerned as he is with a distinctive process of painting — a style founded...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 4, 2011

Tadasu Takamine shocks us, yet again

In their endless efforts to make us see things in new ways and generally mess with our minds, contemporary conceptual artists such as Tadasu Takamine may often do more to distort their own view of the world than change the way the wider public sees it. This would explain why, in 2004, Takamine attempted...
COMMENTARY
Feb 3, 2011

Food crisis threatens Asia

SINGAPORE — Is Asia on the edge of another food supply crisis that will stoke inflation, protection and political unrest?
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL: KEYES' POINT
Feb 2, 2011

Can their young love survive the reality of life?

"Kimi to kekkon shitai (君と結婚したい, I want to marry you). Hontō ni (本当に, really)."
EDITORIALS
Feb 2, 2011

Indictment of Mr. Ozawa

Former Democratic Party of Japan chief Ichiro Ozawa was indicted Monday over accounting irregularities linked to his political funds management body Rikuzankai.
Reader Mail
Jan 30, 2011

Cultural generalizations dangerous

Anyone reading James Hicks' Jan. 20 review ("Speak out for 'universal' standards") of the recent exchange of letters between him and me, and who had not read all the letters, might assume that I was an obsequious cultural relativist who was trying to justify the video rape game that Mark Soni of Maryland...
Reader Mail
Jan 30, 2011

'Gender equality' not universal

James Hicks' Jan. 20 letter, "Speak out for 'universal' standards," implies that gender equality is a universal, fundamental and ethical standard, and that it is the duty of everyone to speak out about it in Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Jan 30, 2011

Art at your fingertips

One Sunday morning in late November, a throng of people, mostly women in their 20s and 30s, made long lines to get into a convention hall at Tokyo Big Sight in Koto Ward. Many others were sitting on benches outside the hall, opening suitcases at their feet and examining tiny bottles, cotton swabs and...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 30, 2011

Cultural insensitivity no laughing matter

The tempest in a teapot whipped up by a segment on the British quiz-cum-comedy show "QI" has prompted debate on cross-cultural sensitivity. The BBC has apologized for the segment, which, contrary to a statement issued by Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara, did not make fun of its subject, the late Tsutomu...
EDITORIALS
Jan 29, 2011

The U.S. president's vision

In the runup to U.S. President Barack Obama's third State of the Union address, the White House emphasized how different the speech would be. Mr. Obama would eschew the usual catalog of initiatives that was dismissed as "small ball" by his predecessor, and focus instead on a vision for the nation. The...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 29, 2011

New Yorker finds success within himself in Kyoto

American restaurateur Charles Roche, 62, credits his love of feting others to having grown up in the warm and noisy embrace of an extended Italian-American family in the Bronx. As part of a food-loving clan he jokingly refers to as "the Sopranos without the crime," he remembers splitting chestnuts and...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jan 29, 2011

It's just me against the machine

I have news for those who fear the machines will one day rise against us.
Japan Times
JAPAN / CAREER-SEARCH CRISIS
Jan 28, 2011

Foreigners solicited, hard-pressed to stay

Despite sending his resume to more than 15 companies, Bryan Cheng, a Taiwanese graduate student at Waseda University in Tokyo, hasn't received any positive replies.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 28, 2011

'Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps'

There was a time when an Oliver Stone film would approach its topic in much the same way that a pit-bull would approach a burglar's meaty calf. Films such as "JFK," "Natural Born Killers" and "Salvador" knew exactly who their targets were, and didn't mince around trying to be "fair" or objective; it...
Japan Times
JAPAN / CAREER-SEARCH CRISIS
Jan 28, 2011

Window of opportunity peephole?

The job-recruiting process requires an overhaul if the government seriously hopes to ease the pressure on struggling students seeking work after they graduate, according to University of Tokyo professor Yuki Honda.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 28, 2011

Greed is good again in 'Wall Street' sequel

BEVERLY HILLS, California — After having announced a week earlier that he had beaten cancer, Michael Douglas took the stage at the Golden Globes awards ceremony in Beverly Hills, California, on Jan. 16 and was greeted with a warm round of applause.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 28, 2011

There's always art behind design

For some, life-changing moments involve a traumatic experience or a piercing epiphany. For others, something as simple as a teapot can elicit transformation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 28, 2011

Saving the individual in times of conflict

The Japanese Western-style painter Saburo Aso (1913-2000) came of age as an artist during Japan's crescendo of militarism that began with the Manchurian Incident of 1931 and came to an ignominious end in 1945. But he refused to be drawn into the officially promoted propaganda painting of the time. The...
Reader Mail
Jan 27, 2011

Leadership crisis delays solutions

It is with a frustrated and sinking feeling that I read the comments of the Liberal Democratic Party chief in the Jan. 24 article "LDP pledges to send ruling party packing." With all the problems facing Japan, what Japanese politics doesn't need is more of the same tribal mentality, greed and power faction...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Jan 27, 2011

Leaf reverses carmakers' flight abroad

YOKOSUKA, Kanagawa Pref. — The Leaf electric car is rolling down the bustling assembly line at Nissan's Oppama plant, taking the place of a gasoline-powered compact whose production was moved abroad last year.
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2011

Ichihashi recalls manhunt stress

Accused killer Tatsuya Ichihashi's book released Wednesday offers anecdotal accounts of his 31-month life on the run, from fears of being caught and listening to radio updates on the manhunt, to moments of awe over nature, to how he abstained from sex because of what he had done, and how it may feel...

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb