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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Dec 2, 2006

Toshi Atsuumi

Calcutta is a dramatic, tumultuous city. This capital of West Bengal still shows the high temper that often marked its turbulent history. Toshi Atsuumi found in Calcutta something he looks for: the survival of nature in the swirl of humanity. Calcutta was not, however, Atsuumi's introduction to a world...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / WALKING THE WARDS
Dec 1, 2006

Katsushika a cut above all your expectations

Many of Tokyo's award-winning swordsmiths choose to live in Ka-tsushika. Why? "Land has always been cheap here," said Shoji Yoshihara, 61, designated an Important Living Cultural Property of the ward and deputy head of All Japan Swordsmiths Association. "The process of making swords is noisy and smoky,...
JAPAN
Dec 1, 2006

Film on Korean identity woes released in South

, yet feeling awkward about the country he supports. The filmmaker said in a recent interview in Tokyo that she loved her parents but chose to take South Korean nationality in 2004 because she felt uncomfortable with the North Korean regime, which has left many people destitute and starving.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Nov 28, 2006

Pore's Babel, Sunnin's Tokyo Dresser, Magnet Tack, Hiroyuki Kato's Root, braille lighting . . .

No sane person would probably ever consider trying to soak in nearly as much design goodness as I do in order to bring to light the cream of the crop for you. Being the brave soul that I am, though, earlier this month I enthusiastically and recklessly charged head first into Tokyo Design Week to see...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / LIFE LAB
Nov 28, 2006

A feast for fish in search for beauty

Growing up in the countryside, a lot of my youth was spent swimming in lakes and rivers for as many summer days as the weather would provide. I had no fear of cannon-balling off high cliffs, I was never bothered by the scrapes of underwater rocks and boulders, and no matter how how fast the current,...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 26, 2006

A colloquial style of literature tourism

JAPAN: A Traveler's Literary Companion, edited by Jeffrey Angels & J. Thomas Rimer, foreword by Donald Richie. Whereabouts Press, 2006, 232 pp., $14.95 (paper). It was purely by chance that I read the stories in this anthology while visiting the very same locations that provide their setting, though...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 26, 2006

The persistence of culture

KYOTO: A Cultural Sojourn, photos by Gorazd Vilhar, text by Charlotte Anderson. Tokyo: IBC Publishing, 2006, 116 pp., profusely illustrated, 2,800 yen (cloth). The final plate in this exceptionally gorgeous photo collection is the jagged, mirrored facade of Kyoto Station, a structure so spectacularly...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 26, 2006

Time to sink or swim for TV fish pundit Sakana

In September, the TV personality known as Sakana-kun was appointed to the position of guest assistant professor by the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 26, 2006

Dealing with death the Japanese ways

There is a quiet revolution taking place in the attitudes and practices concerning death and burial in Japan -- striking changes that shed light not only on how Japanese people today view death, but also life and the relationships that underpin it. So this week and next, I will explore contemporary issues...
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 26, 2006

The host with the most ... broken ribs

Take six Japanese, one Chinese, all young, female and studying law at Chuo University in Tokyo.
EDITORIALS
Nov 24, 2006

Cyber-crime bucks the trend

Excluding criminal violations involving traffic accidents, about 2.27 million crimes came to the attention of police in 2005, according to the 2006 white paper on crime. The figure was 11.4 percent lower than the year before and around 20 percent (580,000 incidents) lower than the peak year 2002. The...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 24, 2006

Foo Fighters

Seriously, what's left for Dave Grohl to do in the world of rock 'n' roll? After playing in tiny, dilapidated clubs with hardcore punk act Scream in the late 1980s, he kicked off the '90s by drumming for one of the decade's most influential groups, Nirvana. Then, in the mid-'90s, Grohl formed his current...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 23, 2006

Japan Folk Crafts Museum celebrates 70th anniversary

On first encountering Korean folk paintings, the avid collector Soetsu Yanagi (1889-1961) was so intrigued that he wrote, "The beauty of this Korean painting is beyond compare."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Nov 23, 2006

Suspended in abstraction

'Maybe there are too many things in Tokyo," says Katsuhiro Saiki, "because for me, New York City is the only place where I can relax -- although I think it could be said that there are too many artists in New York City."
BASKETBALL
Nov 22, 2006

'Samurai' unleashes excitement on court

Nobody was quite sure about the final score, or about who scored how many points, how many assists they had or how many rebounds they grabbed. Because after all, those were probably the least important things the fans cared about.
EDITORIALS
Nov 22, 2006

Working for a better society

Japan's population began to shrink in 2005 and society continued to grow older. That year, people aged 60 or older accounted for 21 percent of the population, making Japan one of the grayest countries in the world. Taking these factors into consideration, the 2006 welfare and labor white paper compiled...
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Nov 21, 2006

Samurai Scarecrows

Dear Alice,
COMMENTARY
Nov 20, 2006

Time for U.S. to change course on Cuba

NEW YORK -- The changed political landscape in Washington offers a unique opportunity to right a wrong foreign policy decision that has been maintained for almost half a century, the embargo against Cuba.
COMMENTARY
Nov 20, 2006

Know the goals of military intervention

In a Washington Post article reprinted in these pages on Oct. 10, "The humanitarian war myth," Eric Posner writes: "If the United Nations were to have its way, the Iraqi debacle would be just the first in a series of such wars -- the effect of a well-meaning but ill-considered effort to make humanitarian...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Nov 19, 2006

Athletes extol sensation of 'iron calm' at the limit

People have been enjoying a wide variety of sports since at least the time of Ancient Greece. In the Athens 2004 Olympic Games alone, athletes competed in about 300 categories of 28 sports -- and the list seems to get longer every time.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan