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Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 15, 2001

Finding market niches to make really good books

Ivan Vartanian makes books. He is not a publisher, nor a commonplace packager. Rather he identifies a niche in the market, lines up the most suitable backing, and then physically puts the book together himself under the company name Goliga Books. All within the constrains of a tiny apartment in Tokyo's...
JAPAN
Sep 13, 2001

'Today, our nation saw evil'

WASHINGTON, Sept 11 - Following is the text of a speech to the nation by President George W. Bush on Tuesday following the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon:
CULTURE / Art
Sep 12, 2001

Little forget-me-nots

"I Don't Mind, If You Forget Me" is the rather bold title of Yoshitomo Nara's current exhibition at the Yokohama Museum of Art. But Nara can easily feign indifference, knowing full well that his warped yet archetypal children will have the opposite effect on viewers. With their enlarged heads and bean-shaped...
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 5, 2001

A master of many voices

Celebrating the 35th anniversary of its foundation, through Sept. 23 the National Theater of Japan in Tokyo is presenting "Honcho Nijushiko" (The 24 Models of Filial Piety), one of the most grandiose historical bunraku plays (jidaimono), almost in its entirety.
BUSINESS
Aug 22, 2001

Saudi investment pact going nowhere

Nearly four years after Japan and Saudi Arabia agreed to form a pact to rev up Japanese private investment in the world's largest oil-exporting country, negotiations remain stalled and the treaty hangs in limbo.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 19, 2001

Way of a puppet dramatist

CHIKAMATSU: FIVE LATE PLAYS, translated and annotated by C. Andrew Gerstle. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001, 234 pp., 60 line drawings, maps and photographs. $39.50. Though the playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1724) has been inaptly called "The Shakespeare of Japan," he remains the single...
JAPAN
Aug 16, 2001

Government hopes to mend ties at APEC

The government plans to have Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi hold talks with his Chinese and South Korean counterparts on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Shanghai in October to try to mend soured relations, government sources said.
JAPAN
Aug 15, 2001

Envoy conveys Seoul's regret over Koizumi's visit to shrine

South Korean Ambassador to Japan Choi Sang Yong said Tuesday that his government "strongly regrets" Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine on Monday to pay homage to Japan's war dead.
JAPAN
Aug 15, 2001

Text of Koizumi's Yasukuni statement

The following is the Foreign Press Center translation of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's statement on his visit to Yasukuni Shrine:
JAPAN
Aug 14, 2001

Police target leftist radicals over arson attack

The Metropolitan Police Department raided several locations Monday connected with a radical leftist group in connection with an arson attack last week that apparently targeted the office of a nationalist group that wrote a contentious history book.
JAPAN
Aug 11, 2001

Group takes credit for incendiary attack

A group calling itself a revolutionary army claimed responsibility Friday for Tuesday's fire in a lot adjacent to the office of a group that authored a controversial history textbook.
BUSINESS
Aug 10, 2001

41% of those in their 60s use mobiles

Forty-one percent of people in their 60s living in the Tokyo metropolitan area have mobile phones and many also use mobile e-mail and special ringing melodies, according to a survey released Thursday by NTT DoCoMo Inc.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 5, 2001

Down the aisle in style

As a little girl, I dreamed of getting married in a church amid beautiful European scenery -- or, if the wedding were held in Japan, then in the quiet setting of the woods of Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture.
COMMUNITY
Aug 5, 2001

A funny thing happened on the way . . .

It was a sunny June afternoon in northern Japan, and the perfect setting for a wedding reception: an airy room with large French windows opening onto a garden; mountains of flowers and a cake with more tiers than a Balinese rice field. Then, one of the groom's pals stepped forward to make a speech.
COMMENTARY
Jul 30, 2001

Foreign policy falls short

LONDON -- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi cannot afford to let Japanese foreign policy become a hostage to nationalist agitation and populist pressures. Japan needs friends in Asia as well as in the rest of the world. Its relationship with the United States remains crucial. Koizumi has worked hard to...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 22, 2001

The kimono celebrated

KIMONO. Text and photos by Paul van Riel, introduction and comments by Liza Dalby. Leiden: Hotel Publishing, 144 pp., color photos, $49.95. Folklorist Kunio Yanagita long ago said that "clothing is the most direct indication of a people's general frame of mind." If this is so, what then is one to...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 21, 2001

Life through the lens in Seoul, Paris and Tokyo

It is hard to imagine Mi-Yeon producing art prints of such emotion and refinement amid the familial clutter of her apartment, but maybe this is the mark of the true artist: beauty can be created against all odds. "My daughter's at kindergarten," she offers as explanation.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 15, 2001

Following in the master's footsteps

During the 10th century, according to legend, there was a blind man called Semimaru who was famed as a biwa (lute) player. Tiring of the stresses of Kyoto life, he moved outside the city and lived by himself in a small house.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 15, 2001

Dismantling stereotypes surrounding Japan's sacred entities

SHINTO IN HISTORY: Ways of the Kami, edited by John Breen and Mark Teeuwen. Richmond, Surrey, U.K.: Curzon Press, 1999, 368 pp., 45 British pounds (cloth); 15 pounds (paper). "Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami" is the first attempt in any Western language (and possibly even in Japanese) to offer...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2001

Vipassana spirituality a refreshing breeze

BANGKOK -- There was recently a cultural event in Bangkok that deserves to be singled out. It was a special Dhamma talk given by the foremost Vipassana meditation teacher of our times, Satya Narayan Goenka, to a select audience presided over by Princess Galyani, the sister of the King of Thailand.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 8, 2001

Wright the dealer, not the builder

FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND THE ART OF JAPAN, by Julia Meech. New York: Japan Society/Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001, 304 pp., 229 illustrations, including 89 color plates. $49.50. Toward the end of his long and successful career as an architect, Frank Lloyd Wright remembered Japan, the scene of so much of...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 8, 2001

Survey offers solid treatment of history

THE MAKING OF MODERN JAPAN, by Marius B. Jansen. Harvard University Press, 2000, 896 pp., $35 (hardback). "The Making of Modern Japan," Marius Jansen's last work, is a reliable, solid and authoritative interpretation of Japan's recent past. It is a fitting testament to a learned man whose scholarly...
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 4, 2001

Latecomer on a 'momentous journey'

Working with Peter Brook, according to one of the actors in his latest production, is like setting out on a "momentous journey."
CULTURE / Art
Jul 4, 2001

Korean imports offer glimpse of a subtle aesthetic

It is not often that such a rare and wonderfully varied collection is put on public view as that currently at the Seikado Bunko Art Museum. This special exhibition, from the permanent collection of the museum, is on display for the first time since 1994.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 2, 2001

French success has economists wondering

LONDON -- For Americans who work long hours, get only two weeks holiday a year, and live under a system that defines job security as a socialist vice, the apparent success of the French experiment is a puzzle and an affront.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 24, 2001

Finding nature by design

JAPANESE DESIGN: A Collection. Photographs and text by Kenneth Straiton. Forward by Peter Grilli. Tokyo: Tuttle Shokai, 1999, 160 pp., copiously illustrated, 3,800 yen. Traditionally the Japanese are a patterned people who live in a patterned country, a land where the exemplar still exists, where there...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 17, 2001

The bright side of bamboo

BAMBOO IN JAPAN, by Nancy Moore Bess, with Bibi Wein. Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International, 2001, 224 pp., 160 color prints and duo-tone photographs, 5,800 yen. Bamboo, the ancient, ubiquitous grass, is everywhere in Japan. Of the over 1,500 species worldwide, nearly half are found here. It...

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes