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Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 23, 2007

Behind the mask

Noh is Japan's most inscrutable performing art. A tremendous influence on kabuki and bunraku puppet theater, it is a household name across the nation, yet relatively few Japanese have ever been to a show. Culture vultures marvel at the elaborate costumes and the esoteric, chantlike music; the plays are...
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Aug 21, 2007

Pocket tissues

Dear Alice,
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 18, 2007

Some things never change

In the last edition of this column, I sewed together a few of the major changes I have seen in Japan since first arriving here close to 30 years ago.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 17, 2007

'Vexille'

Back in 2004, when the sci-fi anime "Appleseed" was released, Studio Ghibli president Toshio Suzuki told me that it was the "future of animation." Not so much for the story, which was a retread of a Shirow Masamune manga about a half-human, half-bioroid (biological android) future society, as for the...
LIFE
Aug 12, 2007

Has another society of such superlatives ever existed at all?

The fascination of the Heian Period (794-1185) lies in the fact that in all world history there is nothing quite like it. It would be hard to imagine a culture more exclusive, more fastidiously refined, more smugly incurious about the unknown, more unwarlike, more tearfully melancholic, more sensitive...
BASEBALL / MLB
Aug 11, 2007

Dice-K fever triggers tourist boom in Beantown

One spring evening at Fenway Park, Koji Sakae rose to his feet in a wave of Red Sox euphoria, joining a packed stadium in a standing ovation for his hero, Daisuke Matsuzaka.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 10, 2007

A playground by the sea

Naughty Atami is the Shizuoka resort with the beachfront soaplands and other salacious establishments. It's got the fraying Hihokan (literally: House of Secret Treasures), likely the world's least scholarly sex museum, with its holographic strippers and a Marilyn Monroe mannequin that exposes itself...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / WALKING THE WARDS
Aug 3, 2007

Home to the outsider

Western Taito Ward is a paradise for nonconformists who stray off the beaten track. Throughout the incense-scented alleys of Yanaka, and across the parklands of Ueno, it's hard to miss the area's preponderance of "strays"; tourists, artists and the homeless who, with a surprising number of cats, all...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 3, 2007

Sensitive spin on an all-time classic

Britain's world-famous Imperial Ice Stars arrive in Japan for the first time to perform "Swan Lake on Ice" in Nishinomiya City, Hyogo Prefecture and Tokyo this summer.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jul 30, 2007

How a woman portrayed Hitler as human

NEW YORK — What kind of courage, or audacity even, is required to stage, in Washington, a play featuring Adolf Hitler — one provocatively titled "My Friend Hitler" and written no less than by Yukio Mishima? After all, not just Hitler, but anything associated with Hitler is condemned here. And Mishima...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 27, 2007

'Kappa no Coo to Natsuyasumi'

Movie reviewers come in two broad categories — the ones who try to write truthfully about films, even if the director is a best buddy, and the ones who let personal factors, such as the free lunch from a PR guy, influence their judgment. The two can overlap, though, as I discovered when I went to a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 26, 2007

The monochrome beauty of Japanese snow

When an important date comes around — like a centenary — and an artist has to be commemorated and celebrated, the problem museums and galleries often have is how to get hold of artworks that best represent him.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jul 24, 2007

Hiroko Tsunoda-Shimizu

Hiroko Tsunoda-Shimizu, age 46, is director of the Department of Radiology at St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo, where she works with a team of 15 other doctors and 50 radiology technologists diagnosing and trying to eradicate various types of diseases. Tsunoda-Shimizu has been researching breast...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 22, 2007

Welcome additions to the newest anthology of Japanese literature

The Columbia Anthology of Modern Japanese Literature: From 1945 to the Present, edited by J. Thomas Rimer and Van C. Gessel, with additional selections by poetry editors Amy Vladeck Heinrich and Hiroaki Sato. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, 864 pp., $59.50 (cloth). Anthologists must consider...
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...
Reader Mail
Jul 8, 2007

'Kawaii' trend is not dead

Regarding the June 30 article "Miss Universe director turns Japanese into women of worldm": I find it quite rich that the one person who actively works for an event that is nothing more than an archaic display of male chauvinism and sexism has the guts to scoff at the "kawaii (cute)" ideal in Japanese...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 5, 2007

"Katsutoshi Yuasa: The World is Overflowing with Light"

Cibone Gallery Closes in 55 days
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jul 4, 2007

A very special friend

Last year, on June 10, my dear friend Eiji Nakahara died. He was 65.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 29, 2007

'Live Free or Die Hard'

Dear John:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 29, 2007

'Sidecar ni Inu'

Kichitaro Negishi has a typical resume for a Japanese baby boomer director: Graduation from an elite university (Waseda), apprenticeship in the porno industry (Nikkatsu), awards for his first straight feature ("Enrai," 1981), followed by success as a maker of TV commercials and music videos. Meanwhile,...
CULTURE / Film
Jun 29, 2007

Steel sells hard story

Eric Steel is a Yale graduate who's been active in publishing and producing for some 20 years now, but has only just made his own feature debut as director with "The Bridge." Inspired by an article in The New Yorker ("Jumpers," by Tad Friend), Steel set out to record the phenomenon of suicide at the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jun 26, 2007

Minoru Inaba

Minoru Inaba, 63, is the director of the Meijijingu Shiseikan Dojo, a martial arts facility located in Meiji Shrine in Tokyo. He is a master of budo, an ancient Japanese fighting style that taught samurai to be versatile and supposedly invincible. Learning budo requires training in a myriad of martial...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2007

'Mogari no Mori'

Naomi Kawase has spent much of her career fending off labels, be it "woman director," "New Wave young hope" or "maker of autobiographical documentaries" the latter a genre she did much to popularize, starting with her student work in the late 1980s.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2007

'Hollywoodland'

The new film noir "Hollywoodland" has a title that may leave people scratching their heads: Isn't the home of the movie studios called "Hollywood?" Well, yes and no. The original, iconic sign on the hillside read "Hollywoodland," placed there in 1923 by some real-estate developers. It lasted only until...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2007

'Volver'

Filmmaker Pedro Almodovar loves women and he's not afraid to announce it either. Probably one of the most fearless and creative directors working today, Almodovar has consistently explored what it is to be a woman and it seems like his level of enthrallment increases with every film.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 22, 2007

Architecture takes spiritual turn at GA Gallery

What do China's Chengdu and Saadiyat Island in the United Arab Emirates have in common? Answer: They're all the sites of major future architectural projects featured in the exhibition "GA International 2007," currently running at the GA Gallery in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward. Though small (the exhibition takes...

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