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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 5, 2003

Borderless abstraction

The Oxford Dictionary of 20th Century Art defines Op Art as: "an exactly prescribed retinal response . . . repeated small scale patterns arranged so as to suggest underlying secondary shapes or warping or swelling surfaces."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 5, 2003

Freed architecture

Rem Koolhaas, recently awarded the 2003 Praemium Imperiale for architecture, is prolific to the point of relentlessness. Looking at the stream of bold, innovative and aggressively hip buildings Koolhaas' Rotterdam-based office has produced, one well-known Japanese architect was prompted to liken him...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Oct 8, 2003

Soaring on the clay wings of inspiration

The mind and soul of a genius often seeks solace in cold, lonely places. In the intense stillness he works deep into the night like one possessed of a vision he knows will burn out with the coming rays of dawn.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 28, 2003

Kawabata's Yomiura City

A short story by Yasunari Kawabata; translated by Burritt Sabin
CULTURE / Music
Sep 28, 2003

Singing in the ageless language of love

Among the rags-to-riches stories that make the annals of popular music such a colorful read, few tales are as dramatic as that of Ibrahim Ferrer, now age 76.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Sep 23, 2003

What was your impression of Japan before you came here?

Mark Friesen Industrial Designer, 40 I heard the whole packing people on the train story a lot, but before I came here I thought, "Oh, come on, nobody would ever do that." But it's true. Of course, since having lived here I've seen a lot more stranger things than that.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Sep 14, 2003

Nets want to get rid of Mutombo

NEW YORK -- Alonzo Mourning, the newest member of the New Jersey Nets, hopes he will get the opportunity to play defense alongside Dikembe Mutombo this season on a regular basis like they did as collegians at Georgetown, but it isn't likely to happen.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 13, 2003

Online group united by anger

In an age of increasing disenchantment with political parties, both among voters and electoral candidates, there is one group whose level of support is still growing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Sep 10, 2003

Enjoying the view from up on high

Last Wednesday, in the early evening, a tremendous thunderstorm crashed through Tokyo. There were blackouts, the lightning started fires, even the rain-or-shine Yamanote Line was shut down for three hours. Meanwhile, Yumiko Okui was putting up her show at the Kenji Taki Gallery in Shinjuku.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Aug 14, 2003

Working with mentors to change the world

Former JET assistant language teacher Nicole Deutsch has an ideal job. She works with a dynamic team of people from all over the world. And at the end of the day she goes home feeling that she's helped to make the world a better place.
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Aug 4, 2003

Seasonal thoughts on Japan's sweltering summer troubles

Summer is as much the silly season in Japan as well as elsewhere. Nothing much moves forward and the papers struggle to find suitable topics to comment on. So do economists. Here are some thoughts for the season.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 31, 2003

What's natural about shizen?

As anyone with an iota of awareness and no partisan ax to grind must surely know by now, this planet's nature is in danger of being mostly destroyed within the next century, with catastrophic consequences for human life.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 20, 2003

Taking readers to the edge

RUNNERS IN THE MARGINS: Poems by Akira Tatehata, translated by Hiroaki Sato. Vermont: P.S A Press, 2003, 103 pp., $12.95 (paper) The poet Akira Tatehata has a wide-ranging imagination as rich, and yet as controlled, as the brush of the most delicate artist. His poems are sometimes playful, sometimes...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 13, 2003

Join the club: Today's Japanese fads

THE IMAGE FACTORY: Fads & Fashions in Japan, by Donald Richie, photographs by Roy Garner. London: Reaktion Books, 2003, 176 pp., £14.95 (cloth). Fads and fashions are not, of course, exclusively Japanese. Still, the unself-conscious abandon with which fads and fashions are adopted in Japan assures that...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 8, 2003

Greenspan should quit while he's ahead

News that U.S. President George W. Bush intended to support the continuation of Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors was greeted with wide support. However, if Greenspan cares about his place in history, he might be wise to decline the offer.
COMMUNITY
Jul 6, 2003

Hope for the future takes root in rice fields

ASUKA, Nara Pref. -- The mid-June drizzle had just let up when taiko drum beats marked the opening of the taue (rice-planting) festival.
COMMUNITY
Jun 29, 2003

Going it alone 'to lift the gloom'

Reiko Togo has been very dissatisfied with Japan's magazine industry for a very long time. "Magazines have become just vehicles for advertisements, and there are none I want to read," she says.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 21, 2003

To feel better, get in touch with Mojo Massage

Benjamin Beardsley was in high school when he was jumped on by a group of his classmates and beaten up. They accused him of thinking he was different, somehow better than them. "You'll never leave this town," they mocked. Well, here I am talking with Ben in Tokyo about theater, massage and holistic integration,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 25, 2003

Vietnamese cuisine in a Parisian scene

The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003, 261 pp., $24 (cloth). It's Paris, 1929. You're young, Vietnamese and gay. You don't speak much French, but you can cook a mean omelet. You see an ad in the paper: "Two American Ladies Wish to Retain a Cook." You answer the ad. You get...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / CLOSE-UP
May 4, 2003

Alice Walker: Love makes her world go round

Alice Walker is best known as the author of "The Color Purple," her 1983 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about the lives of African-American women in the Deep South early in the 20th century -- which Steven Spielberg made into a film in 1985 starring Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey.
CULTURE / Books / THE BOOK REPORT
Apr 24, 2003

Challenging English at 65

April is traditionally the time of new beginnings in Japan, at school and at work. Novelist Sae Shuichi, however, makes it a practice to embark on a new project every five years. At 55, for example, he took up kendo. And at 65, as detailed in his latest book, "65-sai Ojisan no Eikaiwa Benkyo ga Tanoshiku...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Apr 3, 2003

"Going for Stone," "Through the Night"

"Going for Stone," Philip Gross, Oxford University Press; 2002; 224 pp. It seems there's only one thing more terrifying than anything you could dream up -- the world you actually live in. Nick is a teenager who hasn't seen much of that world while growing up, but he's in for a shock when he leaves home....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 30, 2003

Lock & key

KAZUYOSHI UEHARA -- not the Kazuyoshi Uehara -- rang the doorbell. He sensed a pause, a hesitation, an interrupted action -- his imagination no doubt -- and tensed slightly as approaching footsteps grew audible.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 30, 2003

East to West: the seductive Madame Sadayakko

MADAME SADAYAKKO: The Geisha Who Seduced the West, by Lesley Downer. London: Review Press/Hodder Headline, 2003, 336 pp., map, photos, £20 (cloth) In 1899, a 27-year-old ex-geisha who called herself Sadayakko embarked on a new career in San Francisco. With her entrepreneur-husband's enthusiastic backing,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 30, 2003

The young, the beautiful, the talented

COLLECTION OF BEAUTIES AT THE HEIGHT OF THEIR POPULARITY: A Novel, by Whitney Otto. New York: Random House, 2002, 283 pages, $23.95 (hardcover) When we think of Japonisme, it is primarily in the decorative arts -- a painting of a European woman holding a Japanese fan or wearing a kimono, some oriental...
JAPAN
Mar 27, 2003

25,296 without homes: survey

The number of homeless people in Japan stood at 25,296 earlier this year, according to a survey released Wednesday by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / MATTER OF COURSE
Mar 13, 2003

Don't wait till bullying hits close to home

This is the column I thought I'd never have to write. It's about how my son was bullied at school.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 12, 2003

Charlie Watts: The beat goes (40 years) on

Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, 61, has sunk into a deep leather chair in a huge hotel room in Toronto. In the corner hundreds of jazz CDs cover the walls. The table is strewn with old snapshots. Watts coughs and straightens his brown jacket.
Japan Times
SUMO
Mar 7, 2003

Takanohana getting grip on life off the dohyo

Recently retired yokozuna Takanohana was the idol of the sumo world during the 1990s and his departure from the sport earlier this year leaves many wondering how it will carry on.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / CLOSE-UP
Mar 2, 2003

Weighing in on the 'real Japan'

Murray Sayle, 76, likes to tell how he was delivered by the same doctor as Australian Prime Minister John Howard; how he lived a few streets away from him and went to the same high school, and then the same university.

Longform

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person