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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 27, 2007

'Flandres'

In "Flandres," the region referred to in the film's title (located in northern France) is breathtaking in its untarnished beauty. The light -- golden and buttery -- drenches the landscape in an intricately magical, Vermeer-like way. There is, however, nothing remotely idyllic about the film itself; the...
EDITORIALS
Apr 22, 2007

Japan as number-one blogger

Japanese, a recent survey found, is the most common language for blogging. With 70-some million blogs now in all languages, Japan edged out even English and Chinese for the top spot of blog language. A third of all blogs in the world, or virtual world, are written in Japanese. Japan is now number one...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 19, 2007

Works beyond Osaka's sun

If your knowledge of Taro Okamoto's work begins and ends with the sculpture "Tower of the Sun" that he created for the 1970 Osaka Expo, a visit to "Taro Okamoto and His Contemporaries in the Post-War Era," now at the Setagaya Art Museum, is in order.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: FASHION
Apr 17, 2007

Rooms, Tokyo Midtown, Terra Plana, Herchcovitch

Fashion for the filthy rich
COMMENTARY
Apr 16, 2007

Preserving the countryside

LONDON -- In Britain we have not yet quite lost the battle to preserve the countryside, but it is far from won. In Japan, however, it looks to many outsiders as if preservation is a lost cause.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 13, 2007

'Dresden'

German movies are making headway into mainstream international cinema ("Perfume" and "Head On" leap to the mind), opening up a new window from which to view stories of love, obsession, history and war. "Dresden" takes all these themes and weaves them into one episode: the bombing of Dresden during World...
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Apr 13, 2007

Life altering experience came early for Oita's Allen

They say the older you get, the wiser you become.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Apr 13, 2007

Kyoto style comes to Edo

Traditional Japanese dance forms are steeped in rules that often equal the number of dance moves that they consist of. But Kamigata-mai is different, as will be demonstrated at a free performance to be given on April 28 at Fukagawa Edo Museum's Small Theater.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Apr 6, 2007

Love triangles

Setagaya Public Theatre (SEPT), Japan's foremost municipal arts venue, celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 31, 2007

Urban Kyoto tries on an old look

KYOTO -- First-time visitors to the ancient capital of Kyoto usually arrive expecting to see quiet temples and rock gardens or an abundance of old wooden buildings set against the backdrop of the surrounding mountains.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 30, 2007

'Byosoku 5 Centimeters'

As the boundaries between animated and live-action films blur and finally become meaningless (see the graphic-novel look of "300" for a recent example), perhaps a new category is needed -- call it live-mation. In any case, animators in Japan are breaking free of whatever limits on theme and treatment...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 29, 2007

Globalization made manifest at Midtown

Hooray. Another high-rise office tower. Another five-star hotel. Another premium shopping mall. Another Starbucks. And don't forget culture. With this new development, Tokyo will show the world the richness of Japan's civilization and society.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 23, 2007

'Mushishi'

Katsuhiro Otomo once had a reputation as a genius anime auteur -- a younger, hipper version of Hayao Miyazaki. His 1988 SF hit "Akira" was unlike anything coming out of the Hollywood animation industry in its dark vision of an atomic-blasted Neo-Tokyo, with its multilayered story of lawless young bikers...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 23, 2007

A treasure chest of tradition

The capital of Ishikawa Prefecture greeted me like it does most travelers: with a downpour. The train's rain-streaked windows blurred my first views of a city in a storybook setting. Kanazawa averages 178 soggy days a year, so it's fitting that the station's glass dome fans out like an umbrella.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 18, 2007

As London shows, assimilation is what migration's about

LONDON -- I have been coming to this city every few years for more than four decades, and this visit, of 10 days' duration, has, in some ways, been the most startling. Not that the mid-Sixties weren't. The Beatles, with every challenge to staid British routine that they personified, were in the ascendancy...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 16, 2007

'Perfume'

"Perfume" is a film that comes to us with impeccable art-house credentials: It's a story about aestheticism, the appreciation of smells, and thus bathed in sensuality. Its director, Tom Tykwer, is responsible for the art-house hit "Run Lola Run," as well as an ethereal adaptation of a Krzystof Kieslowski...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 16, 2007

'Argentine Baba'

Movies about quirky, dysfunctional families are a thriving subgenre in Hollywood, "Little Miss Sunshine" being the most successful recent example. The Japanese make these films as well, but they tend to be more surreal -- or rather manga-esque, as seen in Katsuhito Ishii's "Cha no Aji (Taste of Tea),"...
EDITORIALS
Mar 13, 2007

Japan's ambivalent English

The recent story about problems at an English school in Tokyo reveals perhaps more about Japanese attitudes to studying a foreign language than about the business practices of language schools. In Japan, signing up with enthusiasm too often leads to giving up in frustration. For many, learning to chat...
CULTURE / Music
Mar 9, 2007

Meet Asia's next generation of opera stars

Sumi Jo isn't the only Asian star to have taken the Western opera scene by storm in recent years. Below are three other talents fast stamping their presence on the international stage.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 9, 2007

A place apart from you

Where are the wildernesses of lore?
CULTURE / Books
Mar 4, 2007

Unearthing proverbs, essential to life but hard to swallow

ZEN OF VEGETABLE ROOTS, calligraphy by Siu-Leung Lee, paintings by Fu Yi Yao, translated by Siu-Leung Lee. Yuzankaku, 2006, 254 pp., 2,800 yen (paper) The original "Zen of Vegetable Roots" integrates the philosophy of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism in a collection of more than 750 Chinese proverbs...
JAPAN / WHEN A CITY GOES BUST
Mar 2, 2007

Once Tokyo's spa playground, Atami fading fast

ATAMI, Shizuoka Pref. -- Tamae "Meme" Ono remembers fondly the late 1980s when the hot spring resort of Atami was a glamorous place to be.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 2, 2007

'Matsugane Ransha Jiken'

Nobuhiro Yamashita is one of the great comic talents working in Japanese films and also one of the most unusual. Unlike the many directors and actors here who equate "funny" with "over the top," Yamashita is low-key, ironic and very sharp. If he were an American he might have written for "Curb your Enthusiasm,"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 2, 2007

'Paris, je t'aime'

It's a collage of miniatures, a collection of gemlike vignettes. In "Paris, je t'aime," 21 directors of various nationalities create 18 bite-size shorts (the longest being five minutes) about Paris, each one named after a Parisian neighborhood. Like a plate of hors d'oeuvres from a five-star restaurant...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 23, 2007

'Sakuran'

How did "Memoirs of a Geisha" ("Sayuri" here in Japan) get it so drearily wrong -- and Mika Ninagawa's new film, "Sakuran," get it so gloriously right?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 22, 2007

Drama despite the Establishment

At last December's press conference heralding this year's Tokyo International Arts Festival, Artistic Director Sachio Ichimura was in a less than festive mood.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 18, 2007

Poet takes on the triads

A Case of Two Cities: An Inspector Chen Novel by Qiu Xiaolong. New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 2006, 320 pp., $24.95 (cloth) In U.S. paperback fiction, the arrival of an American detective, or spy, in East Asia unleashes a predictable train of events. He will inevitably lock horns with a rich and powerful...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 17, 2007

Amy Katoh

Champion of Japan's disappearing traditional crafts, longtime Tokyo resident Amy Katoh is an author and businesswoman. Her famous shop Blue & White testifies to her vision and imagination.

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’