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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
LIFE / Lifestyle
Nov 21, 2006

Label not enough for a healthy diet

Next time you go grocery shopping, take a closer look at the beverages, yogurt and other packaged foods on display in the store you're visiting. You'll most likely find a number of products bearing a special logo and a carefully worded sentence touting their health benefits.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Nov 19, 2006

Scourge of skinnies stands firm on fleshiness

A third of the models who appeared in Madrid's civic-sponsored Cibeles collections last year were banned from the same fashion event this September. The move -- which triggered debate in and beyond fashion circles around the world -- came after city officials declared that the women's extremely underweight...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 16, 2006

An ambassador of enlightenment

When I was a teenager living in New York some 20 years ago, I bought a tiny introduction to Zen Buddhism from a bookstore in midtown Manhattan. A $1 clearance-sale copy, it was so small that I could slip it into my back pocket.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 9, 2006

Tokyo National Museum shows Buddhist masterpieces

Living in a land still largely covered with forest, it is not surprising that Japanese have a special reverence toward wood. We see this particularly in traditional architecture, where wood is not only chosen to reveal its best qualities, but is largely left unpainted so that its beauty improves with...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 3, 2006

It's not about porn, it's all about art

Lucile Hadzihalilovic strides into a room and the mood immediately becomes dense with awe. It's not just her striking looks or her height (over 1.85 meters in stockings), but the way she seems to mute these things behind a natural quietness and engaging shyness, as if she's whispering: "Please don't...
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 22, 2006

NHK's "Premium 10," Nihon TV's "Catherine the Great" and more

On Sept. 23, 35,000 people flocked to the Tsumagoi resort area in Shizuoka Prefecture to attend a concert featuring folk-rock singer Takuro Yoshida and the soft rock trio Kagu-yahime. In 1975 these two artists played for 12 hours at the same site in front of 50,000 fans at the first-ever concert of its...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 20, 2006

Inventing his genres

'It's been insane," sighs Steve Reich, grinning as he settles down in his chair. Reich celebrated his 70th birthday earlier this month, and it's had him shuttling from New York to London and back for numerous concerts of his works. Now he is in Tokyo, where he spoke with The Japan Times, as a recipient...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 19, 2006

"Ceremonial Paintings of Northern Ethnic Minorities in Vietnam"

Shinsei Bank Headquarters Closes in 12 days
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Oct 17, 2006

Visiting a theme park sure beats working, unless . . .

Japan has lots of young people who are out of work or not even in the hunt for a job. The government estimates that 850,000 people, from teens through to their 30s, fall into the category of NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training). Then there are the "freeters," youths who only work odd jobs...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Oct 15, 2006

Intimacy crusader strives to rekindle Japan's fires of marital passion

At first glance, 46-year-old Mayumi Futamatsu looks like a regular housewife. But as someone who's "seen both heaven and hell" in her two marriages, she's a woman with a mission to help all women to be happy -- through having better sex lives.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 8, 2006

Beware a 'beauty' that would deceive the nation

'Japan lost the war, and Bushido [the samurai spirit] perished. But then the human being was born for the first time in the womb of truth called decadence."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 5, 2006

A daughter's conversation

At last year's Venice Biennale, photographer Miyako Ishiuchi (b. 1947) represented Japan with her "mother's" photography series. Featuring mostly black-and-white prints of her late mother's possessions -- lingerie, shoes and cosmetics -- it was one of the biennale's highlights.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 28, 2006

Irwin's enthusiasm survives his passing

SYDNEY -- His death was bizarre -- stabbed through his wet suit by a stingray. Yet the continuing work of Australia's most famous wildlife activist is winning worldwide acclaim in the cause of conservation.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Sep 26, 2006

Barouche appliances, R Chair, DoCoMo N702iS, NEKKO flower vase, M+K Design's Sweet Icicle light

Be it for the home, while you're on the go, or even during some far away travels, this month's column has you covered with a selection of choice items that should satisfy all your stylish needs.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 14, 2006

People of one voice

Michael Franti seemed to be everywhere at the 2003 Fuji Rock Festival, and since he stands as tall as a volleyball player and sports long dreads, it was impossible to miss him.
Japan Times
LIFE / CONFUCIUS
Sep 10, 2006

Confucius and his 'golden age'

Is what Confucius said true? Can music, poetry and decorum govern the world? Do rulers, by cultivating benevolence in themselves, plant benevolence in their subjects, and harmony in the polity?
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 3, 2006

Controversial tales of cats, Pluto and Britney's belly

Controversy No. 1: Cats are people, too
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Sep 2, 2006

Keane-McCarthy antipathy makes for intriguing matchup

LONDON -- Circle the date in your diary -- Nov. 25, Wolves vs. Sunderland.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 31, 2006

The search for 'nihonga' clouds artistic judgements

While proponents of contemporary Japanese art do not seem quite as preoccupied with attempts to shock as their Western counterparts, for curators and creators with an eye on finding fame and fortune overseas, courting controversy can seem almost like an obligation.
CULTURE / Music
Aug 25, 2006

Raising the Fawn "The Maginot Line"

Originally a bedroom project for guitarist John Crossingham in the late 1990s, Canada's Raising The Fawn morphed into a full band to match his growing ambitions. Associations with Toronto's Broken Social Scene have brought the trio increased exposure, but their lack of a distinctive pop edge has seen...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 19, 2006

TaoZen: synthesizing life practices of the sages

Masahiro Ouchi stands before a group of 30 assorted individuals in Be Yoga, a studio in Tokyo's Hiro-o (including five dishy-enough French men to make one English guy joke that among so many women he has never felt so disadvantaged) and introduces us to the essence of the spiritual and therapeutic practice...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 13, 2006

Painting a religion

ZEN MIND/ZEN BRUSH by John Stevens, introductory essay by Claire Pollard, forewords by Edmund Capon and Kurt A. Gitter. Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2006, 144 pp., 78 plates, A$35 (paper). Zenga (Zen painting) usually designates the pictures and calligraphy of the monks of the Edo Period (1600-1868)....
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 12, 2006

The ghost of a summer past

A catch of breath, a creak of wood and a shadow going thump in the night. . . . Fascination for the spooky and inexplicable perhaps bubbles more intensely in Japan than anywhere else, even in Amityville -- especially during Japanese ghost season, the hot month of August. Is what follows a "Flactured...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 10, 2006

There's an art to saving country life

Just a few hours north of Tokyo's seemingly endless sprawl is the mountainous region of Echigo-Tsumari in Niigata Prefecture. Like so many other rural parts of northern Japan, it is a rugged, isolated, aging and economically stagnant place where elderly men and women can be found doubled over in terraced...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 6, 2006

Many happy returns to my Tokyo village past and present

As readers of this column last week may recall, I wrote there about a period in the early 1980s when my wife and I lived in the western Tokyo suburb of Soshigaya in Setagaya Ward. Three of our four children were born in the local hospital, and we have only the fondest memories of the old neighborhood....
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Aug 2, 2006

Cider and Spots in my haunts of old

It was my first month of living in Tokyo, and I had just about gained enough courage to go into a little restaurant and order all by myself. I had come to Japan to study karate, and had just finished a hard training session at the Kodokan. I was thirsty, and so was delighted to see that not only did...
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Aug 1, 2006

Island travel and Mac help

Airport on Ogasawara? J and partner have heard that there is an air service to Ogasawara (the Bonin Islands) -- described in my book Insider's Tokyo (2001) as "Tokyo furthest flung outpost."

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’