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CULTURE / Books
Aug 19, 2007

Keeping up with anime is by no means kids' play

The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917, Revised and Expanded Edition, by Jonathan Clements and Helen McCarthy. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2006, 867 pp., illustrated, $29.95 (paper) The only real problem with anime is that there's way too much of it. Try to get a quick grasp...
BUSINESS
Aug 18, 2007

Nintendo scores with brain-training, etiquette games

Since March, Natsumi Takita has spent 10 minutes daily on a Nintendo DS hand-held game machine, undergoing daily quizzes using "Otona-no Joshikiryoku Training DS" ("Common Sense Training for Adults").
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 9, 2007

The hidden treasures of Shikoku revealed in Ueno

Kotohira Shrine — popularly known as Konpira-san — is one of the main religious centers on the island of Shikoku. Until three bridges were built during recent decades to connect the island and the mainland — and ruin the previously magical scenery — Shikoku was remote and mysterious, a Shangri-La...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Aug 7, 2007

"The Boyhood of Burglar Hill," "Little Rabbit's New Baby"

"The Boyhood of Burglar Hill," Allan Ahlberg, Puffin Books; 2006; 181 pp.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 5, 2007

Keeping the horror of Hiroshima alive

Masako's Story: Surviving the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima, by Kikuko Otake, edited by Dr. Jesse Glass. Tokyo/Toronto: Ahadada Books, 2007, 94 pp. with photos and maps, $15 (paper) The cenotaph for the Hiroshima victims reads "Let all the souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evil," but...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 5, 2007

Tojo and Bush: Trumpeting delusion on their way to defeat

Writing in the New York Times on July 17, the newspaper's well-known columnist David Brooks reported on a White House press conference he attended on July 13. "[Pres.] Bush was assertive and good-humored," Brooks noted.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 2, 2007

"Les noirs de Redon: The Monstrous Friends You See When You Close Your Eyes"

Bunkamura Closes in 25 days
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 2, 2007

DanDans meets Coco Chanel

Artists' lives are seldom easy, but the reality they face in Japan can be particularly daunting.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 1, 2007

Taiji officials: Dolphin meat 'toxic waste'

For what is believed to be the first time anywhere in Japan, elected officials have openly condemned the consumption of dolphin meat, especially in school lunches, on grounds that it is dangerously contaminated with mercury.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 23, 2007

Pollution fouling a legacy of eternal love

MADRAS, India — The Taj Mahal has always been considered a wonder. As India's best known monument, this white-marble icon is now ranked among the "New Seven Wonders of the World," along with the Great Wall of China and Rome's Colosseum.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jul 21, 2007

Mitsuya Goto

Mitsuya Goto can tell any aspiring student how to learn English. "You really have to want to," he might say, and "you must use any tool available to you."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 19, 2007

Sounds of smallness

Settling down into Yukio Fujimoto's "Ears with Chair" (1990) and adjusting the two long tubes on either side to your ears, the drone of the electronic organs on the surrounding walls both intensifies and hollows out. The hushed voices of mingling spectators magnify, as do passing footsteps. You cannot...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 19, 2007

Music busts myth of monocultural Japan

On the 30-odd subtropical isles of the Ogasawara Island chain that lie sparkling in the South Pacific, some 1,000 km south of Tokyo, there exists a unique music and dance form classified as an Intangible Cultural Property of the capital. Historians have traced the evolution of this performing art to...
BUSINESS / JAPANESE PERSPECTIVES
Jul 16, 2007

Companies must fight for balance between greenmailers, growth

The biggest feature of this year's crop of annual shareholders' meetings — which came on the heels of May's removal of the ban on triangular mergers — was the move to install defensive measures against so-called greenmailers, the corporate interlopers who chase after short-term profits.
COMMENTARY
Jul 13, 2007

Breaking point of China's Communists

LOS ANGELES — It's not always easy to do right by China. Should you choose the path of unthinking flattery, you will eventually lose self-respect.
Japan Times
LIFE / REFUGEES AND JAPAN
Jul 8, 2007

Diplomat rues Tokyo's 'lack of humanity' to asylum-seekers

Sadako Ogata was the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees from 1991-2001, and has been President of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) since 2003. Here, she talks frankly to The Japan Times about Japan's attitudes to those who flee their homelands and seek sanctuary on these shores.
Japan Times
JAPAN / PARTY LINE
Jul 6, 2007

Ozawa vows to exit if opposition camp fails to win majority

Democratic Party of Japan President Ichiro Ozawa declared Thursday that he would resign if the opposition camp fails to win a majority in the Upper House election July 29.
Reader Mail
Jul 1, 2007

A concrete or a conceptual road?

The June 24 editorial, "The new Silk Road," is very interesting, but it has many flaws. First of all, for new readers and people with little knowledge of the Silk Road, the editorial does not give much information about the history of the Silk Road. It does not explain how the idea for a new Silk Road...
MORE SPORTS
Jun 30, 2007

WWE hysteria all McMahon's doing

NEW YORK — Hucksters make their living ahead of the curve, or at the very least, by selling that illusion.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 29, 2007

Office weighs less in the work-life balance

After his son was born last April, Hyogo Prefecture civil servant Akira Hirabayashi decided to cut back on overtime at work. He yearned for more time with little Susumu and also wanted to give his wife, Chie, a chance to return to her teaching job at an elementary school.
COMMENTARY
Jun 29, 2007

Hope for six-party talks lives

SEOUL — It's not exactly clear what Assistant U.S. Secretary of State Christopher Hill told (or promised) North Korean officials during his surprise visit to Pyongyang last week — or if the mere continuation of the long sought after one-on-one direct dialogue was sufficient — but the DPRK has finally...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 26, 2007

The war according to Aso Co.

'Japan the Tremendous,' the new book by Foreign Minister Taro Aso, highlights the peaceful nature of postwar Japan and calls the country a "fount of moral lessons" for Asia. It might even help Aso become Japan's next prime minister.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami