Search - beauty

 
 
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
May 7, 2005

Adrienne Westmore

Audiences at the dramas presented by Tokyo International Players exclaim at the costumes the actors and actresses wear on stage. Period costumes invite special praise and wonder. How is it possible for a volunteer organization to put on shows with people so authentically and richly dressed? The answers...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
May 5, 2005

Swallow tales to silence those who speak with forked tongues

It was 1969, and I was driving our open-topped Mercedes Unimog to Asmara to get some building supplies and other gear not available in Gondar, the nearest town to the Simien Mountain National Park in Ethiopia where I was then a game warden.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 2, 2005

Sexual, visual politics: from shunga to shojo

GENDER AND POWER IN THE JAPANESE VISUAL FIELD, edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson and Maribeth Graybill. Honolulu: Hawai'i University Press, 2003, 292 pp., 7 color plates, 106 b/w illustrations, $36.00 (cloth). The original impetus for this interesting volume came during the 1994 Kyoto Conference...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 29, 2005

Reliving the good life in the country

Visitors to Japan often go into a form of shock not long after they arrive. It is not the different language, cuisine, or social customs that are the cause, but, rather, the realization that Japanese cities are vast, crowded, hyper-modern jungles of humanity where life seems to be constantly on warp...
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Apr 28, 2005

"The Mermaid's Manual," "Frozen Billy"

"The Mermaid's Manual," Dawn Applerley, Bloomsbury; 2004; 14 pp. "The Mermaid's Manual" should be a dream come true for many little girls out there. Its vibrant, glittery jacket has a neat press-button on it, which makes this picture-book look like a handy kit for wannabe mermaids.
Features
Apr 24, 2005

Grande dame of haute kuchuuru

In the fickle world of fashion, where players come and go with the regularity of the seasons that their working lives are firmly pinned to, there are fortunately just a few who hang in there to lend some sense of continuity.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Apr 22, 2005

Sipping on Heian history in Uji

In Uji, it's a tough job to go anywhere without consuming its famous product as green tea is liberally doled out on the streets.
CULTURE / Music
Apr 17, 2005

Niyaz: "Niyaz"

The debut album by Niyaz is a delicious, intoxicating collection of songs, with a sound so fresh that it's impossible to reduce it to a particular genre. The band describes their sound as "21st-century folk music," and that's a start, but don't let that fool you: The rolling thunder of frame drums and...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Apr 16, 2005

Christopher Powell

A schoolboy evacuee from London to North Wales during World War II, Christopher Powell said he "fell in love with the land and language of some of my forefathers." Born in Brazil, where his father worked for a British bank, he has Anglo-Welsh antecedents from his father, and Anglo-Scottish from his mother....
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 6, 2005

Butoh creates beauty from misery

"Why are we in this form? Why do we have to be this particular shape? Why is the face on top of the neck? Our face could be on the soles of our feet. . . . Human beings are quite a strange kind of life form . . ."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Mar 30, 2005

Asia week sees debut show of a famous celadon potter

New Asian art becomes the talk of the town each spring -- not just in Tokyo or Beijing -- but in New York City where its annual Asia Week is now in full sway. Exhibitions abound in the Big Apple with some of the world's top dealers offering their treasures to collectors who visit from around the world....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Mar 20, 2005

The earnestness of being important

THE HEREDITY OF TASTE, by Natsume Soseki, translated by Sammy I. Tsunematsu, introduced by Stephen W. Kohl. Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 2005, 201 pp., 1,300 yen (paper). MY INDIVIDUALISM and THE PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF LITERATURE, by Natsume Soseki. Translated by Sammy I. Tsunematsu, introduced by...
EDITORIALS
Mar 19, 2005

Whimsical article of faith

The ongoing takeover battle between Livedoor Inc. and Fuji Television Network offers food for thought regarding "market capitalization," now a favorite topic of conversation among executives of information-technology firms and Internet service providers. Market capitalization, which is calculated by...
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 18, 2005

Women take shine to money management

Major banks and brokerages are holding seminars on finance and giving priority to sales of investment trusts aimed at women, who are apparently showing an increasing interest in the world of investing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 16, 2005

Candle held up to a rediscovered master

Most great artists are instantly recognizable. As soon as you see one of their works, you know that it can't be by anyone else. If this is truly the mark of a great artist, then Georges de La Tour (1593-1652) must be among the greatest.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / THEN AND NOW
Mar 4, 2005

Happy in the haze of a hanami hour

The 1830s wood-block print below depicts hanami (cherry-blossom viewing) on the banks of the Sumida River. A group of young women and girls are on an excursion, and, with their elaborate hairstyles and fancy, uniform kimono, it appears they are apprentice geisha from licensed quarters nearby. Like teenage...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 27, 2005

New truths from broken conventions: travel writing outside Japan

MUSASHINO IN TUSCANY: Japanese Overseas Travel Literature, 1860-1912, by Susanna Fessler. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2004, 297 pp., + xii pp., 29 b/w illustrations, 2004, $65.00 (cloth). Japan has a long history of travel literature. From the 10th-century "Tosa...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Feb 20, 2005

There's big, and Hoover Dam big

Take 4,360 cubic meters of concrete (enough to pave a single-lane highway from San Francisco to New York), add 21,000 workers (but deduct an average of 50 a day due to injury or death), stir in 5 million, 8-cubic-meter buckets of cement and 950 km of steel piping, then garnish the lot with a dog that...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 20, 2005

Ah-choo! Picked up an allergy to the hay-fever industry

Last week the pharmaceutical company Riken announced that it was developing a new desensitivity treatment for serious allergy sufferers. The treatment program would entail fifty or so injections over a three-year period, which is quite a reduction in time. I should know. I received biweekly or monthly...
Features / WEEK 3
Feb 20, 2005

Operation Evacuation

Not only are they a biodiversity disaster, but the millions of sugi (cedars) planted as official policy in the postwar years to yield cheap timber -- but which are now more expensive to harvest than the cost of imports -- have become a serious health hazard across Japan.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 18, 2005

Pristine paradise an hour from Tokyo

Thanks to the newly opened Noto International Airport, Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture is now just a one-hour flight from Tokyo, making one of the Hokuriku region's most popular tourist spots -- famed for its hot springs, local festivals, beaches and mountain scenery -- far more accessible.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Feb 16, 2005

Former prime minister's pride of pots

"On a sunny day I go to the fields, and, when it rains, I read. Simple enough, isn't it?" Sounds like the words of a cute obachan out in the countryside, but these are the words of former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa who now leads a quiet, secluded life.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Feb 12, 2005

As cute as cute can be

A friend who visited these fair islands for the first time last fall had this to say of his weekend-to-weekend impressions of Japan.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 10, 2005

Learning how to make the most of middle age

It's widely acknowledged that the Japanese not only tend to look younger than people in the West, some think and behave that way too. After all, this is a nation fostered on kodomo bunka (kiddie culture), visible in everything from fashion to architecture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 9, 2005

Lost metallic art revived at last

After some 50 years of trial and error in Akita, a remote northern city, Biko Hayashi, 67, has succeeded in reviving a rare metal craft known as kin gin mokumegane (literally, "gold and silver wood grain metal"), a skill that was developed and then promptly lost almost 300 years ago during the Edo Period....
EDITORIALS
Feb 7, 2005

Banking on safer cash cards

In recent months, Japan has been hit by a new wave of crime: cash-card forgery. According to banks, cash withdrawals by forged cards have amounted to hundreds of millions of yen. At stake is the security of deposits. Action is urgently needed on two fronts: crime prevention and loss compensation.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 5, 2005

Kerel Zebrakovsky

Karel Zebrakovsky, ambassador of the Czech Republic to Japan, came late to the role of diplomat. A man of enthusiasm and wide, cultivated tastes, he finds delight in everything he does, and in the different appointments he has held. He has the right attitude to be representative of his country. "I am...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 5, 2005

National Children's Centers cater to body, spirit

In July 2000, after 15 years heading the International Section of the Children's Castle, Teri Suzanne left the play and educational center in Aoyama, Tokyo, and became a freelance bilingual specialist. Two years later she was employed as program adviser to the 14 National Children's Centers of Japan's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 2, 2005

Miracles of the moment in Saburo Teshigawara's dance

Dancer, choreographer and artist Saburo Teshigawara works in a time zone of his own. In the 24 years since he came on the dance scene, Teshigawara has transformed the definition of movement. His work with his group Karas and major international companies, including the Frankfurt Ballet and the Opera...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jan 31, 2005

Far-fetched redesigns between the lines

NEW YORK -- "Contrapuntal reading," as Edward Said called it, is the ability to read between the lines. The reader must be able to have what is referred to, but not described, play off the main descriptive concern. This ability is particularly important with novels written while empire-building was in...

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb