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Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 22, 2002

Pecs, posing and living sculpture

"The main thing I want people to understand is that bodybuilding is the real thing. Bodybuilders are doing what all athletes are doing -- dieting, working out. There are no secrets to it. But, if all people see is a bunch of oiled, near-naked guys striking poses up on stage, they're going to think it's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Sep 18, 2002

Juan Jose Mosalini and Buenos Aires Tango Quintet

Tango has been variously described as a duel, a surrender, a labyrinth -- and the truest manifestation of the Argentine soul. It is so uninhibited and passionate that it was considered corrupting and sinful, which of course is why it's so wonderful. The image of a couple in skin-tight clothes twirling...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Sep 18, 2002

Two dimensions good, three dimensions better

I got some positive feedback on my review last week of the Doug Aitken show at the Tokyo Opera City Gallery. My remark, "I just don't like visiting galleries to sit on the floor and watch videos," struck a chord with a number of readers. Not that I don't like video and new media art, but most galleries...
LIFE / Travel
Sep 17, 2002

Breaking down the barriers

SEOUL -- A merican presidents, soccer stars, paying tourists and the occasional squad of Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders airlifted in to boost U.S. troop morale regularly bus through select checkpoints in the Korean demilitarized zone, but otherwise this 246-km-long, 4 km-wide strip of land is one desolate...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 15, 2002

A river of ill repute

THE MEKONG: Turbulent Past, Uncertain Future, by Milton Osborn. Allen & Unwin, 2001, 295 pp., b/w & color photos, $25 (cloth) The waters of the Mekong, the world's 12th-longest and Southeast Asia's foremost river, do not, like the Thames, run sweetly. Nor have they inspired poets to dream on the river's...
COMMUNITY
Sep 15, 2002

Love in a lovelorn land

Once upon a time, at a temple where homeless families were sheltering after a fire, a girl and a boy fell in love. Months passed. The burned-out neighborhood was rebuilt. The lovers were separated. Oh, misery! Oh, fleeting, unreal world!
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 15, 2002

Making music seem like child's play

Giants of the financial world and famed for more than two centuries as patrons of the arts (Mendelssohn and Chopin were among their many beneficiaries), the Rothschilds also nurtured an acclaimed musical talent of their own: soprano Charlotte de Rothschild.
COMMUNITY
Sep 15, 2002

Did Plato's Republic find a spiritual home in Japan?

Four hundred and two years ago this week, a battle was fought near the village of Sekigahara, 40 km northwest of Nagoya. Though short -- it was over soon after lunchtime -- the battle was decisive, ushering in . . . Plato's Republic?
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2002

U.S. plants tree as symbol of appreciation

Nancy Kassebaum Baker, wife of U.S. Ambassador Howard Baker, thanked the Japanese people Wednesday for their support following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States.
CULTURE / Film / CLOSE-UP
Sep 1, 2002

Films, Zen, Japan

Donald Richie is regarded as the leading Western authority on Japanese film. He first came to Japan in 1947 as a civilian typist for the U.S. Occupational forces -- an intelligent, restless 22-year-old in search of purpose.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / CLOSE-UP
Sep 1, 2002

Films, Zen, Japan

Donald Richie is regarded as the leading Western authority on Japanese film. He first came to Japan in 1947 as a civilian typist for the U.S. Occupational forces -- an intelligent, restless 22-year-old in search of purpose.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Aug 31, 2002

Madhu Jain

"My exhibition in Japanese-style painting portraying Indian imagery was an exciting challenge for me, as it uses a relatively unknown medium. At times I struggled late into the night to bring about the desired effects. When suddenly I could see the subject emerge with the brilliance of its pigments against...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 28, 2002

Spoon: "Kill the Moonlight"

Since forming in the early '90s, the Austin, Texas, band Spoon has continually sharpened its sound to such a fine edge that its new album, "Kill the Moonlight," could conceivably be performed live with only singer-songwriter Britt Daniels on vocals, drummer Jim Eno on tambourine and a tape of the simple...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 28, 2002

A total feast for the eyes

This is total theater. Shinkyogeki, new-style Beijing Opera, is a combination of almost every performing art known to the East and the West. It should be a cross-cultural mess -- but it's not. At its best, as in the staging of "Yang-kui-fei and Abe-no-Nakamaro," which is now touring Japan, it's breathtaking....
Japan Times
JAPAN / WEEKEND WISDOM
Aug 25, 2002

Hamako fires from the lips at today's lackluster Diet ranks

There have been many politicians who were well-known for their outspokenness while still serving in the legislature.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 21, 2002

Trance music: Taking it to the next level

When deep into the music at a trance party, most people dance a sort of mechanized primal stomp, working their arms like pistons and clomping their feet. Although these maneuvers may look awkward, they are a natural reaction to the music's rigidly 4/4 industrial-sounding beats, which, though sublime...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 18, 2002

A man of truly noble blood

In 1987, Salif Keita released "Soro," and, though it was not his first album, for many listeners around the world it served as an introduction to the musician's unique sound: soaring West African-style vocals set to a new blend of traditional African rhythms and electric pop arrangements. He matched...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 18, 2002

Living Dead returns with 'group gestalt'

Bob Weir says he can use some serious beach time. The former Grateful Dead guitarist and vocalist is taking a breather a short while after bounding off stage following a well-received set by his band RatDog at last weekend's Mount Fuji Jazz Festival.
JAPAN
Aug 14, 2002

Daughter of deceased hijacker hopes to visit grandma's grave

The daughter of a deceased Red Army Faction hijacking fugitive has expressed her intention to visit her grandmother's grave on her first visit to Japan, possibly next month.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2002

Toil -- you're on candid canvas

In the mid-19th century, the French village of Barbizon was the artistic equivalent of the reality-TV show "Big Brother." In this tiny village with a population of just 352 (according to the 1872 census), the locals were under constant observation by the 100 or so artists reputedly living among them....
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 11, 2002

Old Edo's many-splendored glories

The Tokugawa Shogunate may have been crumbling, and Commodore Perry's "Black Ships" may have been tearing aside the veil behind which Japan hid from the world for more than 200 years . . . but the commoners of eastern Edo were preoccupied with other matters: A craze for potted plants was sweeping the...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Aug 7, 2002

Scientist at Work

The music of trumpeter Frank London could be characterized as a product of "Radical Jewish Culture," a term coined by John Zorn that refers to post-Holocaust generations of Jews discovering on their own terms the meaning of their faith. London has spent the past couple of decades at the ancient intersections...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 6, 2002

Tussling over a stolen treasure

ATHENS -- In 1801, Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin and British ambassador to Constantinople, hit upon what he considered a splendid idea.
COMMUNITY
Aug 4, 2002

Stars in your eyes: fireworks in Japan

Living with Tokyo Disney Resort in their midst, residents of Urayasu in Chiba Prefecture can enjoy its fireworks displays every night in summer. Even for them, though, the annual Noryo Fireworks Festival is something else altogether.
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 1, 2002

Tokyo's paradise isle under threat

Mikura Island in the Izu Islands south of Tokyo is a spectacular natural paradise known the world over for its community of bottlenose dolphins, estimated to be almost as numerous as the island's 240 inhabitants.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 30, 2002

Counting the cost of marketing tradition

The archaeologist, picking over the dust of the past, will unearth few items to help him reconstruct a history of the Laotian hill tribes. Here there are no monuments to cultures or civilizations past: no temples, stupas, ancestral halls, foundations of lost villages or images of deities carved into...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 28, 2002

A mother lode of beauty and horror

THE STONE OF HEAVEN: The Secret History of Imperial Green Jade, by Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark. Orion, 2002, 352 pp., 8.99 British pounds (paper) This book is one of a newly emerging genre: history told from the viewpoint of a single item. Other studies have already looked at subjects that ranged...
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ARCHIPELA-GO
Jul 23, 2002

A village welcomes visitors to preserve itself

Timing is everything with Shirakawago. Arrive midafternoon on a fine weekend in spring, especially around Golden Week, and you could be forgiven for wondering why you bothered coming in the first place. Unless you have a fondness for shoulder-to-shoulder stadium-size crowds, the delights of Shirakawago...

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