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Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
May 25, 2002

Amalia Lior

Since its founding in 1959, the Japan-Israel Women's Welfare Organization has usually invited the wife of the Israeli ambassador to Japan to be its honorary president. Each one who has accepted the position has praised the organization and devoted herself to promoting its activities and aims. Amalia,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
May 24, 2002

Off home in a blaze of space, light and shadow

For the past three years, the painter Beau Bernstein has lived a quiet and contemplative life in Kyoto. That is not to say he hasn't been busy. When the native New Yorker closes his Kyoto studio in July and returns to Manhattan, he'll take back with him an impressive new series of oil paintings.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 22, 2002

Theo Bleckmann and Ben Monder

Vocalist Theo Bleckmann only occasionally sings in an identifiable language, a trait that reinforces the impression that he is of another world, a messenger graced with an ethereal sense of beauty and a childlike fascination for exploring the unknown. His style is evocative and beckoning rather than...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
May 22, 2002

From the edges of 'reality'

At the most basic level of classification, most paintings can be assigned to one of two broad but fairly clear-cut categories: representational or abstract. This is to say that what appears on the canvas has generally evolved either from people, places or things found in the real world; or from ideas...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 19, 2002

A lost textile art gains ascendancy

THE WORLD OF ROZOME: Wax-Resist Textiles of Japan, by Betsy Sterling Benjamin. Kodansha International, 2002, 224 pp., $49.95 (paper) If the art of "rozome" (wax-resist dyeing) were a moon in the sky, it would be full and glowing brightly. Having waned in importance as a textile-patterning process at...
Japan Times
JAPAN / MUSEUM MUSINGS
May 18, 2002

Pieces at Tokyo furniture museum all miniature history lessons: curator

A piece of furniture speaks volumes about history, lifestyles and people's sense of beauty, according to Masashi Saito, curator of the Furniture Museum in Tokyo's Harumi district.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 16, 2002

Summer's serenaders of the moon, sun and stars

Summer really is here. It has spread north so rapidly that June- and July-like temperatures were reported in Hokkaido even before the end of April. The cherry blossom wave rushed northward, too, at such a pace it was as if it were trying to take a running jump at Sakhalin.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 15, 2002

Art macht frei

"Arbeit macht frei (Work brings freedom)" were the words famously written above the gates of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where Austrian-born artist Friedl Dicker-Brandeis was murdered in a gas chamber on Oct. 9, 1944. Friedl's life, however, had been devoted to a different, truer precept:...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 12, 2002

Making each note dance on the wind

In 1968, at the age of 13, Akikazu Nakamura began playing electric guitar. A few years later, he discovered that one of his favorite bands, King Crimson, counted contemporary classical music among their influences. Intrigued, Nakamura pursued this thread and soon discovered "November Steps" by the composer...
COMMUNITY
May 5, 2002

Raising model children

From a fairly early age, my two children have done modeling work. They've posed for clothing catalogs, appeared on magazine covers and in J-pop videos, rubbed elbows with TV celebrities. They aren't mini-supermodels or chaidoru (child idols) -- thank God -- just your garden-variety kid models.
LIFE / Language
May 3, 2002

Never too young to start making a difference

You don't have to wait until you're grown up to be counted. In fact, if you're between 10 and 12 years old, you're the perfect age to take part in the International Children's Conference on the Environment. And to start thinking of how to preserve and improve the world that you are living in.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 28, 2002

If you like pina colada . . .

Singer, songwriter, guitarist, dancer, entertainer -- any of these titles are appropriate for describing the versatile Latin American star Shakira. But it's the combination of all these together that makes her such an explosive performer.
Japan Times
JAPAN / MUSEUM MUSINGS
Apr 27, 2002

Craftsmen keep alive hair ornaments that were all the rage in Edo Period

The display of fine Japanese hair ornaments at Tsumami-Kanzashi Museum in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward illustrates a small world of plums, cherry blossoms, chrysanthemums, chestnuts, bees and phoenixes created with pieces of colorful silk.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 27, 2002

When a contract contracts, and what comes after

Visitors to Hakone last autumn are most probably still talking about it. How they were in a cable car and saw a Japanese man in another car, traveling in the opposite direction, standing on his head and swiveling his hips 180 degrees with legs splayed open.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Apr 21, 2002

Veteran lensman sets his sights high

After 30 years, Takashi Iwahashi hasn't lost any enthusiasm for his work. Even at age 57, he spends an average of 120 days a year on the world's mountain peaks and ridges, capturing their beauty on film.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Apr 17, 2002

Into the woods today: mourning nature's demise

Japanese cultural life has long revolved around the changing of the seasons, in particular, and nature, in general. Or has it? The differences between Japanese sensibilities toward nature and those generally held by Westerners have been much discussed. Yet it is interesting to note that, when used to...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Apr 9, 2002

Biblical reserve echoes Noah's 'two by two'

A visit to Israel is probably not high on your list of tourism priorities at the moment, but should the situation calm down and the killings and fighting stop, here's one to consider: The Biblical Wildlife Reserve of Hai-Bar Yotvata.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Apr 9, 2002

Biblical reserve echoes Noah's 'two by two'

A visit to Israel is probably not high on your list of tourism priorities at the moment, but should the situation calm down and the killings and fighting stop, here's one to consider: The Biblical Wildlife Reserve of Hai-Bar Yotvata.
MORE SPORTS
Apr 8, 2002

Arrow Carry bags jewel

TAKARAZUKA, Hyogo Pref. -- The 62nd running of the Okasho (Japan's equivalent of the 1,000 Guineas) went to longshot Arrow Carry, which turned the tables on the top picks to win by 1 1/4 length.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 3, 2002

Dance artist of his floating world

As a principal dancer with the Royal Ballet from 1993 to 1998, Tetsuya Kumakawa was a sensation on stage at Covent Garden. London's discerning audiences thrilled to the incomparable ability of this boyish young man, just 21 when he became the first Japanese male dancer to take center stage with the company....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Apr 3, 2002

In the realms of the spirits

"Ghosts, we hope, may be always with us -- that is, never too far out of the reach of fancy." So wrote British novelist Elizabeth Bowen in the preface to her "Second Ghost Book," published in 1952.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Mar 30, 2002

Yoshikazu Uehata

The University of Keele came into existence in 1962, succeeding the previous University of North Staffordshire, England. It occupies what was once the extensive estate of the Sneyd family, 19th century landowners and industrialists. Extensive grounds surround a magnificent 16th century hall that is still...
LIFE / Language / KANJI CLINIC
Mar 29, 2002

Seize the reins and blaze your own kanji-learning trail

Dear Dario Simunovic,
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Mar 27, 2002

Pet Shop Boys: 'Release'

More than 16 years ago, Neil Tennant emerged as the Noel Coward of dance pop when he and fellow Pet Shop Boy Chris Lowe exhorted all the young dudes to "make lots of money." Like the playwright, Tennant sauntered on to the scene fully jaded, his wit already acerbic, his ironies prickly with cynicism....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 24, 2002

Shaping up nicely

There is something about landscaped Japanese gardens that suggests timelessness, a phenomenon apparently contrary to that Japanese tendency to locate beauty in what is fleeting in this world.
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 21, 2002

Blooms tell curious tale of two cities

Ninet years ago, on March 27, 1912, passersby on the northern bank of the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C. may have been surprised to see two elegant ladies digging holes. They may have been even more surprised had they known that the women were Helen Taft, wife of U.S. President William Howard Taft,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Mar 20, 2002

Francis Lockwood: 'Jimi's Colors'

Re-thinking Jimi Hendrix in terms of an acoustic jazz piano trio would seem to be a bit of a stretch. It comes as a surprise, then, that Francis Lockwood's new release, "Jimi's Colors" -- which does just that -- works so well. On listening, however, unexpected similarities reveal themselves.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
Mar 17, 2002

A music man with a mission

Imagine, after years of immersion and study in Western music, discovering the rarefied beauty of Japanese music. Simple aspects of music, previously taken for granted, suddenly take on significant roles. Silence extends between notes and enlivens the idea of pause. An errant breath blows through bamboo,...

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