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CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Mar 27, 2001

Tradition and innovation in modern Celtic music

Julie Murphy and Sharon Shannon are two of the most talented, forward-looking and musically challenging women in Celtic music. Both have captured the spirit of the times, setting a benchmark for a new generation of musicians in their respective traditions. They will soon be performing in Japan with fine...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Mar 25, 2001

Few tasks are tougher than being thoughtless

Meditation increases concentration and mindfulness. That's what this book on Zen meditation says. It instructs me to concentrate for 20 minutes on nothing. Absolutely nothing. One strategy to prevent stray thoughts from entering the mind, the book says, is to concentrate on my breathing.
LIFE / Food & Drink / WINE WAYS
Mar 22, 2001

Raimat's verdant vineyards produce rich variety of wine

I recently enjoyed a trip to the Raimat wineries in Catalonia in Spain's northeast.
JAPAN
Mar 19, 2001

Poll shows public concerned about safety, education

A rising number of Japanese are concerned that public safety and education have worsened over the past few years, according to a government poll.
CULTURE / Film
Mar 18, 2001

Donald Richie: being inside and outside Japanese cinema

In his five decades as a writer, Donald Richie has investigated everything from the glories of noh to the mysteries of the Japanese tattoo, while attempting everything from the travel narrative ("The Inland Sea") to the historical novel (the meticulously researched, wittily engaging "Kumagai"). He is...
CULTURE / Music
Mar 16, 2001

Post-rockers toil in obscurity and they like it like that

Anonymity is the nemesis of pop. History is filled with earnest, well-meaning bands who did whatever they could to keep the music up front and the personalities in the background, often to the point where they wouldn't even reveal their names (like early Pavement). But unless you intend to toil in obscurity...
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Mar 15, 2001

An audacious urge for color

Shimmer and glimmer have been around long enough for their glint and sparkle to start to seem a bit boring, don't you think?
CULTURE / Film
Mar 13, 2001

Our dreams are made of this

Film critics often have a not-so-secret desire to get behind the camera themselves. Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard and Peter Bogdanovich are among those who made the leap successfully, though Bogdanovich returned to writing after his directing career faltered in the mid-'70s. Even thumbs-up critic...
CULTURE / Art
Mar 11, 2001

Swords and chrysanthemums

Modern warfare is increasingly being depersonalized by long-range missiles, so-called smart bombs, and the virtual battlefield of electronic information. The current exhibition at the Nezu Museum takes us back to an era when our dirty work wasn't done for us by computers but was up-close and personal,...
CULTURE / Art
Mar 11, 2001

Bottling everyday beauty on film

With an oeuvre more than a quarter-century in the making, Mamoru Sugiyama is due for a retrospective exhibition. So that is exactly what Tokyo's respected Photo Gallery International has given the 49-year-old photographer, in a show featuring some 30 of Sugiyama's representative black-and-white still-life...
LIFE / Travel
Mar 7, 2001

Krabi: the next 'last paradise'

KRABI, Thailand -- The idea of an unspoiled, untroubled, untouched land has become necessary in our polluted times -- a space where nature as it was is still to be discovered and where we may once more become natural as well. It is a pleasing prospect, this visitable paradise.
COMMENTARY / WASHINGTON UPDATE
Mar 5, 2001

Bush works on tax cuts while Clinton dodges more controversy

WASHINGTON -- "Beauty and the Beast" was on television Monday night -- the movie, not the continuing news saga of our current president and the most recent former one. That show seems to be a never-ending saga.
COMMUNITY
Feb 25, 2001

Top industrial designer to lecture on lunchboxes

The ninth-floor room in Tokyo's Mejiro where Kenji Ekuan receives guests is a perfect reflection of his personality. One wall is stacked with diplomas, photos and portraits, all neatly framed but in no particular order. Opposite, floor-to-ceiling glass shelving is crammed with memorabilia and knickknacks...
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Feb 24, 2001

Names writ in letters of fire

The leading ceramics quarterly Honoho Geijutsu recently published a very interesting survey in its 65th issue, listing the names of the most important (juyo) and popular (ninki) ceramic artists of the 20th century.
CULTURE / Music
Feb 23, 2001

Mukai finds brassy brilliance in the balance

Aristotle said that to achieve beauty, proportion is everything. Shigeharu Mukai has contemporized that ideal into a well-practiced jazz unit that is just the right size: big enough for harmonic textures and soloing variety, but small enough for agility and drive. Mukai's latest release, "Super 4 Brass,"...
LIFE / Food & Drink / WINE WAYS
Feb 22, 2001

Take time to savor the days of wine and oysters

Once again fate finds me back in Japan, wondering what I can enjoy eating here that I can't enjoy back in lovable Leuven, Belgium, where one can have excellent cuisine of all kinds with a glass of well-made wine for a pittance (the norm is the Belgian franc equivalent of under 1,000 yen). It's hard to...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 21, 2001

CWAJ lecture series draws a line

"What characterizes Japanese art is its obsession with lines," says Sumie Jones.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 17, 2001

Ukiyo-e treasures make brief return

The Baur Collection of ukiyo-e woodcuts by several of Japan's top masters is this country's own version of the Elgin Marbles. Perhaps this is why the 200 works are only on display so briefly. If you want to see these excellent examples of print art in their homeland, you have only a short time.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Feb 16, 2001

Scrub a dub dub: DIY spa treatments

Though spring isn't far off, it's that time of year when even the last dregs of winter seem to be lingering too long. To cheer yourself up and conjure up a sense of renewal, give yourself a DIY spa treatment.
COMMUNITY
Feb 15, 2001

A playground for the imagination

From the outside, Minamisawa Steiner Hoshi-no-ko Kodomo-en kindergarten looks much like any other home-run preschool. The two-story house is approached from a quiet side street, and you enter through a garden gate.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 12, 2001

Into the heart of darkness

What is it about deeply rural places and deeply strange religion and sex? In the United States, one has the stereotype of the hills of Appalachia as refuges for snake-handling preachers and cousin-marrying hillbillies. In Japan, one has the mountains of Shikoku in Masato Harada's "Inugami," where ancient...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 11, 2001

Christopher Hughes

Bath in southwestern England, his birthplace and home for his first 18 years, played its part in the makeup of Christopher Hughes. Several generations of his family have lived in that beautiful town of squares, crescents and terraces. Set in a bend of the River Avon and famed since Roman times, Bath...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 8, 2001

Calligraphy: a goodwill ambassador for Japanese culture

MADRID -- I used to take it for granted in my youth that my practice of "sho" (Japanese calligraphy) would bear no relation to my career as a diplomat, but over the past half century I have often found that sho serves as a good topic of conversation with my guests.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 6, 2001

Trauma in a sepia-tinged Kyushu

It's not easy filming the inner lives of human beings. Novelists can go on at length about their protagonist's stream of consciousness (see "Ulysses") while filmmakers cannot show scene after voiced-over scene of that same stream without inducing audience catatonia. See Joseph Strick's misbegotten 1967...
CULTURE / Film
Feb 2, 2001

Johnny Rebels without a cause

When director Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" took off last year on its ascent to critical and commercial success, many film-goers in Japan were left scratching their heads: How did this director of small,family-based melodramas like "The Ice Storm" or "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" suddenly make...
COMMUNITY
Feb 1, 2001

Sophistication with a poignant twist

There is nothing quite like Cosmic Wonder. Since its inception in 1994, the Osaka-based fashion label has gone from being a cult name that only a few aficionados could identify to a sell-out collection at Ray Beams, the most directional of the Beams clothing stores in Tokyo. The company's clothes even...
MORE SPORTS
Jan 30, 2001

Ravens dominate Giants for title

TAMPA, Fla. -- For a while it looked like it might be a game, but in the end it turned into a blowout.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 30, 2001

The brocaded body beautiful

PEAU DE BROCART: Le Corps Tatoue au Japon, by Philippe Pons. Paris: Seuil, 2000, 142 pp., plates (color, b/w) 60, FFr 230 (cloth). Rene Magritte has spoken of someone clad "only in the robe of her skin," and this concept of surface as substance is observed by the tattooing tradition of Japan, the...
COMMUNITY
Jan 28, 2001

Rip'em up, tear 'em up

SAN FRANCISCO -- If you've ever had the pleasure of watching a U.S. college or pro football game on television, you'll notice one thing invariably. Just before the commercial they'll pan to a too-cute-to-be-true cheerleader.
CULTURE / Film
Jan 26, 2001

Many rivers to cross in Les Rivieres Pourpres

On what attracted him to the project -- Matthieu Kassovitz: "The book was a best seller in France, and the producer came to me with the project. Jean was already interested in playing the lead, and I also thought it was a good chance to work with Vincent again. So getting this script was like a big present...

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