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CULTURE / Film
Jan 23, 2001

Lock, stock and instant noodles

Here's a word association game for you. What comes to mind when you hear "Thai cinema?" A blank? Don't worry -- in Japan, you're hardly alone.
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 23, 2001

Keeping it all in the family

The Kabukiza Theater in Tokyo is starting 2001 with special programs to celebrate the succession (shumei) of Yasosuke Bando, 45, to the prestigious stage name Mitsugoro Bando X, left to him by his father Mitsugoro IX on his death in April 1999.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 19, 2001

Understanding the power of evil

Hamlet's views on man are well known: "What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! In form and moving how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world!" (II-ii, 315-20)
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Jan 18, 2001

Oranges for body and soul

Continuing with our citrus theme from the previous column, today we'll discover a few more uses of the spiritually potent, beautifying, healing orange and its citrus relatives.
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jan 17, 2001

Botswana's delta a force of nature

The Okavango delta (or "the Delta" as it's known by those in the know) is not a swamp, at least not in the conventionally unpleasant sense of the word.
JAPAN
Jan 14, 2001

Making gardens accessible proving a slippery path

Legend has it that when the Koishikawa Korakuen Garden in Bunkyo Ward was built in the early Edo Period, it boasted gigantic rocks and majestic, ancient trees reminiscent of the steep mountains and dark valleys of China.
CULTURE / Art
Jan 14, 2001

Pursuing Japan's great love affair with Toulouse-Lautrec

The Japanese love Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901). His art is lively and interesting, and strong Japanese influences can be detected in it. The current exhibition at the Tobu Museum of Art makes much of this mutual admiration, with the French artist's work revealing his love for Japan while the...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jan 14, 2001

Sandra Gamo

Sandra Gamo is just old enough to be able to say that she was "a rare species" in the late 1950s, when she was a bilingual Pan American Airways flight hostess. In those days few young women in this part of the world had achieved her level of two languages, poise and presence. Remarkably, and very early...
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jan 13, 2001

Pottery with a Korean foundation

A simple fact to begin the Ceramic Scene 21st century: Many great Japanese ceramic traditions of western Japan began with Korean potters.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 8, 2001

Tomorrow today in Tokyo

TOKYO X. Photographs by Shunji Ohkura. Afterword translated by Ralph McCarthy, captions translated by Shii Ichiba, envoi by Giles Murray. Tokyo: Kodansha Intl., 2000, 216 pp., 251 plates with endpapers, 3,800 yen. In the afterword to this remarkable collection of pictures, the photographer says that...
CULTURE / Art
Jan 6, 2001

Gentility of famed Wedgwood

Despite fears that England is increasingly becoming an unpleasant and vulgar country with an antisocial yob culture, internationally it is still blessed with an image of civilized gentility.
CULTURE / Film
Jan 5, 2001

A film genius in his own mind

Harmony Korine -- screenwriter of "Kids," director of "Gummo" -- fancies himself the enfant terrible of contemporary cinema. Well, he is . . . terrible. Certain critics have been calling him "the new Godard," and I'd agreewith that too. But when was the last time Godard made anything that played better...
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Jan 4, 2001

Festive citrus delights to brighten up the new year

If there is a companion plant to the evergreen that is so characteristic of this time of year, it must be the orange or one of its immediate relatives: the tangerine, the clementine, the mandarin, or even the citron or grapefruit.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jan 3, 2001

Kicking up a stink about smelling as natural as a skunk

While beauty traditionally belongs to the beholder's eye, correct hygiene might be better ascribed to his or her nose.
CULTURE / Art
Dec 30, 2000

Simple tea, the soul-soother

Japan , a hectic, densely-populated country, has always been guilty of overloading the senses. It is only natural that here too an ameliorating aesthetic should have developed. This is best expressed by the calmness and simplicity of the tea ceremony.
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 23, 2000

Anything but ordinary

With the title "Raj Packet -- Everything But Ravi," you can't help but be curious about the performance. "Raj" possibly indicates something to do with British sovereignty over India in the last century;"packet" could be compendium, maybe a selection box of performance chocolates; "everything" as in "everything...
LIFE / Digital
Dec 20, 2000

Gifts galore for the gadget lover

Japan constantly churns out high-tech gadgets, and Christmas is a great time to buy the best.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 13, 2000

Book bites

SHONEN: Where It All Started, by Yuji Ando. Kabushiki gaisha 22, 6-6-16 Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-0052. 80 pp., 3,000 yen (cloth). This beautiful bilingual book is basically an album of paintings by the well-known artist Yuji Ando, depicting his memories of a rural Japanese childhood in a setting...
CULTURE / Art
Dec 9, 2000

Bringing Russia and Japan together

Permit me a brief personal anecdote if you will: Some 20 years ago, a cold December night in Toronto found me inspired to chip, using my house keys, a few raisin-sized shards of concrete from the base of that city's newly-constructed CN Tower. Friends I mailed the little gray jewels to would later remark...
LIFE / Travel
Dec 7, 2000

Popularity of Aso region both blessing and burden

FUKUOKA -- Kumamoto Prefecture's mountainous Aso region is a place where you could get drunk on nature's immensity. Swing your car onto Aso's Panorama Line road, step on the accelerator and you'll fly past grassy plains stretching upward to the green-tipped crags of Mount Aso and its five peaks. Here,...
LIFE / ALTERNATIVE LUXURIES
Dec 7, 2000

Traditions found anew

"It's only recently that the great mass of Indians have begun to feel that rising in the world and becoming rich was a good thing, a valuable thing," says Asha Amemiya.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Dec 7, 2000

Counting down to Christmas in gold and silver

When you're getting into a Christmas mood, nothing expresses this festive state better than sparkly, shimmery, glimmery things, and when it comes to buying special gifts from the beauty realm, there is plenty of that sparkly stuff out there to choose from.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 28, 2000

Miserable every step of the way

REDISCOVERING NATSUME SOSEKI, with the first English translation of "Travels in Manchuria and Korea." Introduction and translation by Inger Sigrun Brodey and Sammy I. Tsunematsu. Folkestone, Kent: Global Books, 2000, 155 pp., 24 b/w plates, 2,950 yen. In the autumn of 1909, Natsume Soseki, already...
CULTURE / Music
Nov 26, 2000

Looking up so tears won't fall

Tragedy crushes some people, twists and mangles them in ways from which they never recover. Others emerge stronger, as if all the pressure had fused to produce a diamond. Violin prodigy Diana Yukawa shows such sparkle.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Nov 25, 2000

Jury is back on Mashiko exhibition

Mashiko is a name that many of you are familiar with, I'm sure. It is the name of a town in Tochigi Prefecture, as well as an internationally recognized pottery style made famous by the late Shoji Hamada. Today hundreds of potters reside there, and many come from around the world to study or pay their...
LIFE / Travel
Nov 15, 2000

The yellow (or white or blue) treasure of Kaliningrad

Monopoly is not a word you would naturally associate with Kaliningrad. Yet the tiny Russian enclave possesses a remarkable -- and entirely natural -- one: amber. Ninety percent of the world's commercial amber comes from just one site, the open-pit amber quarry at Yantarny on Kaliningrad's Baltic coast....
CULTURE / Art
Nov 15, 2000

Taking inspiration where you find it

TOKUSHIMA -- Californian furniture maker Cynthia Kingsbury works in a 100-year-old timber storage building at the foot of a lushly forested mountain in Tokushima Prefecture. Dried sticks are piled like kindling beneath her worktable. Her dog Tingi, a black Labrador-Doberman mix, is sprawled across a...
JAPAN
Nov 12, 2000

Playing princess dress-up in Himeji

HIMEJI, Hyogo Pref. -- When tourists visit the city of Himeji, they should not miss the opportunity to visit Himeji Castle, a national treasure and the first historical property in Japan registered on the U.N. World Heritage List.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 12, 2000

Japan's not-so-silent media conspiracy

Some months ago I went up to Tohoku to give a public lecture sponsored by a television station. After the talk there was a delightful, informal dinner, during which I chatted with an old friend, a producer at the station.

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