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Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / STYLE WISE
Sep 9, 2010

Fashion that blooms, rocks, roars and parties

Blooming T-shirts!
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 27, 2010

Immersed in epic visions of nature

It is as epic as it is arresting. With a gentle whirr, thousands of white feathers are blown into the air in a vast clear space where they proceed to toss and tumble like snowflakes.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Aug 21, 2010

It takes a lot of guts in Katakana Land

One struggle in learning Japanese is getting a grip on all the various loan words that have slipped into the vernacular from abroad.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2010

'Colorful'

One of the iron rules for Hollywood scriptwriters is that the audience must root for the hero. Character flaws and bad behavior are permitted, but, in the final analysis, the hero should not be a jerk.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 13, 2010

'The Sorcerer's Apprentice'/'How to Train Your Dragon'

There's a bit in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," Disney's shameless attempt to siphon off some of that "Harry Potter" cash flow, where a wizard played by Nicholas Cage is lecturing his young protege on how to conjure magic. The trick to sorcery, says Cage, is to tap all one's mental faculties; most people,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 8, 2010

Getting high in the highlands

High in the Northern Alps of Japan there are snowfields in August. Up above the tree line, wherever the bare geology dips into cirques, thick blankets of dirty white stretch out between the peaks and jagged ridges like caught clouds.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 6, 2010

'The Men Who Stare at Goats'

Reality, wrote Philip K. Dick, is what's still there even after you stop believing in it. Thus an enlightened man in our age of science may well speculate on the notion that our bodies, like the walls of the room we are in, are all made up of atoms. And atoms, for their part, contain a lot of empty space....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 30, 2010

'Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Natsu (Japan's Longest Summer)'/'Ishii Teruo: Eiga Tamashi (Teruo Ishii: The Soul of Film)'

August is the season in Japan for a never-ending stream of films and TV programs about World War II. Quite naturally, from the Japanese perspective, most of this outpouring examines the war's closing days, particularly the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some outsiders (including this one)...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 25, 2010

On the hunt for snakes and dragons in Chinatown

Two years back I reviewed "Year of the Dog," about the exploits of detective Jack Yu, the creation of Chinese-American author Henry Chang, who portrayed New York's Chinatown as a frightfully sordid place. Yu, besides being forced to endure the slings and arrows of a race- baiting police department, suffered...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 23, 2010

Poll thunder Down Under

SYDNEY — Two untested political leaders with no new policies to offer but with lots of vocal thunder — that's how Australians view the current battle for Canberra. By election day Aug. 21, when every eligible Australian adult is required by law to vote, the thunder will be sounding mighty hollow....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 23, 2010

Mexican metal act Moderatto hope to swap tequila for sake

Although their name may sound like the Spanish cognate for "moderate," parody glam-rock band Moderatto are anything but.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jul 10, 2010

An odor by any other name

Draw a big breath and admit it. Japan smells.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 9, 2010

'Surely Someday'

The seishun eiga (youth movie) is an important, long-established genre in Japanese films with no exact parallel in the West. The difference is not the theme as such — films about teenagers are hardly rare in Hollywood — but rather their numbers and angle of approach. The Japanese industry produces...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 9, 2010

Komura Settai finds a new modern audience

It is often difficult to fathom how an artist so popular in his own time slides into oblivion in subsequent generations. 2010 has been a good year for one such artist, Komura Settai (1887-1940), who in his time was a prolific creator, producing illustrations, woodblock prints and stage designs. His recent...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / JAPAN TIMES BLOGROLL
Jul 7, 2010

thatjapanesegirl

Her moniker on YouTube says it all — born and raised in Kyoto, thatjapanesegirl has lived in Japan all her life, moving to Tokyo just this year. With more than 24,000 subscribers to her two YouTube channels, thatjapanese girl, who prefers to withhold her real name, is one of Japan's most viewed English-speaking...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / Japan Pulse
Jun 29, 2010

Designers rock the yukata

Buoyed by a renewed popularity in made-in-Japan traditions, designers are updating the yukata of summer with both retro and modern designs.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 27, 2010

Still shy of reversion after all these years

NEW YORK — Just about the time Yukio Hatoyama resigned as Japan's prime minister, apologizing to the Okinawa people in tears, I was writing about the last day of Yukio Mishima's life — Nov. 25, 1970.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 20, 2010

Pulp fiction raunch with a happy ending

Yoshihiro Tatsumi was, when young, a fan of Mickey Spillane, the poor man's — the very poor man's — Raymond Chandler, and Spillane's fingerprints are all over "Black Blizzard," a page-turner in the best pulp style, published in 1956.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 6, 2010

Art rebel without a cause

Pulse waves from the art world of the early 20th Century may have been felt far and wide, but the movements, practitioners and individual works of art themselves were far from being globally coordinate.
EDITORIALS
Jun 3, 2010

A disappointing departure

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama resigned Wednesday, nine months after bringing historic change to Japanese politics by ending more than five decades of almost uninterrupted Liberal Democratic Party rule.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jun 1, 2010

Gunma city does battle with beards

I would like to draw readers' attention to the outstanding work of the municipal government of Isesaki, Gunma Prefecture. After receiving complaints that citizens find bearded men unpleasant, Isesaki — just as all levels of Japanese government often do — took decisive action to address an important...
COMMENTARY / World
May 28, 2010

Thai 'multiparty' turmoil not lost on China's rulers

BEIJING — Whatever the effects of political turmoil in Thailand, they have not helped the cause of democracy in China. The images of prodemocracy protesters and the subsequent military crackdown in downtown Bangkok have been openly shown in Chinese media without any apparent bias. Indeed, there is...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
May 22, 2010

The bright career of a literary 'shadow hero'

American author Paul Auster once called translators "the shadow heroes of literature," who have enabled us to understand that we all live in one world. He could also be describing Juliet Winters Carpenter, 61, one of the best-known literary translators from Japanese to English, who has won praise for...
JAPAN
May 15, 2010

Carrying on the art of silent film narration

Midori Sawato knows how to act, from princess to samurai to thief — but only with her voice.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
May 10, 2010

Apartment shares in Japan draw a share of the herd

Rents aren't getting any lower, but if you're willing to share, you might end up with a pretty cool place to live.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 7, 2010

Crime scene investigation: Edo

The original U.S. TV series "CSI (Crime Scene Investigation)," set in Las Vegas, has been so successful that it has almost grown into a franchise, with "CSI: Miami," "CSI: NY," and "CSI: Triology." After visiting the "Ryoma Den" exhibition at the Edo-Tokyo Museum, which looks at the life of the 19th-century...
JAPAN
May 5, 2010

Secondhand market grows

When Chie Matsumoto buys anything — from a DVD player to golf goods to a telephone — she now chooses secondhand goods because brand-new items aren't necessarily what she needs.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
May 1, 2010

By the pricking of my thumbs, something yummy this way comes

Every time I return to the States I cannot help but feel a bit . . . evil.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 30, 2010

'The Box'/'9'

You'd be hard-pressed to find more than a handful of certifiably cult movies from the past decade, but Richard Kelly's "Donnie Darko" (2001) is definitely one of them. This strange hybrid about a troubled teen and his invisible friend (a giant evil-looking rabbit named Frank) could best be described...

Longform

Rock group The Yellow Monkey played K-Arena Yokohama in June as part of a nationwide tour. Concerts are increasingly popular in the age of social media as users value in-person experiences.
Inside Japan’s arena boom: Sports, sound and city-building