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JAPAN / Science & Health
Aug 6, 2014

Reform panel chief says STAP researcher's suicide could have been prevented

Yoshiki Sasai's suicide could have been avoided if the Riken institute had implemented reforms and accepted his resignation months ago, the former head of an independent panel says.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 16, 2014

Noh master Gensho appears to know no bounds on stage

Noh is a performing art originally developed by and for the samurai class that has continued without a break for 700 years — a mighty span through which Umewaka Rokuro Gensho, as the 56th-generation head of the Rokuro Umewaka family, can trace his lineage.
Japan Times
WORLD
Mar 23, 2014

Germans finally start poking fun at the Fuhrer

If Hitler were alive today, would he become a standup comic? Incredible though that may sound to anyone who lived through World War II, that is the scenario sketched out in "Look Who's Back," a satirical novel by Timur Vermes, which topped the best-seller lists in Germany after its publication in 2012...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 22, 2014

Motley crew of foreigners backing Japan's revisionists basks in media glare

In the war of words — particularly with South Korea and China — over World War II-era issues that has intensified over the past 18 months, foreigners — both Westerners and Asians — have also waded into the fray.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 23, 2013

Ozeki's work reflects her complex identity

Ruth Ozeki's recent novel, the 2013 Man Booker-shortlisted "A Tale For the Time Being," is best described as a hybrid: a fictional masterpiece with footnotes and appendices like a research paper; a colorful scrawl of inventive creativity marked by scientific asides ranging from ocean gyres to quantum...
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 16, 2013

The day JFK died: Fifty years on, the assassination still haunts Americans

The murder of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963, forever changed America. I was 16 years old when it happened, and still haven't fully come to terms with it. The indelible sense of loss and still-unanswered questions — How it could have been allowed to happen? Who was behind...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 14, 2013

Scottish police corruption has never been so fun

Oftentimes authors whose books are adapted into movies are left to sit at home and simmer as directors make the rounds saying how their "reimagining" of the work was necessary to make it a better cinematic experience, blah, blah, blah, while every fan of the novel knows exactly how it was butchered....
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 11, 2013

For Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the subject is 'simply life itself'

In describing Alice Munro, the Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood once wrote: "She's the kind of writer about whom it is often said — no matter how well-known she becomes — that she ought to be better known."
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Oct 8, 2013

Backlash against Miyazaki is generational

If you haven't lived in Japan, it's hard to appreciate just how beloved are anime maestro Hayao Miyazaki and his creative hub, Studio Ghibli.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Sep 21, 2013

Upgrading from four wheels to two or three

Careening through the winding streets of Chennai, India, in the back of black and yellow auto-rickshaws, I am always amazed by the drivers' audacity — or perhaps a better term would be "death wish." These are the subcontinent's equivalent of New York's exuberant cabbies, but these drivers are much...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 7, 2013

The murky past of Pope Francis: Is he really so humble?

I don't remember hearing the name of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis in March, or any of his fellow Argentinian Jesuits when I was in Buenos Aires in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They seemed strangely silent in such harrowing times when the fundaments of decent civilization were being set...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Aug 24, 2013

Reflecting at leisure on who we are and where we live

My day job as a professor in Japan offers precious few chances to take a step back from work and give the old brain a bit of free rein. But August is one such golden opportunity.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Aug 21, 2013

Influential crime novelist Leonard dies at 87

Elmore Leonard, a masterful crime novelist whose razor-sharp dialogue and indelibly realized lowlifes earned him an unusual mix of mass-market appeal and highbrow acclaim, dies at his home in Michigan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 13, 2013

Illuminating the interplay between Japanese poetry and pictures

This cleverly titled book combines two subjects, for the "art" that it describes is not just the art of haiku composition but that of the pictures that frequently accompany the poems, often by the same person. "If haiku is a worldwide phenomenon, haiga (haiku painting) is almost unknown," says the author....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 6, 2013

Challenging our notion of currency

When an American explorer named William Henry Furness III arrived on the remote Pacific island of Yap at the start of the last century, he found a scarcely touched place that made his previous destination of Borneo look almost developed.
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Jun 12, 2013

Preserving a classic Japanese art form: tokusatsu magic

Our monster is scaly, spiky, reptilian — a cross between a dinosaur and an irradiated insect that shrieks like an angry bird. Our hero is lean, faintly muscular in a rubbery skintight suit with inscrutable praying-mantis eyes. They face one another, stomping left to right like sumo wrestlers, posing...
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jun 11, 2013

Can brain scans explain crime?

University of Pennsylvania neuroscientist Adrian Raine, author of "The Anatomy of Violence," believes that advances in brain imagery are helping to explain the biological roots of crime. American Enterprise Institute scholar and psychiatrist Sally Satel, co-author of "Brainwashed," is wary of the seduction...
Japan Times
WORLD
Jun 3, 2013

Liberal hawks mum on U.S. intervention in Syria

For interests on both sides of Syria's civil war, the past two weeks have been the time to increase the pressure. Hezbollah sent reinforcements to the troops of President Bashar Assad, and Russia reiterated its intention to furnish the regime with weapons. At the same time, Republican Sen. John McCain...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 14, 2013

Digging for insights on foreigners living in Japan from some of the most prominent figures

Donald Richie, prolific author of more than 40 books and longtime contributor to The Japan Times, died in February at age 88. April 17 was his birthday, so this review pays tribute by sharing some of the insights he passed on during an interview, one of 12 in this book, conducted four years ago.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 17, 2013

Playing to the beat of the gods

TAIKO BOOM: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion, by Shawn Bender. University of California Press, 2012, 259?pp., $29.95 (paperback)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 10, 2013

Providing lessons on nuclear policy

FALLOUT FROM FUKUSHIMA, by Richard Broinowski. Scribe Publications, 2012, 273 pp., A$27.95 (paperback)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 10, 2013

Japan's animal spirits

BONES OF CONTENTION: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan, by Barbara R. Ambros. University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 255 pp., $29 (paperback)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 3, 2013

Escaping one's demons through an epic trek

WILD: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed. Knopf, 2012, 336 pp., $25.95 (hardcover) In this hugely entertaining book, Cheryl Strayed takes the redemptive nature of travel — a theme as old as literature itself — and makes it her own. For three months she hiked 1,100 miles...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 25, 2013

'Life of Pi'

Director Ang Lee's adaptation of author Yann Martel's Man Booker Prize-winning "Life of Pi" feels almost like two films sandwiched into one. In the core, you have the succulent special-effects-driven story of a young Indian survivor of a shipwreck who's adrift in a lifeboat with a man-eating Bengal tiger....
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
Jan 21, 2013

Lincoln set the bar high for inaugural addresses

He first wrote out his speech in longhand. He had it printed and then cut the text into 27 snippets that he pasted on a sheet of paper. He changed three words and added 15 commas and semicolons.

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.