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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 10, 2008

The Renaissance Man

Peter Greenaway's first film in eight years is every bit as enigmatic and tantalizing as the painting it takes its name from, Rembrandt van Rijn's "The Night Watch." Completed in 1642, this work in oils is considered by many critics to be the Dutch master's greatest and most mysterious work.
Japan Times
Reference / Special Presentations / WITNESS TO WAR
Jan 5, 2008

Aug. 13 field draftee fast-tracked to Soviet gulag

Fourteenth in a series
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 24, 2007

Christmas letter to Pope Benedict XVI

HONG KONG — Until three years ago, you had a well-earned reputation as the fierce watchdog of the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. You were nicknamed "God's Rottweiler."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 20, 2007

Hokusai's 'Dutch' courage

It might sound a corny to say that artists live through their works, but in the case of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), whose lengthy life story is mired in muddles, myths and myriad name changes, it is his art that speaks with the clearest voice and that provides the scale with which to weigh the words...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Dec 2, 2007

Dalai Lama: Ocean of wit and wisdoms

Lhamo Thondup was born on July 6, 1935 in Taktster, a small village in the Amdo region of northeast Tibet. But neither his parents — farmers who grew barley, buckwheat and potatoes — nor his three elder brothers and one elder sister (a younger sister and brother came later) were to discover his true...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 25, 2007

Tales of Meiji love, lust and drinking tea

Mistress Oriku: Stories from a Tokyo Teahouse by Matsutaro Kawaguchi. Tuttle Publishing, 280 pp., 2007, ¥1,785 (paper) During the middle to late years of the Meiji Era, factories, cement works and commercial shipyards began to spring up like noxious mushrooms along the embankments of Tokyo's Sumida...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 25, 2007

Oh mother, I can feel the soil falling over your head

As shown by the media frenzy sparked by lapses in decorum on the part of women like Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, the value of a person's sins increases exponentially in direct proportion to her fame. Women celebrities are subject to closer scrutiny for their mistakes than are men,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 22, 2007

A taste for blood, arts and culture

One haunting image that lingers in the mind after seeing the exhibition "Legacy of the Tokugawa — The Glories and Treasures of the Last Samurai Dynasty" at the Tokyo National Museum is a carved-wood statue of Ieyasu (1543-1616), the first of the Tokugawa shoguns, now the deity of the Shiba Tosho-gu...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Nov 20, 2007

A support service for sufferers

Phones ring off the hook in the office of VOL-NEXT, a Tokyo-based company that offers various goods and services for women battling breast cancer. Chiharu Soga, the demure 42-year-old who runs the three-year-old company, has just fielded a phone call made in desperation by the sister of a recently diagnosed...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Nov 13, 2007

Goh Hotoda

JUDIT KAWAGUCHI
Japan Times
LIFE / CLOSE-UP
Nov 4, 2007

Sue Palmer: The kids are not OK, top educator warns

To a growing legion of educated, enlightened and empowered mothers in Japan and abroad, Sue Palmer's advice on how to bring up children might sound — if not heard in context — too old-fashioned, too alarmist or even maybe too naive to prepare their loved ones for the rapidly changing, fiercely competitive...
CULTURE / Film
Nov 2, 2007

A guy and a girl

In "Once," the couple consisting of the Guy (Glen Hansard) and the Girl (Marketa Irglova) make sweet music but never get together.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Oct 31, 2007

NFL foray recalls days when London boasted title team

LONDON — Occasionally life deals you a good hand.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Oct 31, 2007

Tokyo's botanical beauty

A FLOWER LOVER'S GUIDE TO TOKYO: 40 Walks for All Seasons, by Sumiko Enbutsu (Kodansha International, ¥2,200)
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 27, 2007

Blind adventurer refuses to accept limits

Blind adventurer Miles Hilton-Barber has climbed both Mount Kilimanjaro and Mont Blanc, completed an 11-day marathon across China and crossed Qatar's desert on foot without any sleep — all within the last seven years.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Oct 20, 2007

Haruko Komura

Haruko Komura said, "I don't want to be in the forefront of politics. I do want to continue working for peace."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 11, 2007

Mother of all comebacks

Hollywood's hardest-working movie star, John Travolta dons a fat suit and breasts to play a housewife in his latest role, the all-singing, all-dancing musical 'Hairspray.'
Reader Mail
Oct 7, 2007

The death of one's own

Before I go to bed tonight, I will pray hard to Lord Buddha that I wake up as a Japanese in the morning. All my life, I have been Burmese and have thought that human life has equal value worldwide. Recent days have been a rude awakening for me.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 30, 2007

Cancer may kill, but it can also revitalize a flagging media career

Right now there's a commercial on TV for the American insurance company AFLAC featuring veteran journalist Shuntaro Torigoe, who was diagnosed with cancer two years ago. It shows the 67-year-old reporter in what looks like home videos undergoing tests, or about to be operated on, or clowning around with...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Sep 29, 2007

Hamilton Armstrong

"Sometimes I think my head is so big because it is so full of dreams."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / SHORT TAKES
Sep 28, 2007

No Reservations

Director: Scott Hicks Language: English
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 28, 2007

Filming a Champs Elysee moment

At first glance Olivier Dahan doesn't come off as a filmmaker who would choose to make a biopic about Edith Piaf. He carved out a successful career in music videos, and is an avid aficionado of French hip-hop. Piaf's music and what he listens to don't quite gel. But perhaps this explains the particular...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 14, 2007

Got the Biwa blues

This is the second part of a two-part story on a trip to Lake Biwa and its environs in Shiga Prefecture.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 5, 2007

Clock ticking as Councilor Kawada goes after what has long ailed Japan

Newly elected Upper House lawmaker Ryuhei Kawada was diagnosed with hemophilia soon after he was born.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 28, 2007

Indian women who never had a chance

MADRAS, India — India may be the land where the Buddha preached nonviolence, and Mahatma Gandhi practiced it to perfection, but the country's "womb murders" are a horrible reality.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 24, 2007

'Salvador'

Now that the bio-pic genre has become as familiar as a worn beach towel, it seems to have spawned a sub-genre — as yet still in the embryonic stages — which can perhaps be described as the "bio-pic of death."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 17, 2007

'Rosso Come Il Cielo'

In many ways Mirco was a typical 10-year-old boy; skittish, puppyish and with a very short attention span. One second he'd be playing with a spinning top, and a nanosecond later he'd be running down the street in pursuit of the next fun thing. Mirco was the only child of adoring parents living in the...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 15, 2007

Bliss for a Lazy Birder

Birders are often motivated by their species list — often something akin to their meaning of life.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 14, 2007

Health-care costs to squeeze capitalism

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Will the inexorable rise in medical costs around the world someday pose a major challenge to contemporary capitalism? I submit that in the not-so-distant future, moral, social and political support for capitalism will be severely tested as would-be egalitarian health systems face...

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years