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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 18, 2008

Pop Levi goes slightly wrong

"It was a very obsessive thing," says Jonathan Pop Levi about the recording of his new album of warped pop music, "Never Never Love." "It took six days a week for 12 hours a day for four months to get it to sound that way. Especially in the vocals; if a computer could do a perfect impression of a human,...
BUSINESS
Jul 15, 2008

Shinsei's CEO sees consumer finance rebound

Shinsei Bank Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Thierry Porte, whose firm is buying General Electric Co.'s Japan consumer finance business for $5.4 billion, said the industry is about to recover from its two-year slump.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 13, 2008

Beauty of the beasts: mythological and real

A BRUSH WITH ANIMALS: Japanese Paintings 1700-1950, by Robert Schaap, with essays by Willem van Gulik, Henk Herwig, Arendie Herwig-Kempers, Daniel McKee and Andrew Thompson. Leiden: Society of Japanese Arts (distributed by Hotei/Brill), 2007, 206 pp. with 275 color illustrations, $117 (cloth), $81 (paper) This...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 11, 2008

'Hot Fuzz'

Hercule Poirot once proclaimed that "the police in England are only adequate, but the English detective is a thing of marvel!" Sherlock Holmes would have agreed, having put up with the uninspired adequacy of Scotland Yard for most of his career. But no more: The English police or rather "the fuzz in...
JAPAN
Jul 10, 2008

Confectioners spice things up with hot chili, soy sauce sweets

The Japanese sweets scene is heating up and getting salty to boot.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 8, 2008

How green are Japan's urbanites?

The Group of Eight summit began Monday at the Windsor Hotel Toya, an exquisite, maximum- security resort in Hokkaido. There, the world's top leaders are holed up in conference rooms, trying to strike last-minute deals on various global issues, the most disputed of all being climate change.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 6, 2008

The shrine of controversy

YASUKUNI: The War Dead and the Struggle for Japan's Past, edited by John Breen. London: Hurst Publishers, 2007, 202 pp., £25 (cloth) Yasukuni Shrine resonates powerfully in contemporary Asia, dividing Japanese and alienating regional neighbors. In April, some conservative Japanese politicians' criticisms...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 6, 2008

Peace follows turbulent times

"It was a nightmare," laughs Tokyo-based author David Peace of a recent trip to Paris to promote the French version of his most successful novel, "The Damned Utd."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 6, 2008

Fearless bluestockings in Japan

THE BLUESTOCKINGS OF JAPAN: New Woman Essays and Fiction From Seito, 1911-16, edited by Jan Bardsley. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2007; xii + 308 pp., $70 (cloth), $26 (paper) In 1911 a new publication appeared in Japan. It was singular in that it was written, edited...
Japan Times
Reference / Special Presentations / WITNESS TO WAR
Jul 2, 2008

Finding Papua war dead a vet's life

20th in a series
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jun 29, 2008

Sayuki: Aussie geisha speaks out

What a titillating sound bite it is: Japan's first gaijin (foreigner) geisha!
SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Jun 27, 2008

Qualifying round shows talent gap narrowing in Asia

Japan national team manager Takeshi Okada will be aware his seat at Friday's World Cup final Asian qualifying round draw in Kuala Lumpur has not come easy, but he will not be the only man in the room irked by such thoughts.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 26, 2008

How Carlo Zauli changed the course of contemporary Japanese ceramics

Change can be one of the most difficult words for traditional craftsmen to hear.
LIFE / Travel
Jun 22, 2008

In the footsteps of Dylan Thomas

SWANSEA, Wales — Thursday night in Swansea and it's a full house. Outside, it's the kind of night that Dylan Thomas would have described as "starless and Bible black." Inside, text-messaging teenagers and polite pensioners count the seconds to the interval and the ritual stampede for ice-cream as the...
Reader Mail
Jun 22, 2008

Kids love stories, even in English

Every time I read a letter arguing that the lack of skilled linguists among staff is reason enough not to offer foreign languages at the primary school level in Japan, I wonder if the authors have noticed the polychromatic pachyderm peering over their shoulders as they write.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
Jun 21, 2008

Southpaw trio going the distance to help Hawks

Tsuyoshi Wada was pitching a complete game against the Yokohama BayStars on Sunday and there wasn't anything anyone could do about it. Not Fukuoka Softbank Hawks pitching coach Tadashi Sugimoto and not the BayStars.
JAPAN
Jun 21, 2008

Ex-banker avoids prison over Chongryon scam

The Tokyo District Court handed a suspended two-year prison term Friday to a former banker for his part in defrauding the pro-Pyongyang group Chongryon in cahoots with former Public Security Intelligence Agency chief Shigetake Ogata.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 15, 2008

War and propaganda: a Japanese narrative

CERTAIN VICTORY: Images of World War II in the Japanese Media, by David C. Earhart. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2008, 552 pp., with photographs, maps, illustrations, $74.95 (cloth) One way to induce people to kill other people is to dehumanize "the enemy." And one of the ways to do this is through propaganda....
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Jun 10, 2008

Health cover; donating clothes

Reader TJ writes:
CULTURE / Art
Jun 5, 2008

'Choe U-Ram: Anima Machina'

SCAI the Bathhouse
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jun 4, 2008

To cage or not to cage?

I was born in 1940, in Neath, South Wales. My father went off to war and my mother took me to live in the relative safety of rural Suffolk in eastern England, where the Luftwaffe's bombers seldom attacked. There, she worked as a nanny for rich people's offspring. It was pretty tough for my Mum, but she...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Jun 4, 2008

Failure to make Finals will cost Saunders job

NEW YORK — Failing to crash the NBA Finals for the third straight season is guaranteed to cost Pistons coach Flip Saunders a fourth try.
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Jun 1, 2008

MLB's greatest finishes, memorable moments chronicled in new book

I received a new book this week titled "Walkoffs, Last Licks and Final Outs," written by Bill Chuck and Jim Kaplan. The sub-title is "Baseball's Grand (and not-so-grand) Finales," and the foreword is by Jon Miller, the popular play-by-play broadcaster who does "Sunday Night Baseball" with Joe Morgan...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 1, 2008

Old Royal Siam revisited

TRAVELER IN SIAM IN THE YEAR 1655: Extracts from the Journal of Gijsbert Heeck, translated and introduced by Barend Jan Terwiel. Chiang Mai: Silkworm Books, 2008, 124 pp., with b/w pictures and drawings, full-color maps and illustrations, 2008, 595 Bahts (paper) In 1903, the 1655 manuscript of Gijsbert...

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji