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CULTURE / Books / THE YEAR IN BOOKS
Dec 23, 2012

U.S. essays, Japan's Christians

It may seem like cheating, but my first best book of 2012 is "The Best American Essays of 2012" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), part of the Best American Series. I read it each year and am never disappointed. This year's selection was made by David Brooks, a moderately conservative author, columnist and...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / EVERYMAN EATS
Oct 26, 2012

Women — the essential B-kyū ingredient

COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Aug 28, 2012

Paid leave, advice for foreign parents, JET's value: readers' views

Uncompetitive Japan Inc. Not being a Japanese person employed in a private Japanese company, it is hard for me to imagine the hardship experienced by the writer of the July 17 Have Your Say letter ("Working employees to death"). I can, however, say with a high degree of confidence that laws mandating...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2012

'The Rum Diary'

America's infamous outlaw journalist Hunter S. Thompson was, like many of his generation, a bone-deep admirer of author Ernest Hemingway, so much so that he even typed out word-for-word two of Hemingway's novels — "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Farewell To Arms." Thompson wanted to feel the rhythm of...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 26, 2012

Fuji-san: reflections on Japan's iconic mother mountain

MOUNT FUJI: Icon of Japan, by H. Byron Earhart. The University of South Carolina Press, 2011, 238 pp., $40 (hardcover) It is significant that in a country where nature has long been transfused with the numinous, that Japan's most iconic image is neither a building nor a monument, but a mountain — Fuji-san....
CULTURE / Books
Jan 29, 2012

Gallant cop, reporter on quest hit right notes

RED JADE, by Henry Chang. Soho Press, 2011, 248 pp., $14 (paper) KILLED AT THE WHIM OF A HAT, by Colin Cotterill. Minotaur, 2011, 374 pages, $24.99 (hardcover) It is pleasing to note that among the growing number of Asian-Americans producing works of fiction are authors who specialize in stories of crime...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 15, 2012

The other side of world's 'worst battle'

FIGHTING SPIRIT: The Memoirs of Major Yoshitaka Horie and the Battle of Iwo Jima. Edited by Robert D. Eldridge and Charles W. Tatum. Naval Institute Press, 2011, 224 pp., $26.95 (hardcover) Iwo Jima is a tiny sliver of an island 1,200 km south of Tokyo, an unlikely setting for anything historical, let...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2011

JFK showed reluctance in acknowledging aide's help in crafting words for a generation

The recently released 1964 interviews of Jacqueline Kennedy by Arthur Schlesinger Jr. make for fascinating reading. But if the one subject on which I have some detailed knowledge is any indication, historians will need to be careful about putting too much stock in what Mrs. Kennedy said.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 17, 2011

Erasing the bloody wounds of war

IMAG(IN)ING THE WAR IN JAPAN: Representing and Responding to Trauma in Postwar Literature and Film, edited by David Stahl and Mark Williams. Brill, 2010, 375 pp., $179 (hardcover) This anthology is as incisive and demanding of consideration as any that I have read. The central question reframed again...
JAPAN
Jun 26, 2011

Top scientist in academic row

An article that helped Tohoku University President Akihisa Inoue win the Japan Academy Award has been retracted from a leading U.S. scientific journal after the author violated protocol by reusing his own previously published material without acknowledging it.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 5, 2011

Doomed self-obsessive remains iconic to some in the Japan of today

"It's not that I'm weak, it's that the suffering weighs down on me too heavily."
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 8, 2011

Hisashi Inoue's great legacy is just the ticket to inspire our best efforts

A beautiful cherry-blossom tree stands right beside the sento (public bath) I religiously go to, and its top branch hangs over an opening in the roof. In early April, petals were falling from the branch down into the water, which comes out of the ground the color of strong coffee.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 24, 2011

Lotus Stutra enlightenment

THE STORIES OF THE LOTUS SUTRA, by Gene Reeves. Wisdom Publications, 347 pp., 2010, $18.95 (paper) Gene Reeves is just the kind of preacher-teacher I like, one who lays his wares out, takes a step back and lets you appraise what he has to offer without obligation. Buddhism, like all religions, is best...
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Apr 12, 2011

'Judge not,' 'fly-jin' and saving electricity: views from readers

Some readers' responses to Roberto De Vido's "Judge not, lest you be judged" (March 22), Darek Gondor's " 'Fly-jin' face fallout from decision to go" (April 5), and Darryl Magree's March 29 letter:
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Apr 3, 2011

Japan's 'La Gaijine'

On Francoise Morechand's living room table there sits a book once owned by a samurai in the Edo Period (1603-1867) that she says she has been studying.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 11, 2011

'Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson'

On one level, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's career can be described simply: He was a writer who wrote best when loaded. Sure, you say, but tell me which great American writer wasn't a raging alcoholic. F. Scott Fitzgerald? Jack Kerouac? Ernest Hemingway? William "There is no such thing as a bad whiskey" Faulkner?...
CULTURE / Books
Dec 26, 2010

Mastering the enemy's tongue

Creating a language-learning program may not sound like the kind of material to set the readers' pulse racing, but author Roger Dingman has a unique and compelling story to tell.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 31, 2010

Those risky, robust, resplendent architects of Japan

If Europeans are overawed by the architecture of the past, convinced that nothing as accomplished can ever be built again, this is where the Japanese, having none of these convictions or inhibitions, radically deviate, believing they can improve on the past, produce something more outstanding, or at...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 3, 2010

Mao's famine was no dinner party

There are many books on the Great Leap Forward (GLF) that detail the horrific suffering inflicted on the Chinese people, and the instigating role of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is well known, so why yet another?
CULTURE / Books
Aug 22, 2010

Forbidden romance in Saigon

United by wars against the United States, yet divided by the economic results and effects of those wars, Vietnam and Japan are the real subjects of Aska Mochizuki's Knopf Kodansha Prize-winning novel "Spinning Tropics."
CULTURE / Books
Jun 27, 2010

America's man from Japan

Edwin O. Reischauer, U.S. ambassador to Japan (1961-66), set the bar very high for all of his successors. Born and raised in Japan by missionary parents, when U.S. President John F. Kennedy called him into diplomatic service, he was already a prominent scholar who pioneered Japanese studies in the U.S....
Japan Times
LIFE
May 9, 2010

Children of Japan

Childhood. We all know it, we've all been through it, we've all lost it. Memory retains traces of it. We recall facts, incidents, fragments — but not what it felt like to be a child. Childish feelings are nameable to the adult, but not recoverable. They are on the other side of an impassable boundary...
CULTURE / Books
Apr 18, 2010

Troubled times call for such a hero

Japanese history is replete with heroes admired for successfully challenging the status quo. Nostalgia for such figures increases during tough times, as seen in the "Ryoma boom" borne from the TV series on Sakamoto Ryoma, the Meiji Restoration hero. However, the nation might benefit more from studying...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 14, 2010

Untamed past taken by the tail

Jid Lee, now a professor of English at Middle Tennessee State University, begins this memoir with the tale of the killing of her great-great-great-great- great-great grandmother by a tiger. A Buddhist monk predicted the death, saying it would bring rewards to her descendants. Her "sacrifice" is the touchstone...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 28, 2010

Australian forces, occupational hazards

The presence of Australian servicemen in the U.S.-dominated occupation of Japan (1945-52) is little known, an oversight that is overcome in this vivid and entertaining book. Some 20,000 Aussies served for over six years in Hiroshima and environs, doing their part in the demilitarization, democratization...
JAPAN
Feb 24, 2010

A-bomb book's source proves false

The publisher of a disputed book about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima has confirmed a key source misrepresented himself and promises any errors will be fixed soon.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 31, 2010

Entrap, exploit and repeat

WESTERN POWER IN ASIA: Its Slow Rise And Swift Fall 1415-1999, by Arthur Cotterell. John Wiley & Sons, 2009, 439 pp., $29.95 (paper)
COMMENTARY
Dec 20, 2009

Wake up a friend about China at Christmas

LOS ANGELES — Attention last-minute holiday shoppers: We have an easy-to-purchase gift to recommend. And we guarantee that it will fit all sizes, shapes and tastes. This is assuming your intended recipients are intelligent, literate and eager to learn about the world.
EDITORIALS
Oct 17, 2009

The man with no name

Article 61 of the Juvenile Law prohibits the dissemination of information that identifies a minor in a family court decision. The aim is to spare the minor publicity that might hinder his or her rehabilitation.
Reader Mail
Aug 2, 2009

Constant death wish toward Israel

Cesar Chelala's July 27 article, "Threats against Iran feed off modern myths," does not reveal anything new to anybody with the faintest interest in politics. The world has known for years about the pros and cons of the topics dealt with in the article. Moreover, while explaining his point of view on...

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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.