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Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 2, 2015

Dramatist brings citizens of all ages together

Public theaters across the country are holding significantly more community productions and workshops aimed at local residents who are looking to get involved in performance art.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 12, 2015

Russia's social order today

In today's Russia, traditional forms of employment with stable wages and a more or less transparent system of social security have given way to shadow-market-style labor relations with badly documented part-time jobs and nontransparent methods of remuneration.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 15, 2014

Holiday gifts they'll cherish from cover to cover

As the holiday season rolls around, it's time to dash about in a mad panic in search of gifts that say "I've given this one some thought, honest." Or you can just let us do the thinking for you, with gift suggestions from our regular book reviewers — tailor-made for the Japanophile reader.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 8, 2014

Finding Murakami in his own weird worlds

Consider this hypothetical conundrum: Haruki Murakami is (finally) awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, but what does the author have to say for himself on Japanese television?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 1, 2014

Malice

"The incident took place on April 16, 1996, a Tuesday." This meditative, clever novel from the author of 2011's "The Devotion of Suspect X" begins with a journal entry by Osamu Nonoguchi, a children's author who happens upon the body of his friend and fellow writer, Kunihiko Hidaka, facedown in his office....
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Aug 22, 2014

Haruki Murakami's Cool Japan

I was in New York last week to host a launch event for the English translation of Haruki Murakami's latest novel, "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage." My good friend and Murakami translator Ted Goossen, professor at York University in Toronto, joined me, as did pianist Eunbi Kim, whose...
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.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes