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Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jan 15, 2004

'Miyake man' leaves a legacy of inspiration

Last week, the environmental community lost a beacon of wisdom and inspiration, a gentle and passionate man who dedicated his career to raising awareness of the oceans' unique ecosystems and Japan's in particular. On Friday, at the age of 74, Jack Thomson Moyer is believed to have taken his own life,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 29, 2003

An artist in a land of ice and snow

Jorg Schmeisser traveled to Antarctica on the icebreaker Aurora Australis in 1998. The result was a series of works -- etchings, drawings and paintings -- that became "Breaking the Ice," a major exhibition showing in Kyoto and scheduled for Tokyo and Yokohama, that explores the majesty and uncanny beauty...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 10, 2003

The cutting edge of Tokyo's fashionably tressed

Every morning at around 9 o'clock, Naoko Hayashi arrives at the Toni & Guy Japan hair salon in Tokyo's smart Minami-Aoyama district. The trainee, who joined the salon in April, sets to work on a wig, practicing how to curl hair. Just along the street at rival salon Kakimoto Arms, Noriko Yagi, a second-year...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 4, 2003

Still howling with emotion

HOWLING AT THE MOON: Poems and Prose of Hagiwara Sakutaro, translation and introduction by Hiroaki Sato. Kobenhavn & Los Angeles, Green Integer, 2002, 316 pp., $11.95, (paper) Hagiwara Sakutaro is one of Japan's most important, and most cherished poets. His first volume of poetry, "Howling at the Moon"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Feb 12, 2003

Mountain man who walked the path of art

"Born alone, will die alone; come alone, will be gone alone; study alone, walk alone": This is said to have been the mantra of one of Japan's greatest 20th-century artists, the boisterous, arrogant and brilliant Rosanjin Kitaoji (1883-1959).
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Dec 16, 2002

Sicily's sobering message for grandparents

SYRACUSE, Sicily -- Sicily is an ideal place to ponder the fate of civilizations and to reflect on the future. This island off the boot of Italy, with a population of 5 million, has been a crossroads of civilizations for almost three millennia. The Greeks, Romans, Saracens, Normans, Catalans, French,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 22, 2002

Happy doing it her way -- whatever the 'bashers' say

Yumi Sekine, 41, a nurse by profession, began training 12 years ago and has reached levels beyond those of any other female bodybuilders competing in Japan.
CULTURE / Art
Sep 4, 2002

Designed to dazzle: a lacquerware celebration

The quintessential Japanese aesthetic is that of wabi sabi, a beauty associated with things that are simple, rustic, unpolished or even plain rundown. It is perhaps surprising, then, that this aesthetic is so little in evidence at an extensive exhibition at the Tokyo National Museum of one of Japan's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 4, 2002

Let there be light in the urban darkness

Naoya Hatakeyama's stunning photographs use finely tuned modern techniques to discover harmonious beauty in places where we often perceive only competing layers of chaos. They filter our all-too-familiar environment, revealing its underlying complexity and, in the process, leading us to question the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2002

Felicien Rops: Days of madness

The catalog of the Felicien Rops exhibition is wrapped in the anonymous brown paper more often used to disguise pornography than art. The display itself, now at the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, would, if art galleries issued such things, come with a parental advisory label. With a preponderance...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 1, 2002

Trendsetters ditch beach-girl look

The Japanese beauty industry has yet again been thrown into turmoil, with many young, trendy women abandoning the tanned beach-girl image in favor of the porcelain look.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 23, 2002

The nature of the Zen mind

Zen gardens, those wonderful treasures of Japan, can be enjoyed in several ways: as pure abstract works of art; as representations of Zen principles; or as tools to transport one's mind from the cares of everyday life to a higher state of consciousness.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 29, 2002

Master at the cutting edge of art

Japan is often seen as a blend of the advanced and the archaic. But this combination is nothing new, as a visit to an exhibition of swords now on at the Nezu Museum in Tokyo's Omotesando district makes clear.
COMMUNITY
May 26, 2002

Art and life in a bowl

Like a gossamer web, drifting in mist, the threads that link Japan's traditional arts can be hard to grasp. Yet some links become visible as soon as a keen observer points them out.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 19, 2002

Preserving spaces fit for living

JAPANESE COUNTRY STYLE: Putting New Life Into Old Houses, by Yoshihiro Takishita. Forward by Peter M. Grilli. Preface by Sachiko Amakasu. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2002, 168 pp., more than 200 color and b/w photographs, floor plans, maps, etc; a bilingual edition. 4,800 yen (cloth) In this stimulating...
EDITORIALS
May 5, 2002

The wrinkles in Botox

Is it just us, or do others have the same reaction to media stories about the mounting popularity of Botox, the toxo-cosmetic touted as death to wrinkles: People are injecting what into their faces?
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Nov 14, 2001

To see a world in a bowl of tea

"Kokoro shugetsu ni nitari," which translates as "My mind is like the autumn moon," is a line from a Chinese poem expressing the Zen sensation felt strongly during this harvest season. Pure and reflecting without hesitation, the moon is a metaphor for our hearts and one that all of humanity could do...
CULTURE / Art
Sep 12, 2001

Picking out Triennale treasures from the trash

Just 100 years ago, Monet was watching light dance over water lilies and Matisse was scandalizing art critics with his wild use of color.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 9, 2001

Vanity thy name is also man

If my mates could see me now, they'd just about die laughing.
CULTURE / Art
Aug 15, 2001

A 'subversive' finally brought in from the cold

In 1953, Kansuke Yamamoto wrote: "The surreal exists within the real. Tireless experimentation with new photography leads to the creation of a new beauty."
JAPAN / WEEKEND WISDOM
Aug 12, 2001

Copying Kyoto is way to revitalize Japan, fashion critic says

KYOTO -- If Japan wants to revitalize the sluggish economy and turn its prospects around, there are plenty of indications that Kyoto's way of life as well as its way of doing business are the answer, according to Hiromi Ichida, a fashion critic who has lived in the ancient capital for more than half...
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
May 16, 2001

Belly up to the dance floor

While many hip urban types still seem to view belly-dancing as kitsch, they've probably never been lucky enough to experience the real thing. At its best, Oriental dance is a sublime fusion of body and rhythm, where the dancers allow the sound to ripple through their limbs with mesmerizing grace.
CULTURE / Art
Mar 27, 2001

The Elephant Man's other side

You know the old adage about how consciousness operates? Tell a person not to think of elephants, and they won't be able to stop thinking about elephants.
LIFE / Style & Design / BEAUTY EAST AND WEST
Mar 1, 2001

International spa secrets

Some of the best recipes for a do-it-yourself spa come from those cultures known to go in for a bit of sybaritic pampering. Japan is high up on the list: A highly developed sense of aesthetics, a long tradition of bathing and a sublime appreciation of ritual have helped beauty practices here evolve into...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Feb 16, 2001

Somewhere over the rainbow lies a pot of bliss

In any creative activity, our powers of invention stimulate the mind, in much the same way fertilizer in a vineyard helps the grapes grow to make wine. By engaging these powers, particularly insight and synthesization, our mental and creative capacity is nurtured and nourished.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 3, 2001

A passionate embrace of Nihon

Shinsui Ito (1898-1972) was a central figure during Japan's artistic identity crisis in the 20th century. As wave after wave of artistic movements from overseas broke upon these shores, native artists felt compelled to either abandon their own artistic traditions or embrace them even more strongly.
CULTURE / Film
Jan 16, 2001

A living, dancing tradition

Stories may be universal, but story-telling, as a performance art, just doesn't travel well. Kabuki is universally known among the educated in the West, at least by name, while rakugo remains obscure to all but scholars and a handful of devotees. This is an unfortunate, but seemingly intractable position....
CULTURE / Art
Dec 24, 2000

Rene Lalique: the magic of design

"Siren and Frogs" carafe by Rene Lalique Some of the best window shopping this Christmas season is being enjoyed at an exhibition of jewelry and glassware by Rene Lalique (1860-1945), currently on display at Tokyo's most elegant art gallery, the Teien. Held in the Art Deco building that was once the...
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Oct 28, 2000

Coal-crusted, ash-glazed, long-fired

From aspiring lawyer to automatic washing machine salesman to master potter, life has been an interesting but rocky road for Shigaraki ceramist Shiho Kanzaki.
COMMUNITY
Oct 5, 2000

Vanity, thy name is . . . Vince?

SAN FRANCISCO -- Clairol, the staid manufacturer of women's hair dyes, tried something new this year: It went after kids.

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb