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Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Oct 19, 2007

Berlin-based artists unite

Writer Yoko Tawada and jazz pianist Aki Takase will perform together on Nov. 2 as part of Art Complex 2007, a new project held by Kanagawa Kenmin Hall, which combines chamber music, art, theater and contemporary dance.
LIFE / Travel
Oct 18, 2007

A country caught in the grip of a regime

MYANMAR — Rangoon (or Yangon as it is now called) seen from the air seems subdued, at least after brilliant nighttime Bangkok. Just a light here and there, otherwise a carpet of darkness. This extends even down into the new and otherwise imposing "national" airport where the light is so dim that officials...
CULTURE / Art
Oct 18, 2007

Design meets art at 'Roppongi Crossing'

The world loves Japanese design. Because of this, Design Week, coming up next month, is arguably one of the most successful international events in Tokyo. By contrast, Tokyo Fashion Week and Tokyo International Film Festival hardly generate in those fields' fans the rabid excitement that the designers'...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Oct 16, 2007

The faces behind the numbers: A day feeding Tokyo's hungry

Last in a two-part series O n a typical Saturday evening, I stroll around the bustling streets of Shibuya with my friends, dressed up, heels clicking, ready to hit a couple of trendy shops. The chilly breeze puffs up the hairs on my arms and I shudder — winter is approaching. We chat about school,...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 14, 2007

Reappraising the Asian endgame in World War II

The End of the Pacific War: Reappraisals, edited by Tsuyoshi Hasegawa. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007, 331 pp., $60 (cloth) Former Defense Minister Fumio Kyuma discovered to his regret that public discourse in Japan concerning the atomic bombings does not accommodate dissent or nuance. The...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 11, 2007

Zen direct to you

Perhaps the most celebrated of the late-Edo Period Zen artist-priests, Sengai Gibon (1750-1837) left a large number of ink paintings on Zen-related subjects, of which by far the largest collection is in the Idemitsu Museum opposite the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 4, 2007

East and West in mists of gold

Most people outside of Japan demonstrate their wealth and success by living in ever-larger spaces and by accumulating more and more stuff to fill them. Contrast walls covered with paintings and every level surface cluttered with objects to the traditional Japanese ideal of an empty room in which artworks...
Japan Times
CULTURE / OTAKOOL
Sep 27, 2007

Akihabara's awful truths

While the Establishment packages Electric Town as a mecca for manga and anime obsessives, and a magnet for camera- toting tourists, the reality differs: 'Akiba' is alienating the geeks who once made it great
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Sep 26, 2007

Back-chatting TVs and translating photocopiers

Bridging the gaps between the multiple towers of Babel that are modern languages has traditionally relied on software. Whether this be organic software, as in humans and their linguistic skills, or computers with their still relatively primitive ability to translate from one language to another. Fuji...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Sep 25, 2007

Tokujin Yoshioka, Nosign Design etc.

A drop of light
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Sep 19, 2007

Transformers: more than meets the ear

Since 1984, Transformers has proven an immensely enduring toy brand, spawning a hugely popular TV series (which in turn spawned even more spinoff TV series), a couple of movies and ever more toys, right up to the present day. In fact, the toys have their roots in the 1970s Japanese toy lines Microman...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Sep 9, 2007

Yamamoto protege debuts stoic new line

While his daughter Limi prepares to present her Limi Feu line at the Paris collections for the first time in October, Yohji Yamamoto has selected another protege to take her place on the Tokyo runways.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Sep 9, 2007

Fashionistas hold forth on a scene full of 'potential'

It seems that fashion weeks are the latest, well, fashion. They're everywhere — from Singapore to Sydney and Moscow to Mumbai, and that's not counting the "big four" seasonal collections in Paris, Milan, London and New York.
JAPAN
Sep 6, 2007

Anger brews over dubious social security system

confers with Social Insurance Agency consultant Kiyoshi Kawaguchi at an agency branch office last month. AP PHOTO
Japan Times
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Sep 4, 2007

Japan's Shinto-Buddhist religious medley

Most in Japan may know Buddhism has something to do with controlling lust and anger, and is associated with funerals and graves, while Shinto involves venerating nature, and weddings. But many people have trouble making theological distinctions between the two or even telling a Buddhist temple from a...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 2, 2007

Transcending boundaries with writer Yoko Tawada

Facing the Bridge by Yoko Tawada, translated by Margaret Mitsutani. New York: New Directions, 2007, 186 pp., $14.95 (paper) WHERE EUROPE BEGINS by Yoko Tawada, translated by Susan Bernofsky and Yumi Selden, preface by Wim Wenders. New York: New Directions, 2007, 208 pp., $14.95 (paper)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 30, 2007

Immersed in playful worlds

Tokyo Opera City Gallery has one of the best art spaces in the city, and a program that ranks it with The Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo near Kiyosumi in eastern Tokyo and the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi.
MORE SPORTS
Aug 25, 2007

Hammer king Murofushi eyes first world title

In Western culture, 13 is considered an unlucky number. For Koji Murofushi, Japan's maestro of the hammer throw, it's not a symbol of misfortune; it's a number that underscores one thing: his era of dominance.
BUSINESS
Aug 22, 2007

GE considers selling Lake credit unit

General Electric Co., the world's largest provider of private-label credit cards, said Tuesday it is considering the sale of its Japanese consumer-credit unit, Lake Co.
BASKETBALL / HOOP SCOOP
Aug 11, 2007

Albirex stand tall for Niigata

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear — not absence of fear.''
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Aug 10, 2007

Festival theater heats up Shibuya

Matsuri (festivals) in Japan are not only about fireworks, as the monthlong "Summer Summit 2007" drama event attests.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 10, 2007

A playground by the sea

Naughty Atami is the Shizuoka resort with the beachfront soaplands and other salacious establishments. It's got the fraying Hihokan (literally: House of Secret Treasures), likely the world's least scholarly sex museum, with its holographic strippers and a Marilyn Monroe mannequin that exposes itself...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 9, 2007

The hidden treasures of Shikoku revealed in Ueno

Kotohira Shrine — popularly known as Konpira-san — is one of the main religious centers on the island of Shikoku. Until three bridges were built during recent decades to connect the island and the mainland — and ruin the previously magical scenery — Shikoku was remote and mysterious, a Shangri-La...

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight