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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...
Reader Mail
Jul 19, 2009

Different aircraft and missions

Regarding Jochen Legewie's July 13 article "Japanese choices in aviation market reveal overreliance on U.S.": Being a pilot and aviation enthusiast, I was interested in this article, but as I began reading, my excitement faded to disappointment. The article was a biased bashing of the U.S. aviation industry....
Reader Mail
Jul 2, 2009

Give the students some slack

I agree with several points made in the June 25 letter "Japanese is just a language." Specifically, I think the author is right to point out that the Japanese language is incorrectly characterized as "vague," and that it seems implausible to consider any particular human emotion as unique to a group...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 24, 2009

From Meiji gentleman to 'Japanese Yankee'

This curiosity (a first-person account of the writer's gradual transformation from Meiji gentleman to self-proclaimed "Japanese Yankee") was first published in 1898 (by the Congregational Church) and never again seen until now.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
May 19, 2009

Weight of Imperial world on Princess Masako

Observers often liken Crown Princess Masako to Britain's Princess Diana. They both embody the fairy tale gone tragically wrong — women outside the royal circle wooed by the heir to the throne, only to end up clashing with the establishment and surrounded by controversy and speculation that has made...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 19, 2009

Finding the exotic, alien other

The subject of the exotic and alien other is a perennial. In Japanese literature the foreign influence is usually traced to its reappearance in a native product and the results are appraised.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 29, 2009

Japan shows how a good's no good unless it's a character good

"Novels you can eat" was the title of an article in the Asahi Shimbun on March 16. It drew on the initiative displayed by a confectionery-maker in Hirosaki, Aomori Prefecture, to commemorate this year's 100th anniversary of the birth of bohemian author Osamu Dazai. That initiative involves a box of 18...
Reader Mail
Mar 29, 2009

Beneficial restoration of oceans

Regarding Michael Richardson's March 21 article, "Are Earth's oceanic 'carbon sinks' filling up?": The author was correct in some of his reports and observations but quite wrong in others. For example, it is well established that the loss of ocean plant growth in terms of carbon dioxide is 4 billion...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 15, 2009

Opening your mind to open your heart

21-SEIKI HAIKU NO JIKUU / THE HAIKU UNIVERSE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: Japanese Haiku 2008, edited by Modern Haiku Association. Nagata-shobo, 2008, 216 pp., ¥2,500 (paper)
CULTURE / Books
Feb 15, 2009

Opening your mind to open your heart

HAIKU MIND: 108 Poems to Cultivate Awareness & Open Your Heart, by Patricia Donegan. Boston & London: Shambhala, 2008, 231 pp., $18 (cloth) 21-SEIKI HAIKU NO JIKUU / THE HAIKU UNIVERSE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: Japanese Haiku 2008, edited by Modern Haiku Association. Nagata-shobo, 2008, 216 pp., ¥2,500...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan / WEEK 3
Dec 21, 2008

30 Days in the Wilderness

What miracles will the incoming 44th President of the United States perform?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 16, 2008

What's between sex and gender?

GENDER GYMNASTICS: Performing and Consuming Japan's Takarazuka Revue, by Leonie R. Stickland. Melbourne, Australia: Trans Pacific Press, 2008, 282 pp., with five plates (I through V). A$49.95 (cloth) The Takarazuka Revue is one of the several entertainment anomalies of Japan. It is an all-female presentation,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 9, 2008

Life in Burma: an expatriate's point of view

BURMA CHRONICLES by Guy Delisle. Quebec, Canada: Drawn and Quarterly, 2008, 208 pp., $19.95 (cloth) Over the past 20 years Burma has sunk ever further into an abyss of political oppression and economic malaise under a brutal military junta that shot monks on the streets of Yangon during the Saffron Revolution...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 9, 2008

Tackling the 'Zainichi' experience

Sitting across from best-selling New York author Min Jin Lee in a Tokyo expat cafe, I can't help thinking that the heroine of her debut novel "Free Food For Millionaires" is the one sipping ice tea and talking sex. Like Lee, protagonist Casey Han is unusually tall, refined in speech, and deeply interested...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 10, 2008

Russia's convertible icon

MOSCOW — Prophets, it is said, are supposed to be without honor in their homeland. Yet Moscow has just witnessed the extraordinary sight of Alexander Solzhenitsyn — the dissident and once-exiled author of the "Gulag Archipelago" and "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" receiving what amounts...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 29, 2008

Having faith in traveling

EXCURSIONS IN IDENTITY: Travel and the Intersection of Place, Gender and Status in Edo Japan, by Laura Nenzi. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2008, 267 pp., illustrations IX, $57 (cloth) During Japan's Edo Period (1603-1867), Dr. Laura Nenzi tells us, "physical mobility (traveling along horizontal...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Feb 10, 2008

Kurosawa cohort tells illuminating Showa tails

Alongside great artists are those who witness their triumphs and setbacks, recording behind-the-scenes episodes that illuminate the processes of art.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 6, 2008

Social realism enhanced by the pastoral

MOUNTAINS PAINTED WITH TURMERIC by Lil Bahadur Chettri, translated from Nepali by Michael J. Hutt. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007, $22.50 (cloth) Originally published in the late 1950s, this novel — says the blurb — "is one of the few books almost every Nepali knows well." The reason is...
LIFE / Lifestyle / ON THE BOOK TRAIL
Nov 6, 2007

"The Bomb," "Bunker 10"

"The Bomb" Theodore Taylor, Harcourt; 2007; 195pp.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 28, 2007

A friendship's influence across Asia

Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin, by Rustom Bharucha, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006, 236 pp., $35 (cloth) This book examines the friendship engendered between two significant thinkers — one Indian and the other Japanese — who were highly representative of their time...

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