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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 28, 2013

Re-creating the life of a 17th-century concubine

As G.G. Rowley notes in the preface to her lovingly researched, elegantly written study of Imperial concubine Nakanoin Nakako, the history of her subject's period, the late 16th and early 17th centuries, 'has traditionally been written as the history of men.'
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 31, 2013

Life is too short for an undesirable satori

The wise have always inveighed against materialism. But most people are not wise, and it remains a material world. The economy dominates the news, an indication of where our strongest interest lies. Our spirits rise or fall with the stock market, the unemployment rate, the value of the yen, the consumer...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Mar 3, 2013

Yukari Horie: Making life easier for working moms

Yukari Horie, 30, is managing director of Arrow Arrow, a Tokyo-based NPO that offers consulting to companies with female workers who are in the later stages of their pregnancy or who have just become moms and are wondering how to adjust their work styles to accommodate their life needs. Horie's group,...
LIFE
Feb 24, 2013

An inclined view: The life and work of Donald Richie

It was with a heavy heart that I heard from Donald Richie's longtime friend and editor Leza Lowitz that he had passed away on the morning of Tuesday, this week. He was 88.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 8, 2013

The Hitler home movies: how Eva Braun documented the Nazi dictator's private life

Lutz Becker was born in Berlin, he says, "during the anno diabolo, 1941. Mine was the generation that was sent into a dark pit." Meeting this survivor of the Third Reich, now in his 70s and living in Bayswater, London, it's hard to suppress the thought that Becker, a distinguished artist and film historian,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Dec 15, 2012

Writer, teacher, advocate finds her stride in the Japanese countryside

For Jane Joritz-Nakagawa, her sociopolitical outlook colors all aspects of her life, as a writer, educator or activist. "Activism runs through what I read and what I write and what I'm teaching; It's all one big thing, as the same mindset invades all those activities. It is inescapable," she says.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 1, 2012

An email memoir on a life in Japan

Life and Nihonjin: Dispatches From Japan, by Alex Kahney. Portland Books, 2011, Japan, 290 pp., $16.00 (paperback) Japan's habit of technological innovation alongside tradition has surfaced in recent literary fads such as the "Densha no Otoko" (Train Man) phenomenon. What started as an urgent plea for...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 26, 2011

Life from a global perspective, and into the past

It may not be a cinematic masterpiece, but "Life in a Day" is a prophetic example of where film may be headed. Everything that has surrounded and defined the film industry — studios, locations, directors, casts and theaters — all of these are condensed into two letters: PC. Flip open a laptop and...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Aug 14, 2011

Japan's unsung role in India's struggle for independence

Nestled in the upmarket Wada district of Tokyo's Suginami Ward, Renkoji Temple is a model of gentility. On weekday mornings, pensioners sit and sketch its prayer hall while housewives chat quietly in the shade of its well-tended trees. Given this setting, it would be easy to mistake the bust of a bespectacled...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Aug 6, 2011

A-bomb survivor looks back on a life lived in N. Ireland

It's a difficult time of year for survivors of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the August anniversaries inevitably swing around.
JAPAN
Jul 13, 2011

Life term urged for Ichihashi

Prosecutors demanded Tuesday life in prison for Tatsuya Ichihashi over the March 2007 rape and murder of English teacher Lindsay Ann Hawker.
EDITORIALS
Jun 12, 2011

A life in the coal mines

This May brought unexpected news of the selection by UNESCO of annotated paintings and diaries by Sakubei Yamamoto of life in the Japanese coal mines for entry in its Memory of the World Register.
JAPAN / Q&A
Mar 29, 2011

Long-life cesium top threat to seafood

The damaged Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is contaminating seawater with heavy amounts of iodine-131 and other radioactive materials.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 27, 2011

Ditching materialism for the simple life

There's a new notion floating around. Perhaps you've heard of it: Danshari. Its three kanji characters signify, respectively, refusal, disposal and separation. Prosaically it means cleaning or tidying up, but there are psychological and religious dimensions, deriving in part from yoga, which suggest...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Feb 13, 2011

Japan's first pop culture

Pop culture. Japan's today is thriving, vibrant, spreading, turning people the world over into manga/anime freaks and costume players.
Japan Times
LIFE
Oct 24, 2010

COP10: A meet to save life on Earth?

The next time someone asks you what biodiversity is, try this: "It's about your life, life on this planet, and about what we're doing to this planet with our eyes open."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 2, 2010

Living green, Venetia truly is at home in Kyoto

Venetia Stanley-Smith Kajiyama, or Venetia to her many fans, personifies natural, country living in her popular NHK program "Neko no Shippo, Kaeru no Te," but her first two months in Tokyo exemplified neon lights and city swing as a go-go dancer at a Shinjuku disco.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 25, 2010

'The Girlfriend Experience'/'Sin Nombre'

From the era of President Ronald Reagan onward, life in the United States has been marked by one salient trend: the increasing Brazilification of society, where wealth is concentrated in a super-rich elite, while the underclass swells and the middle class shrinks.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 6, 2009

Donald Keene: A life lived true to the words

Donald Keene is one of the greatest scholars of Japanese literature and has been highly influential in the establishment of Japanese studies in the West.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 21, 2009

'Clean'/'Patti Smith: Dream of Life'

To feel "clean," if you're a junkie, is to be in a state free of addiction, but more than that, it also implies a clean slate, a life wiped clean of its past temptations, joys and pain, in order to allow new beginnings to emerge.
JAPAN
Aug 18, 2009

Traumas of Showa Era have shaped a man's life

A man's life alone cannot represent the Showa Era in its entirety, but Susumu Iida's serves to underscore many of its harsh legacies.
BUSINESS
Jun 2, 2009

ING Life Insurance to cut 300 jobs

ING Groep NV, the biggest Dutch financial services company, plans to cut about 300 jobs at its Japan life insurance unit as it stops selling variable annuities in the nation, according to two sources.
Reader Mail
Apr 5, 2009

Robots reflect attitude toward life

In the March 25 article, "Programmed for combat or for pleasure," the United States appears to be praised for using robots practically — as weapons of war — while Japan is chastised for "sitting on the sidelines." We get the sense that Japan is being naive while the U.S. is the responsible trendsetter. ...
BUSINESS
Feb 20, 2009

Nippon Life to up Principal stake

Nippon Life Insurance Co., Japan's biggest life insurer, plans to raise its stake in Principal Financial Group Inc. as it seeks expansion abroad, a source said Thursday.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami