Search - people

 
 
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 16, 2003

Yoji Yamada

A director since 1961, with 77 films to his credit, Yoji Yamada, 71, is a Japanese film industry icon. His "Tora-san" series, about a wandering peddler who is forever falling in love, but never gets the girl, generated 48 hit installments -- and made Yamada the most successful Japanese director of his...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 13, 2003

Debts, loan sharks and culture of shame a recipe for suicide

Yuki Saito should have known something was wrong when his dad quietly walked into their steaming home tub that night -- they hadn't taken a bath together in years, although it is the Japanese custom to do so.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Mar 13, 2003

Water, water -- where?

These days the talk is all about oil, but wait a couple of decades and oil politics could be a quaint historical artifact.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 5, 2003

All ye that pass by, behold

A little girl, neglected by her busy parents, one day meets a headless man in a suit, holding an umbrella in one hand and a hat in the other. This ghostlike stranger gives her the hat and when she puts it on, her familiar world disappears and she finds herself in "Quidam" -- a wonderland where nothing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 2, 2003

The real deal of high fidelity

Twin sisters Kim and Kelley Deal pass the phone back and forth like siblings accustomed to dividing everything. Today they're sharing an interview, and only the tone of their near-identical voices indicates who is on the line. Kelley's measured, Midwestern accent remains at a clipped, cordial distance,...
COMMENTARY
Mar 2, 2003

Dissent shaking institutions

LONDON -- I don't know what destruction may be visited on the Iraqis by the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or by Iraqi President Saddam Hussein himself in the next few weeks. But it is clear that great waves of destruction are already roaring through the institutions of social...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 1, 2003

Flood of opinions solicited for water forum

OSAKA -- Water is everyone's business, and so it is perhaps only natural that preparations for the Third World Water Forum -- which starts later this month in the Kansai region -- include activities to raise awareness and get the public more involved.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Feb 23, 2003

You can be yourself, but not be understood

Identity has as much to do with socialization as it does with the circumstances surrounding one's birth. But since gender is considered an absolute, it has become the test of a society's willingness to allow its members to identify themselves. Except for hermaphrodites, humans are either male or female,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2003

Antiwar protesters march in Tokyo

Thousands of people took to Japan's streets Saturday to protest against a probable war in Iraq.
JAPAN
Feb 15, 2003

Shiga 'eco-village' lures many disciplines

HIKONE, Shiga Pref. -- Rooftop solar panels provide energy and heat water. Rainwater is collected and used for washing and toilets. Kitchen waste and leaves are composted into fertilizers for crops. People work on farms and community businesses.
COMMENTARY
Feb 12, 2003

Koizumi shirking top duty

Over the past year, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appears to have all but lost his enthusiasm for military contingency legislation. Protecting the lives and property of the Japanese people from armed attack is the most important duty of the prime minister as the supreme commander of the Self-Defense...
COMMENTARY
Jan 29, 2003

War rhetoric leaves most Britons cold

LONDON -- A few thousand antiwar protesters gathered outside the House of Commons last week to lobby members of Parliament, to take part in a silent vigil or to attend one of several -- to the annoyance of those who would have liked unity -- antiwar meetings.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 26, 2003

Reasoning against Iraq 'catastrophe'

Few were the world leaders who, in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, withheld moral support for the United States. Longtime friends and onetime foes, Christians, Jews and many Muslims alike sang as in one chorus: They would root out terrorism where it lurked. It seemed the birth of a new world...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jan 25, 2003

Mariko Asano

Americans Millard and Linda Fuller began Habitat for Humanity International in 1976. Appalled to know that more than one-fifth of the world's people were living without decent shelter, this couple set out to do something about poor housing and homelessness. They called on volunteers to help build simple,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 25, 2003

Festival celebrates 400 years atop Atago-yama

Meet the Matsuoka family: Mineo (that's Dad), Yuriko (Mum), older sister Rie and younger sister Iku. Oh, and let's not forget Vino, the Mexican Chihuahua, who wears a hand-knit coat against the cold and makes pretense to be as fierce as a Rottweiler.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jan 16, 2003

When two hemispheres of the brain work as one

The French surgeon Paul Broca had a patient in his care in 1861 who had fallen and broken his hip. Eighteen months earlier the man, called Lelong, had collapsed with a stroke that left him unable to speak. When Lelong died on Broca's ward, a hip fracture being a fatal condition in those days, an autopsy...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 12, 2003

Shopping queen shelves host 'illusion'

Popular writer Usagi Nakamura is known to many Japanese as "Shoppingu no Joo (The Queen of Shopping)," which is also the title of her popular column in the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun. Nakamura, 44, who describes herself as "shop dependent," writes frankly about how she impulsively purchases luxury...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jan 11, 2003

Get ready for Japanese inside and out

People often ask me what they should expect before coming to Japan. It's hard to say, but if you don't speak Japanese, at first you'll be limited to communicating with Japanese people who can speak English. Be ready to meet these people:
MORE SPORTS
Jan 10, 2003

Takahashi setting sights on another Olympic gold in 2004

This is the second and final installment of an exclusive interview with Naoko Takahashi, the gold medalist in the 2000 Sydney Olympic women's marathon.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 1, 2003

Ackerman and tpt bend theater's rules

Whether a person becomes a theatergoer often depends on a crucial encounter with this dramatic art form -- and a play that just opened at the Benisan Pit in Tokyo's Sumida Ward is indubitably the stuff that makes theatergoers.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
Dec 30, 2002

An Ainu 'homecoming' for journeying Navajo

When Marcus Mose, a Native American from the Navajo Nation and an assistant language teacher in Gonohe, Aomori Prefecture, visited the popular Ainu musician Kano Oki in Hokkaido this November, it was like a journey home.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 16, 2002

Withholding food aid only kills innocents

CAMBRIDGE, England -- Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara does not like Japanese charities sending dog biscuits and old rice to North Korea to feed its hungry people.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Dec 15, 2002

From jobs to robots it's all about chance

It's that time of year again, when hundreds of people can be seen lining up in front of the shopping arcades in Ginza and Shinjuku. No, we're not talking about Christmas. We're talking about the big Yearend Lottery.
SOCCER / World cup
Dec 8, 2002

Man United director Charlton has no complaints

England and Manchester United legend, Sir Bobby Charlton, is confident that his English Premiership club is back on track after last year's trophyless season despite its problems so far this season.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 8, 2002

Myanmar's generals allergic to dialogue

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and many world leaders have welcomed the recent release of 115 political prisoners from various prisons in Myanmar. At the same time, many leaders have voiced concerns about the more than 1,000 remaining political prisoners, human rights abuses and the lack...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 7, 2002

Journeying back to tribal roots with eagle feather

Two years ago, after more than a decade in Japan, Shirley (Blackstar) Macdonald and her husband, Chris, decided it was time to go home. Now they run Eagle Feather Gallery in Victoria, British Columbia, with a magnificent cedar house in deep forest north of the city. A long way from working in Tokyo,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / TANGLED WEBS
Nov 14, 2002

A false sense of air security

I travel a lot, too much, really.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 10, 2002

A straight-shooter wherever she goes

With her Nikon camera, dozens of film rolls and a strong social conscience, photojournalist Natsuko Utsumi travels the world to capture the human face of the issues that shape public debate.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Nov 3, 2002

Terror in our own backyard

A key phrase in my recent e-mail exchanges has been, "The world has gone crazy." The hostage drama in Moscow; the shooting spree in the Washington, D.C. area; the bombing of two nightclubs in Bali; the Finnish teenager who blew up himself and six other people in a suburban shopping mall; the killing...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 1, 2002

Emergency psychiatric care falling short

Her schizophrenia repeatedly sent her over the edge.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan