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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Apr 18, 2015

'You Gotta Have Wa' is still the best analysis of Japanese culture seen through the lens of sport

Robert Whiting's baseball classic, "You Gotta Have Wa," (updated in 2009) remains the definitive text on Japanese culture seen through the lens of sport. Whiting has an engaging style, his research is exhaustive and his first-hand knowledge has ensured this book is just as entertaining now as it was...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 16, 2015

Shizuoka blooms with culture at theater event

With sunlight dappling fresh green leaves, flowers in bloom and birds singing, spring and early summer is when Europeans leave their homes to enjoy the arts at great annual events such as Germany's Theatertreffen and France's Avignon Festival.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 18, 2015

Wild Style: 'the birth of hip-hop culture, set in a lost age of New York City'

In his book of essays on pop nostalgia, "Retromania," music critic Simon Reynolds writes of how we "privilege the emergent phase of a genre . . . rather than those who come later and carried on their work; the latter are settlers, not pioneers . . . but I really think you can hear the difference. In...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 21, 2015

Avignon chief sees culture and politics sharing the stage

"The Avignon Festival is not only about shows and theater, but also about thinking, searching and seeking to understand the world and its politics — and offering an opportunity for three weeks' intellectual life experience every year," Olivier Py, the event's artistic director, declared with passion...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jan 10, 2015

Code + culture: New Internet artists from Japan

If the Internet is an ocean, why do we spend so much time floating on its surface? What's really going on down there? Not just in the deepest, darkest trenches, but among the forgotten protocols, faulty algorithms and emerging parameters outside the busy shipping lanes and far from the crowded life rafts...
Japan Times
CULTURE
Jan 1, 2015

Most read Culture stories of 2014

OK Go's Japanese-inspired music video and Sailor Moon's special birthday were some of the most read and shared Culture articles of 2014.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Dec 6, 2014

Code + culture: new media art from Japan

Domestic media artists have been using programming code in recent years to create some astonishing works of art. We look back at how this scene developed over the years and examine four contemporary artists who have defined the way the genre has evolved.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 12, 2014

Women's work culture under fire

One morning in February, the government personnel department began an experiment in a nondescript building in a Tokyo residential area that could end up rewriting the rules of the nation's powerful bureaucracy.
Reader Mail
Aug 27, 2014

See that changes fit the culture

Professor Takamitsu Sawa is an economist who should know better than to use statistics to extrapolate conclusions that could be misleading or erroneous. In his Aug. 25 article, he neither indicates tuition costs at European universities nor makes comparisons with EU dormitory housing.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Jul 1, 2014

Whaling town preserves tradition

The whaling season opened with a public carve-up and barbecue in the coastal town of Minamiboso, Chiba Prefecture, where workers last Thursday sliced a whale before a crowd of elementary school students and residents. Onlookers later received pieces of fried whale meat.
Japan Times
Events / Events In Tokyo
May 8, 2014

Celebrate Okinawan culture at Tokyo's Yoyogi Park

In Okinawa Prefecture, soba is not a bowl of buckwheat noodles in a light broth — it is a helping of thick, white noodles served in a hot soup of pork-bone stock flavored with katsuobushi (dried skipjack tuna flakes). From foods to rituals, culture in Okinawa — shaped by its history as the Ryukyu...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
May 3, 2014

Japan inked: Should the country reclaim its tattoo culture?

Tattooing is the most misunderstood form of art in contemporary Japan.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 20, 2014

Why not teach students what's going on now?

Who do textbook publishers think it's smart to start a fourth-grade history textbook with prehistoric humans who lived 10,000 years ago? Why not begin by teaching students what's going on now?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Apr 2, 2014

Left-behind dad eyes an end to abduction culture

How Richard Cory rescued his daughter and lost his abducted sons.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 19, 2014

'Tank girls' lead the charge

Being a soldier in Japan after World War II was seen as a job for failed police recruits and unemployed youths from depressed rural towns.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 8, 2014

Tsunami zone's village culture fades into fog of history

We can better appreciate what Tohoku's shoreline villages represented now that they have been washed away and former residents are marooned in soulless temporary housing ghettoes where the greatest risks are isolation and boredom.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 1, 2014

Japan's reactionaries waging culture war

The contemporary culture wars that have erupted over Japanese identity and history are undermining the country's national interests and damaging its reputation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 19, 2014

'The refusal of time' is worth every minute

The former Rissei Elementary School site, nowadays an occasional cultural events center, was earlier home to the Kyoto Dento, the electric company whose technology helped industrialist Katsutaro Inabata to demonstrate the Lumière Brothers' cinématographe camera in 1897 — Japan's first experience...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 5, 2014

'Prelude Exhibition — William Kentridge: The Refusal of Time'

"The Refusal of Time" is a collaborative work between South-African artist William Kentridge and science historian Peter Galison. A five-channel video installation with a complex sound system, this large-scale installation presents Kentridge's innovative animation and a large "breathing machine" sculpture...
JAPAN / CHUBU CONNECTION
Jan 24, 2014

Kabuki reviews shed light on Edo theater culture

Seven compilations of acting reviews for kabuki shows performed in Nagoya during the Edo Period have been found in the storeroom of Misono-za, an old theater in the city that is under renovation.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 2, 2014

The conspicuous tendency to wish China well

If China fails and falls, the rest of the world will suffer more than a headache or a short-term setback. We need to be cautious about pessimism that might fuel self-fulfilling prophecy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 24, 2013

'Flowers in Bloom: The Culture of Gardening in Edo'

Japan has a long history of gardening, but the culture truly blossomed during the peace and stability of the Edo Period (1603-1867). As summer kicks in, the Edo Tokyo Museum is showcasing Ukiyo-e prints, screens and guidebooks related to the art of gardening and floristry.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jun 22, 2013

Vienna embraces the culture of the bicycle

On the Praterstern, where cars, buses and trams converge from several busy streets on a road that loops around Vienna's central train station, a new digital counter stands under the eye of the Riesenrad Ferris wheel.
Reader Mail
Jun 16, 2013

The culture of sexual predation

Paul Gaysford, in his June 6 letter, "Sense of brotherhood toward all" (a response to my May 30 letter, "Myth of the willing prostitute"), avoids the issue at hand.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 7, 2013

Yokohama to celebrate French culture

Interested in France? Head to Yokohama.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 2, 2013

Taking anime too seriously

'Why study anime?' the author of this study of anime asks himself. Good question, thinks the reader. Why indeed 'study' a pop art whose appeal is less to thought than to mass, unreflecting, spontaneous enjoyment?
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / ON: GAMES
May 28, 2013

Revamped 'Shin Megami Tensei IV,' a new 'DoDonPachi Saidaioujou' and collectable merchandise

Most collectible statues are a few inches or perhaps 30 cm tall. Typically, they are not life-size. But this is no typical statue.
COMMENTARY / World
May 25, 2013

End the U.S. military's culture of sexual violence

There may be fertile ground for reducing the number of sexual assaults in the U.S. military: Why not round up those in charge of handling sexual-assault cases?

Longform

In 2020, 38% of all households were single-person. That figure is projected to rise to 44.3% by 2050.
The rise of AI companionship in a lonely Japan