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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 23, 2006

Intimate photography: Tokyo, nostalgia and sex

Usually reviews of Nobuyoshi Araki's work start by pointing out the contradictions "monster," "genius," "pornographer," "artist," etc. The greatest negative routinely cited is his attitude toward women, photographed smeared with paint or bound in bondage ropes, images that reflect attitudes rooted in...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Nov 22, 2006

Status quo really is planet's dead end

If you've looked around at the state of our planet and been tempted to say, "God help us," you're not the only one.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Nov 11, 2006

Mary Ishin Sung Katayama

Educated in Japan and the U.S., and each year making frequent official trips to Europe, Mary Ishin Sung Katayama says that she thinks of herself as borderless. "I love to travel and feel a need to be on the go every month or two," she said.
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 9, 2006

Clues to living in a stress-filled society

We live in a high-pressure, high-stress society. In Japan, the symptoms of extreme levels of stress are seen in the "death from overwork" syndrome and a tragically high suicide rate. Vicious bullying among children is likewise a reflec- tion of this stress.
EDITORIALS
Nov 5, 2006

Madonna, child and critics

Spare some sympathy for Madonna. Not a lot, mind you. Celebrities are better cushioned against life's slings and arrows than the rest of us, and the flamboyant U.S.-turned-British pop star is a super-mega-celebrity. Still, the pillorying she has suffered in recent weeks is unreasonable.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Nov 4, 2006

Lynne Reid Banks

Lynne Reid Banks believes in the value of imagination. She says that children's books are more important than those for adults "because for society's sake our children must be able to imagine the consequences of their actions. They must be able to empathize with the situations of others. A healthy imagination...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Oct 31, 2006

Slow food, an attitude as much as a meal

In the 1960s, Japan's first instant ramen changed people's eating habits significantly by making it possible to get dinner in as little as three minutes. Even putting fast food and microwave dinners aside, eating has become easier and more functional since those days, due either to higher living standards...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 22, 2006

Exploring the cobwebs and exposing some dirt

ISTANBUL: Memories of a City, by Orhan Pamuk. Faber & Faber, 2006, 348 pp., £8 (paper). Turkey it seems has always inspired fear. The memory of advancing Turkish units camped outside the gates of Vienna haunted the European mind for centuries. "Where the Turk treads, no grass grows," ran one saying...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 22, 2006

Something 'beautiful' that leaders may not see from on high

Sometimes a very significant event in the life of a country passes largely unnoticed, particularly if it occurs away from the center of power. Just such a thing happened on the 11th of this month.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 21, 2006

Astrologer reaches out with readings of counsel

His certification as an astrologer reads Tatsuhiro Percival Nakajima. Why? The gentle Japanese -- still coolly dressed for summer -- replies smiling: "Because I am the Fool."
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 8, 2006

Beware a 'beauty' that would deceive the nation

'Japan lost the war, and Bushido [the samurai spirit] perished. But then the human being was born for the first time in the womb of truth called decadence."
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / WALKING THE WARDS
Oct 6, 2006

Animal magic in the jungle of Setagaya

Taxi drivers claim that, unless you've lived there all your life, Setagaya is nearly impossible to navigate. Major thoroughfares pulse straight across the second largest of Tokyo's 23 wards, but off the highway a maze of tapering, winding one-way alleys will often as not dead-end you in someone's back...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 28, 2006

An Asian woman becomes aware

Thirty-one year-old playwright, director and actor Keishi Nagatsuka has been turning heads since he staged his first productions while still a student at Waseda University. In 1996 in Tokyo, he founded the Asagaya Spiders company, which has received glowing critical acclaim and regularly plays to full...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 28, 2006

Celebrating civilizations

The Islamic world is home to one of the richest and most important musical traditions on Earth. It doesn't hurt that it also spans an incredibly vast area, stretching west to Morocco and east as far as Indonesia, and that it contains an intricate tapestry of races, languages and cultures, or that it...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Sep 19, 2006

End of the Lion

The mythmaker Jim Frederick TIME Magazine The most difficult aspect of reporting on Koizumi was confronting the fixed, immutable and monolithic "Koizumi Myth." What started as a campaign plank -- "Koizumi is a reformer and a rebel who is destroying the LDP and reinvigorating Japan" -- somehow became...
EDITORIALS
Sep 17, 2006

Have a nice 'sol'

It's that time again. Every so often, life on our planet just seems so bleak there's nowhere to look but out. That was certainly the case this past week. Not only did the usual whack-a-mole wars keep flaring and simmering, even good things had their dark sides. Here in Japan, the welcome birth of a prince...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 2, 2006

Imperial rivalries are grist for media mill

Harumi Kobayashi has been an enthusiastic admirer of the Imperial family for more than a decade. She has followed the royals around the country, greeted them and taken their pictures. In fact, she has become such a familiar face at Imperial events that some members of the family respond specifically...
Japan Times
LIFE / DISABILITY IN JAPAN
Aug 27, 2006

Unseen sufferers take self-help route

This story is part of a package on "Disability in Japan". The introduction is here.
EDITORIALS
Aug 22, 2006

The possibility of work at any age

Job opportunities for young people, women and elderly people are the main topic of this year's government white paper on people's lifestyles. Many young people can't seem to get the jobs they really want. Women are experiencing a hard time finding jobs after giving birth or after raising their children....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Aug 19, 2006

Bon stories: fire heads and stuffed turtles

"Ne, ne, Amy-chan . . ." Kio-chan is calling to me from across the Moooo! Bar. "Man-chan wa ne . . ." he starts to tell me a story about his best friend, 80-year-old Man-chan, who is sitting next to him. The only thing he likes more than Man-chan is telling stories about him. "You should see Man-chan's...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 17, 2006

Daughters also unable to reach Asahara

When she was finally allowed to visit her father, she found him in a wheelchair, wearing a diaper. A prison guard took notes throughout the 30-minute encounter, which took place in a small, barren room, through a plate of thick, transparent plastic. It was, for her, a dream come true, but yet a nightmare....
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 15, 2006

Meet the chic sikh

Waris Ahluwalia has some good anecdotes. Like the one where Willem Dafoe asks him if it's OK to give Spike Lee his number, and a couple of hours later he gets a call and the voice at the other end of the line says "Hey Waris, it's Spike Lee," and asks him to audition for his upcoming blockbuster bank...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Aug 10, 2006

A loving tribute at the Watari-um for a close friend

"Bye-Bye, Nam June Paik," the current exhibition at the Watari-Um Museum of Contemporary Art, is a loving tribute to an artist who has always been close to that Aoyama art space's heart.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 8, 2006

Osim is next to continue 'sports bully' tradition

In the wake of Japan's disastrous World Cup campaign, the mood in the country has swung quickly from darkly pessimistic to remarkably upbeat. Much of it has to do with the appointment of the new national team coach, Ivica Osim.
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2006

Japan Post firms plan expansion after privatization

The bank and the insurance company to be created through postal privatization next year will try to expand their operations to match those of their private-sector rivals, informed sources have said.
CULTURE / Music
Jul 20, 2006

Senegal is calling

Time and again Western journalists ask superstar Senegalese pop singer Youssou N'Dour, arguably the most successful African musician in history, the same question: Why, despite selling hundreds of thousands of records in the West and collaborating with artists such as Peter Gabriel, Sting, Wyclef Jean...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jul 12, 2006

Guinea pigs hail 'mystical experience'

What was the most spiritually meaningful moment in your life?

Longform

A sinkhole in Yashio, which emerged in January, was triggered by a ruptured, aging sewer pipe. Authorities worry that similar sections of infrastructure across the country are also at risk of corrosion.
That sinking feeling: Japan’s aging sewers are an infrastructure time bomb