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COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 15, 2008

Nuggets of 'wisdom' can speak volumes beyond what's said

"Biting Comments, Curious Statements and Famous Misstatements" is the headline on the lead article in the June 5 issue of the popular Japanese weekly magazine Bungei Shunju. It features dramatic ejaculations of famous politicians, sports figures and entertainers, among others.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jun 13, 2008

Koshu stands out as sip of summer

Last month, Tokyo's wine community was given a rare treat: Two of the most famous names in the wine world descended to hold forth on subjects including the bright future of Japan's Koshu grape and Bordeaux's stellar 2005 vintage.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jun 11, 2008

Of Darwin and Mishima . . .

If I said that I met Darwin last week, you might think I'd gone crazy.
COMMENTARY
Jun 10, 2008

A shift in priority to 'happiness'

Per capita gross domestic product is a highly valued as yardstick for measuring the degree of "affluence" enjoyed by the citizens of each nation. The figures of various countries are usually converted into U.S. dollars to determine how countries rank internationally.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 8, 2008

When it comes to the crunch, remaining neutral isn't an option

When a nation is living through a crisis, whether its citizens like it or not, it becomes a crisis of conscience for every individual.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 5, 2008

'Choe U-Ram: Anima Machina'

SCAI the Bathhouse
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 5, 2008

Torifune celebrate the birth of butoh's founder

Last month in his ongoing series Japanese Cinema Eclectics, author Donald Ritchie screened "Horrors of Malformed Men" (Toei, 1969). An "unsung classic" of Japanese film, "Horrors" features the only cinematic performance of Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of the butoh dance movement. Hijikata, who would...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 3, 2008

Lectures from steak-lovers hard to stomach

London — I feel a little sorry for U.S. President George W. Bush. Whatever his other many failings, he has a pretty good record on aid to poor countries, particularly in health care. True to form, he recently announced a big increase in U.S. food aid good for the hungry poor and good for American farmers....
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 18, 2008

Japan affords translators an elevated status not found elsewhere

Here's a little quiz for you.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / FREEWHEELIN' ACROSS JAPAN
May 16, 2008

Into the Land of the Dead

Second of two parts
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 16, 2008

'Goodbye Bafana'

A good politician — as opposed to a dramatic revolutionary — is hard to find, but Nelson Mandela could safely be called one of the best living examples of that rare and precious category.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
May 13, 2008

Team Japan faces huge hurdles on road to Homeless World Cup

Japan's collective image of homelessness is a fairly bleak one: Men in unwashed clothing, faces devoid of expression, hauling armfuls of flattened cardboard that will be their resting place for the night; rows of depressingly permanent-looking blue tarp huts in parks and beneath bridges, tucked out of...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Apr 30, 2008

Do bacteria make the man (or woman or child)?

What happens when Japanese people start eating a Western diet? Could it mean that their famed long life span starts to decline?
Japan Times
LIFE
Apr 27, 2008

Musashi: A do-or-die warrior not to be crossed

When he killed his first man, Miyamoto Musashi was a mere boy of 13 — in present-day terms, a first-year junior-high-school student.
Reader Mail
Apr 24, 2008

CPR article could save lives

According to the April 2 article "Skip mouth-to-mouth: CPR ruled just as good with hands only," the American Heart Association has announced that simple uninterrupted chest presses at the rate of 100 times a minute could save a life in a case of a sudden cardiac arrest in adults. Evidently, in contrast...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Apr 15, 2008

An outside eye on Japan

In a nation traditionally seen as a monoculture, there's a multinational range of flowers blooming in Japan's current cultural crop. In the last several years there has been an influx of foreign-born creators — whether architects, designers or writers — and they are thriving in the local scene.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 13, 2008

Mishima's literary mistress

MISHIMA ON STAGE: The Black Lizard and Other Plays, edited and with an introduction by Laurence Kominz, foreword by Donald Keene. Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2007, xii + 328 pp., with photographs, $70.00 (cloth), $26.00 (paper) Though most famous as a novelist, Mishima...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 11, 2008

'Chesuto'

Japanese live-action films about teenagers are many, but about children, few. This is largely a box-office calculation — teenagers pay higher ticket prices than children. Also, children usually go to the theater for a feature-length version of a cartoon they know from television, though there are hugely...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Apr 11, 2008

DJ Tiësto to entrance ageHa

For those still in the mood for dancing after the Nagisa Music Festival closes its gates Saturday in Odaiba, the massive nightclub ageHa in Shinkiba, Koto Ward, will sport the biggest ticket in Tokyo clubland just a short train ride away.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2008

Is Tibetan culture slated for extinction?

NEW YORK — Are the Tibetans doomed to go the way of the American Indians? Will they be reduced to nothing more than a tourist attraction, peddling cheap mementos of what was a once-great culture? That sad fate is looking more and more likely, and the Olympic year already has been soured by the Chinese...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Apr 5, 2008

Lazy cow sex and the dairy queen

Inside a barn in Hokkaido, I sat down with a 47-year-old woman named Mrs. Takahashi and talked about sex. Cattle sex, that is. Of course, the closest thing I've seen to it is a pregnant cow, so I wanted to get a little more information as my interest in this subject was mounting.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 4, 2008

'Cloverfield'

An old gripe of Woody Allen was that America hated New York ("The rest of the country looks upon New York like we're leftwing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers!" he rails in "Annie Hall"). For most of his life he had stuck staunchly by his city, showing the rest of America just what "leftwing...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Mar 31, 2008

Oxymoronic sustenance and sustainability

NEW YORK — Earlier this month there was held, in a midtown hotel, an International Conference on Climate Change. Yet another one? you might ask. But, no, this one was to make the case that Al Gore, with his argument in "An Inconvenient Truth" is a fraud, a swindler. One of the conferees' premises was...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 30, 2008

Hatching out some teaching blues

TONOHARU: Part One, by Lars Martinson. Minneapolis: Pliant Press, 2008, 128 pp., $19.95 (cloth) This account, in comic-book form, of an assistant English teacher's experiences working at a junior high school in the Japanese outback is not bad. Neither, however, is it as good as it might have been, or,...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Mar 29, 2008

Youngsters hold labor meeting ahead of G8

Ahead of the Group of Eight Labour and Employment Ministers' Meeting in May, youngsters from each G8 country exchanged opinions on labor-related issues at the Junior Labour Summit 2008 held Friday in the city of Niigata.
BUSINESS
Mar 29, 2008

Markets laud Fukuda offer to untie taxes

Sensing the will for reform, financial markets have responded generally favorably to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's proposal to free up road-related taxes for other purposes in fiscal 2009, but rural economies already suffering from cuts in public spending risk further damage, analysts say.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 28, 2008

'Things We Lost in the Fire'

How easily we are numbed by routine. We wake up each morning expecting the world to be much like it always is, barely aware that one day we will awake to find that someone so close, so needed, in our lives is no longer there.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 26, 2008

Access to water is a right, not a privilege

BANGKOK — How will Japan and other countries in the world achieve the millennium development goal (MDG) target to reduce by half the proportion of 2.6 billion people who have no access to basic sanitation by 2015?

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years