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CULTURE / Books
Jul 15, 2012

Madame Butterfly's love child

Butterfly's Child, by Angela Davis-Gardner. Dial Press, 2011, 352 pp., $26.00 (hardcover) Western opera's opulent pageantry contradicts traditional Japanese understated aesthetics. In the novel "Butterfly's Child," Angela Davis-Gardner resolves this difference by crafting a subdued, multilayered marvel...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jul 13, 2012

It's music to children's ears

"I got this idea from children," said Japanese pianist Mayumi Tokugawa when asked about her upcoming performance — a collaborative effort involving poetry and music. "When we have concerts for children and we read out stories, they respond better," she said, explaining that she has always wanted to...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 13, 2012

Introducing a Kansai feel for the eel

Every summer, as the mercury rises the gourmands of Kansai head for their local eel-cuisine specialist. The custom of eating unagi to alleviate the effects of the summer heat is known as doyō-no-ushi no hi, (day of the ox of the seasonal change period) or doyō-iri (entering the period of seasonal change)....
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 10, 2012

Thomas Jefferson's view of equality under siege

A week after the 236th anniversary of the birth of the United States — which was squalling to the world in its very first utterance that all men were created equal and endowed with unalienable rights — the essence of our politics is still about who are those people who are self-evidently equal and...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jul 8, 2012

Keeping an eye on TV news coverage of the nuke crisis

In the week immediately after March 11, 2011 — when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami hit Tohoku and crippled the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant — most Japanese were closely watching TV news programs — amazed that a nuclear crisis was now threatening their lives.
COMMENTARY
Jul 5, 2012

Power shifts outstrip reforms

The international institutional structure has remained largely static since the mid-20th century rather than evolving with the changing power realities and challenges. Reforming and restructuring the international system poses the single biggest challenge to preserving global peace, stability and continued...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 5, 2012

Mexico's old political party needs modern vision

On Sunday, about 49 million Mexicans (roughly 62 percent of eligible voters in a population of 110 million) voted for their next president. The winner is Enrique Pena Nieto, the young candidate of an old party, the PRI, that is often associated with the image of a dinosaur.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jul 1, 2012

Another tax drama; murder mystery at the archery club; CM of the week: Delicare

Nippon TV obviously thinks we're not sick of taxes yet because this week they launch a new drama series called "Tokkan" (Wed., 10 p.m.), an abbreviation of tokubetsu kokuzei chōshūkan, or "special national tax collection officer."
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 1, 2012

The land where sex fears to tread

No love, no sex, no marriage, no kids — such, in glum outline, is Japan today. It's too bleak a picture, it can't be true! But it can't be false either. If it were, people would be marrying, making babies and having love affairs. Instead, statistics reflecting everything from marriage and childbirth...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 1, 2012

Sexual policies and politics during the occupation of Japan

Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan, by Sarah Kovner. Stanford University Press, 2012, 240 pp., $50.00 (hardcover) Love, Sex and Democracy During the American Occupation, by Mark McClelland. Palgrave MacMillan, 2012, 252 pp., $85.00 (hardcover) Six decades after the U.S. occupation...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Jul 1, 2012

Lesley Downer: Love, war and geisha

Lesley Downer's seven books range widely in genre and subject. Here she reflects on their inspiration and her experiences writing them.
COMMENTARY
Jun 25, 2012

A success story with or without 'Tiger Moms'

High up in the category of news that's too familiar to be newsworthy is the latest poll that finds Asians to be the most-educated and highest-earning population in the United States.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 24, 2012

Fumiko Hayashi: Haunted to the grave by her wartime 'flute and drums'

If you compare the treatment dealt out in the immediate postwar period to Japanese writers who supported their nation's military aggression in World War II with that meted out to such writers in Europe, the Japanese literary collaborators seem to have got off lightly.
Reader Mail
Jun 24, 2012

Addressing basic human needs

To Rowena Xiaoqing, the writer of The Washington Post article "China: no answers and no justice" (which ran in The Japan Times on June 14): I share Tiananmen Mothers' indignation and never doubted the idealism of the Tiananmen protesters. Ultimately, a China that understands its past and recent history...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 24, 2012

A woman's world

PASSIONATE FRIENDSHIP: The Aesthetics of Girls' Culture in Japan, by Deborah Shamoon. Univ. of Hawai'i Press, 2012, 181 pp., $27.00 (paperback) The subject of this book is one that is baffling to outsiders, but visible on the streets of Tokyo, especially the more fashionable parts, and in fiction, dress...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 22, 2012

Model train buff brings out his toys for everyone

The term Shangri-La was coined by British author James Hilton in his novel "Lost Horizon," referring to a mythical paradise in the Himalayas. Nobutaro Hara, however, found his utopia on a railway line.
Jun 22, 2012

Cold War shadows Serb's win of key U.N. post

Shadows of the Cold War returned to the United Nations in the recent elections for president of the General Assembly, where a previously agreed candidate from Lithuania was challenged and subsequently defeated by a Russian-backed contender from Serbia.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball
Jun 18, 2012

Foreign players' message sometimes lost in translation

Foreign ballplayers in Japan have had their words misunderstood for as long as there have been foreign ballplayers in Japan.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jun 17, 2012

Rock on down to a geopark near you

To naturalists and hikers, the renown of 810-meter Mount Apoi near the southern tip of Hokkaido towers mightily above its lowly elevation.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 17, 2012

Japan: the history behind its love affair with dogs

Empire of Dogs: Canine, Japan and the Making of the Modern World, by Aaron Skabelund. Cornell University Press, 2011, 312 pp., $39.95 (hardcover) The Japanese fascination with dogs is long-standing, but the pampered pooches of today would cringe at the horrid treatment of their predecessors during wartime...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
Jun 16, 2012

The midlife crisis hotline — dreams to fulfill before you get too old?

I've recently been reading books about athletes. Lance Armstrong's "It's Not About the Bike," Andre Agassi's "Open," and more recently, Scott Jurek's "Eat and Run." All these books are memoirs, but they have something less obvious in common. They all had ghostwriters.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 15, 2012

'Act of Valor'

Ten minutes into "Act of Valor", I could practically hear the voice of Homer Simpson in my head, delivering his own critique of the movie: "Ooh, propatainment!"
CULTURE / Books
Jun 10, 2012

Okinawa: a long history of hardship

THE OKINAWAN DIASPORA IN JAPAN: Crossing the Borders Within, by Steve Rabson. University of Hawai'i Press, 2012, 312 pp., $55.00 (hardcover) Okinawa, mainland Japan's subtropical playground, is no paradise to Okinawans. Ryukyu, the archipelago's original name, means "circle of jewels." Lush appearance...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2012

'11.25 Jiketsu no Hi: Mishima Yukio to Wakamono-Tachi (11.25: The Day Mishima Chose His Own Fate)'

On Nov. 25, 1970, at the Self-Defense Forces headquarters in Ichigaya, Tokyo, renowned author Yukio Mishima committed suicide by seppuku (ritual stomach cutting) after urging a crowd of jeering soldiers to overthrow the government in the name of the Emperor.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 4, 2012

Final ride for the Putin showboat?

Vladimir Putin's new presidential term is just beginning, but it increasingly looks like the beginning of the end.
COMMENTARY
Jun 4, 2012

The political storm in China

As senior leaders are purged and as retired provincial officials publicly call for Politburo members to be removed, it has become clear that China is at a crossroads. China's future no longer looks to be determined by its hugely successful economy, which has turned the country into a world power in a...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 3, 2012

Koki Mitani: Japan's Mr. Comedy

Koki Mitani is far and away the nation's best-known dramatist. Although theater is quite a niche medium here, most people in Japan — whether male or female, young or not so young, Japanese or not — recognize his face, even if they couldn't name many of his works. Recently, indeed, I was amazed when...
CULTURE / Books
Jun 3, 2012

Portrait of a pickpocket

THE THIEF, by Fuminori Nakamura, translated by Satoko Izumo and Stephen Coates. Soho Crime, 2012, 304 pp., $23.00 (hardcover) In simpler times, in simpler tales, authors pitted heroes against villains, and there was no confusion about who wore the black hat and who the white. We no longer live in those...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 1, 2012

'Midnight in Paris'

A guy's on a trip to Paris with his fiancee. Gil (Owen Wilson) is a hack Hollywood screenwriter bemoaning the fact that he never became a "real" author and, besotted by the city's charms, toys with the idea of staying and doing just that. Inez (Rachel McAdams) is a castrating harpy who won't buy into...

Longform

Figure skater Akiko Suzuki was once told her ideal weight should be 47 kilograms, a number she now admits she “naively believed.” This led to her have a relationship with food that resulted in her suffering from anorexia.
The silent battle Japanese athletes fight with weight