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Japan Times
Features
Apr 11, 2004

Zen for all to see

A few years ago, I went to see "Izutsu (The Well Curb)" at the old Kongo Theatre in Kyoto. A key scene in this noh classic comes when the shite (principal character), a beautiful woman played by a man, offers prayers at the little grave mound beside a well in a dilapidated temple. In answer to the waki...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 11, 2004

Keeping ghosts in the family

STRANGERS, by Taichi Yamada, translated by Wayne Lammers. New York: Vertical, Inc., 2003, 204 pp., $19.95 (cloth). Orphaned as a child, a middle-aged TV script writer wanders back to Asakusa where he was born. "A forlorn air hung about the area . . . streets empty even at midday . . . the atmosphere...
BUSINESS
Apr 10, 2004

Rehatched Tamagotchi pets can play dating game

Every parent knows how exhausting it can be answering newborn babies' every beck and call: the constant feedings, diaper changes and rocking them to sleep while they wail.
JAPAN
Mar 31, 2004

Iranian family faces deportation as justice minister wins court reversal

The Tokyo High Court on Tuesday overturned a lower court ruling that nullified a deportation order for a visaless Iranian family, effectively putting the family back on the deportation track.
Japan Times
Features
Mar 28, 2004

Irene & Matilde

"SO IT STRUCK YOU AS ODD."
EDITORIALS
Mar 26, 2004

Last resort to protect privacy

Over the past two weeks Japanese media have made much of a privacy issue involving the eldest daughter of former Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka. It all started with an article in a popular weekly describing the daughter's private life. Responding to a request from her lawyer, the Tokyo District Court...
JAPAN
Mar 26, 2004

Insurers must pay out for suicides

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that insurance companies are obliged to pay out on contracts even when clients kill themselves solely for the designated beneficiary to receive the cash.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 24, 2004

Sculptor who molded open-air art

I have been a professional sculptor for 20 years, and in that time Henry Moore has toppled from the pedestal I put him on when I was 14 and first saw his "Helmet Head" series of bronze sculptures on display in my home city of Edinburgh.
EDITORIALS
Mar 14, 2004

Imagining a world without birds

Take a walk in a Tokyo garden -- particularly an undisturbed, crow-haunted one such as the Institute for Nature Study's park in Meguro -- and you might find this hard to believe, but the world's bird population is shrinking. According to a report released to coincide with BirdLife International's quadrennial...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Mar 7, 2004

Yayoi Kusama: Lost and found in art

Yayoi Kusama was just shy of 30 when she left her hometown of Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture and headed to America to meet her hero, the painter Georgia O'Keeffe.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 6, 2004

'Tokyo Stories' wittily points up the expat scene

Two years ago, as a balance to researching and writing up projects for financial institutions in the U.S. and preparing reports for fund managers in Japan, Christine Cunanan-Miki began a novel -- a series of interrelated tales about expats in Tokyo.
Japan Times
Features
Feb 29, 2004

Pooch paradise

A dog's life in Japan can be about as close to canine heaven on earth as it gets.
JAPAN
Feb 25, 2004

Follower couldn't shake Aum's allure till its 1999 apology

When Aum Shinrikyo officially acknowledged for the first time in December 1999 that it was behind a spate of heinous crimes and apologized to the survivors, Hiroyuki Miyaguchi said he was relieved that suspicions he and other rank-and-file cultists harbored for years had finally been cleared up.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 18, 2004

A bombardment of images leaves riddles in the rubble

Naqoyqatsi Rating: * * * * 1/2 (out of 5) Director: Godfrey Reggio Running time: 89 minutes Language: English Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings] While all the attention has focused on "The Matrix" and "The Lord of the Rings," another trilogy, 20 years in the making, has...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 14, 2004

Roland Thompson

His happiest memory, Roland Thompson says, is of his training, and learning advanced techniques, in Soke Shioda's black-belt aikido classes. His saddest memory is of the day Shioda died. He regards himself as "very fortunate to have been with him, and to have trained with him, during that last part of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 11, 2004

Back to Futurists and fascists

Max Rating: * * * * 1/2 (out of 5) Japanese title: Adolf no Gashu Director: Menno Meyjes Running time: 108 minutes Language: English Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings] With his debut feature, "Max," director Menno Meyjes takes us back to the Germany of 1918, in the immediate...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Feb 7, 2004

Kazuko Asakura

"Bar pianists are like public bathhouses, or shoeshine boys in the street. There are no jobs any more. Situations have changed, and it is shocking how much has disappeared," said Kazuko Asakura.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 7, 2004

Two Myers-Briggs analysis sessions change lives

Californian-born Terri Nii of KNT Co. appears to have found a most agreeable and satisfying balance in her life.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Feb 3, 2004

'Real' last samurai fights for attention

Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe may be raking in big box-office bucks as The Last Samurai, but a rival claimant to the title has emerged in the unlikely form of a sword-wielding British TV producer.
SOCCER / PREMIER REPORT
Jan 23, 2004

Saha saga just goes to show what a funny old game soccer is

LONDON -- "Read my lips -- Louis Saha is not for sale" -- Fulham owner and chairman Mohamed Fayed.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jan 17, 2004

Robert Tsonos

The magnetism of theater pulled in Robert Tsonos at an early age, and kept him captive. He cannot account for the passion with which he responded to performance art, which still holds him in thrall. Robert says he is the only one in his immediate family, and in his extended family of several cousins,...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jan 15, 2004

An island alone that is worlds apart

If it were possible to view the Japanese archipelago rising from the Pacific in profile, a distinct, lonely, broad cone would be immediately apparent between the high peaks of the Japanese Alps of Honshu and the even higher peaks of Taiwan. That cone is the long-isolated, mountainous island of Yakushima,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jan 14, 2004

New year musing of a 'pottery poet'

As this is the first Ceramic Scene of 2004, I'd like to wish all readers a Happy and Healthy New Year!
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 11, 2004

Japan's 'Seabiscuit' shows losers can be winners too

There are few cliches as dubious as "Everybody loves a winner." Does everybody love a winner? The fans of the Hanshin Tigers certainly don't love the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 6, 2004

Family plot not for all women

Women in Japan may have made great strides in deciding how they live their lives, but such freedom has yet to translate into their final resting place.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 23, 2003

EBRD must rethink its role

LONDON -- When people hear the word "globalization" they differ in how they react. Some think about how globalization has spread around the world raising incomes and the quality of life wherever it goes. Others think about how the capitalist forces of the West extend their exploitative tentacles to grab...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 21, 2003

Gray lining for the silver years

BLESSED WITH OLD AGE: Demographic Change and the Family in Japan's Aging Society, edited by John W. Traphagan and John Knight. New York: State University of New York Press, 2003, 248 pp., $71.50 (cloth), $23.95 (paper). Aging is not what it used to be. Fuwaku, "no longer straying off course" once described...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Dec 17, 2003

A family unit to value in tech's brave new world

The Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Shinagawa used to be a family home, and it must have been a very nice one because it is a beautiful place, designed and built in the late 1930s in the Bauhaus style. The hardwood floors and comfortably high ceilings create a relaxing atmosphere in the one-time dining,...

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