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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 21, 2002

Trance music: Taking it to the next level

When deep into the music at a trance party, most people dance a sort of mechanized primal stomp, working their arms like pistons and clomping their feet. Although these maneuvers may look awkward, they are a natural reaction to the music's rigidly 4/4 industrial-sounding beats, which, though sublime...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 14, 2002

Janet Klein: past perfect

Janet Klein's ukulele is no gimmick. Nor are her "obscure, lovely and naughty songs from the '10s, '20s and '30s." Klein and her L.A.-based band, The Parlor Boys, are about as real a deal as it gets. More than just fans of phonographs and sepia tone, Klein and company are musical archaeologists, taking...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2002

Toil -- you're on candid canvas

In the mid-19th century, the French village of Barbizon was the artistic equivalent of the reality-TV show "Big Brother." In this tiny village with a population of just 352 (according to the 1872 census), the locals were under constant observation by the 100 or so artists reputedly living among them....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 11, 2002

Book industry cries murder

Although everyone agrees that the Japanese publishing industry is in trouble, there is less consensus as to the causes. Book and magazine sales have been declining for five years and book revenues for last year were at roughly the same level as a decade earlier; indeed, some say that if it were not for...
Japan Times
JAPAN / WEEKEND WISDOM
Aug 11, 2002

Bible scholar questions value of religion without substance

If something lacks substance, it is not to the taste of Bible scholar Michiko Ota. Thus, she contends, humans are better off without religion if that religion has lost its substance.
COMMUNITY
Jul 30, 2002

Learning goes both ways in JET program

I first came to Japan in 1991 as an English instructor with the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program and ended up staying twice as long as I originally planned. Here are some recollections from that period.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 28, 2002

Images of harmony between man and nature

THE SIGN OF LIFE, photographs by Yoshiko Seino, text by Asako Imaeda. Tokyo: Osiris, 2002, unpaginated, 60 full-page plates, 7,000 yen (cloth) In her text to this important collection of photographs, Asako Imaeda writes of its "strange harmony, a precarious harmony that is the result of the introduction...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 24, 2002

Beautiful people

Men, does your weedy physique or receding hair line make you feel inadequate? Women, do you worry about wrinkles or whether to brave the pain of a bikini-line Brazilian wax? Ever feel that all of us, every day, are bombarded with images of physical perfection that are impossible to live up to?
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 18, 2002

'Factory' fishing threatens marine stocks

Ever evening at sunset, Maruyama Keizo, 64, and his brother Motoichi, 54, of Minabe, Wakayama Prefecture, take their boat out and return the next morning at dawn with their catch: either flatfish or sardines, depending on the season. In his 50-year working life, Maruyama has seen shrinking catches, the...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 14, 2002

The name is Otaku, James Otaku

Don't go to Akihabara if you're looking to buy an Aston Martin with twin machine guns, or a pen that shoots poisoned darts. Aside from these, though, there's enough exotic spy goodies there to keep 007 -- or even the most discerning otaku -- supplied for years to come.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jul 10, 2002

Summer sees ceramic talents in full bloom

Crunchy powerhouses of protein and vitamin E, sunflower seeds are much consumed in the West though their health benefits have never really been appreciated here in Japan. When it comes to pottery, we sometimes see himawari (sunflowers) painted on porcelains, but I've never come across a ceramic one complete...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 7, 2002

Violinist who plays off the scale

Most people expect the kind of music played on a violin to be classical. Unless they're listening to internationally known violinist and composer Taro Hakase, that is, whose violin demonstrates melodies that can't be easily pigeonholed into any one musical category.
LIFE / Food & Drink / BEST BAR NONE
Jul 7, 2002

The lord of the dance

To Tokyo clubbers, the name Pylon conjures images of overly tanned and underdressed young women teetering precariously on high clogs as they dance para-para style -- glow sticks in hand -- atop a bar (or other elevated surface). And at their center will be a handsome young man, shirt slipping off his...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 6, 2002

Aussie cameraman's show highlights art of nature

Journalist Paul Murray was slightly thrown when his photographic teacher told him to forget using a macro lens. "He said the best photographers technically were Japanese, so I might as well give up before I started."
JAPAN
Jul 1, 2002

Euthanasia doctor defends actions

A doctor accused of performing unlawful euthanasia defended her actions as ones of conscience in a recent interview with Kyodo News.
JAPAN
Jun 29, 2002

Growing minority blurs borders of Chinatowns

In 1919, 15-year-old Zeng Yaoquan from Guang Dong Province, southern China, arrived at Yokohama port to work as a servant at a trading house that imported rice and other crops from China, run by one of his relatives.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 23, 2002

The unbearable enlightenment of being

Bells. Lights. The sound of -- an earthquake? Galloping horses? No -- I'm oriented now. It's monks running through the corridors.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 23, 2002

Bursting illusions and facing a sometimes ugly reality

Ever since Takuya Kimura got married and became a father, his popularity among women has cooled. Fellow SMAP member Masahiro Nakai has apparently taken up the slack, though Nakai's female fans don't seem to want to sleep with him the way they wanted to with Kimutaku. The reason for Nakai's popularity...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jun 23, 2002

Arts of the essential

It is one of those wonderful historical coincidences that Zen Buddhism arrived in Japan at a time when political, economic and social forces converged in such a way as to foster outstanding achievements in the arts.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jun 20, 2002

The ants' workaday world is wherever you look

Despite the name, I didn't see any ants in Antarctica, though it's the only place I've been that I haven't seen any. Everywhere else, from Alaska to Australia, from Norway to New Zealand, I have encountered them. Ants are an extraordinarily numerous and successful group.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE WAY OF WASHOKU
Jun 16, 2002

Big world sprouts from tiny grains of rice

When you travel between one small town and another in Japan often the panorama is a vast plain of flooded fields or a towering terraced mountain of rice paddies. In early June, up and down the Japanese archipelago, rice has been planted and the glistening paddies are teeming with life. Along with the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 12, 2002

From the hands of masters down the ages

The most impressive of the numerous art exhibitions taking place this summer to celebrate South Korea and Japan's co-hosting of the World Cup soccer finals opened on Tuesday at Ueno's Tokyo National Museum. "The Dynastic Heritage of Korea," running June 11 to July 28, is the largest exhibition ever held...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Jun 11, 2002

On the pagoda path of the Irrawaddy

"On the road to Mandalay, Where the flyin' fishes play, An' the dawn comes up like thunder outer China 'crost the bay." -- Rudyard Kipling.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Jun 9, 2002

Winning always comes at a cost

The television audience-share for last Tuesday's World Cup match between Japan and Belgium climbed as high as 58 percent. As that was on a weekday, Sunday's Japan-Russia game on Fuji TV will probably be watched by even more Japanese people, so rival stations aren't even going to try to compete.
JAPAN
Jun 9, 2002

Makeup therapist tries to boost patients' esteem, health

It is a skin-thin issue, but it could also be a matter of life-saving gravity. Such is the significance of "rehabilitation makeup" in the eyes of leading makeup therapist Reiko Kazuki.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 4, 2002

The Palestinian intifada: a very American struggle

AL-BIREH, West Bank -- The Palestinian people have no grudge against the American public. We never did. As a matter of fact, if one resists the media spin and takes a closer look at what the Palestinians have been struggling for, it will be revealed that the Palestinian intifada is a very American struggle....
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / JET STREAM
May 24, 2002

Off home in a blaze of space, light and shadow

For the past three years, the painter Beau Bernstein has lived a quiet and contemplative life in Kyoto. That is not to say he hasn't been busy. When the native New Yorker closes his Kyoto studio in July and returns to Manhattan, he'll take back with him an impressive new series of oil paintings.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 19, 2002

Preserving spaces fit for living

JAPANESE COUNTRY STYLE: Putting New Life Into Old Houses, by Yoshihiro Takishita. Forward by Peter M. Grilli. Preface by Sachiko Amakasu. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2002, 168 pp., more than 200 color and b/w photographs, floor plans, maps, etc; a bilingual edition. 4,800 yen (cloth) In this stimulating...

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