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COMMENTARY
Oct 23, 2005

Look for change next year

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's determination to visit Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni Shrine needs to be seen in the perspective. The visit was not necessarily, as Beijing and Seoul seem to believe, a final proof of prime-ministerial evil.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Oct 22, 2005

Margarita Carrillo de Salinas

"The most important room in our house in Mexico was the huge kitchen. We six children went in with our bicycles; our mother was cooking, we all helped. Our grandparents were there -- our father, a lawyer, was always encouraging family life around the table. That is the way I got my interest in food,"...
COMMENTARY
Oct 16, 2005

China needs an independent judiciary

HONG KONG -- China has performed a miracle over the last quarter century, lifting hundreds of millions of people from dire poverty and turning the country into an economic powerhouse. In the process, Beijing has raised people's expectations not only of a better life but of a fairer society.
COMMENTARY
Oct 15, 2005

Statesman test for Koizumi

TOKYO -- Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has demonstrated that he is a brilliant politician. His resounding victory in the Sept. 11 Lower House Diet elections provides him with an opportunity to demonstrate his brilliance as an international statesman as well.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 13, 2005

Pop mystification

Sigmar Polke has a lot in common with the medieval alchemists with whom he identifies. Like them, he is interested in transmutation, sometimes employing pigments and techniques that make his paintings change over time. Like those pseudo-scientists of the past, he uses a combination of mystification and...
COMMENTARY
Oct 4, 2005

China peels a layer off its secret onion

HONG KONG -- In the 1980s, when I was a Beijing-based correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, I had occasion to interview an official in Shanghai. How much of China's trade, I asked, pass through Shanghai? The official responded: "I don't think that figure has appeared in the newspapers."
EDITORIALS
Sep 28, 2005

Now for some bold reforms

With the resounding victory of the Liberal Democratic Party in the general election, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi can now boldly kick-start the stagnant process of structural reform. Utilizing the strong leadership consolidated in the triumph, Mr. Koizumi must set about breaking up the LDP cliques...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 27, 2005

Chubu economy's future seen bright with boost from expo

NAGOYA -- As Nagoya's big coming-out party winds down, thoughts turn inevitably to what's next. The issue of how the prefecture can capitalize on the Aichi Expo is on everyone's mind.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Sep 27, 2005

Plusminuszero cordless phone, Nendo's Skiima, Toshi Iwai's Tenori-On, Monacca's Bag-Kaku

In the world of product design, we've finally come to a point where features have seemingly attained a certain level of parity. Gone are the days when detailed specs ruled, and bigger (brighter, louder, faster) was better. The focus has now shifted toward the promotion of an object's outward design --...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Sep 27, 2005

Radical Suzuki

Radical Suzuki's playfully risque illustrations have appeared in books, magazines and advertisements. He's a geek and proud of it.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Sep 24, 2005

Geraldine Twilley

LONDON -- In the 25 years that she has lived in Japan, Geraldine Twilley has balanced her serious work with free-time fun. When she was a young woman on her own, going for the first time to Tokyo, she showed the enterprise and spiritedness that are still her characteristics. Currently she is in London...
COMMENTARY
Sep 18, 2005

Japan to go boldly backward for a while

HONOLULU -- No one predicted the size of Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro's election victory last weekend. The landslide win has transformed the landscape of Japanese politics.
Japan Times
Features
Sep 18, 2005

TREASURED TRANSPORTS OF ARTISTIC DELIGHT

Tigers and dragons snarl. Missiles and rockets soar above a dozen Mount Fujis. Inside, a chandelier sways over plush velvet. Around the fender, Chinese characters for "art," "tradition," "landscape gardener" and "love" salute the important things in life. All moving at a respectable 75 kph on the highway....
Japan Times
Features
Sep 18, 2005

In skeptical quest of a boom

"Why don't you write about the kimono boom?" they said, citing anecdotal evidence suggesting that the traditional gown of Japan was making a comeback. So, with several people at The Japan Times claiming they'd seen "a lot" of people wearing them recently, off I set to investigate.
JAPAN
Sep 13, 2005

Doi's loss ends 36-year Diet run

Former Social Democratic Party leader Takako Doi failed to retain her House of Representatives seat for a 13th term in Sunday's election, bringing a 36-year Diet run to an end.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Sep 13, 2005

Arihiro and Kimiyo Fujita

Arihiro Fujita and Kimiyo Fujita, owners of the award-winning Takasagoya Pork Shop in Tokyo's Tsukishima, know their pork. These two 65-year-olds also know what makes a relationship work. They've been married and working together for 40 years -- without, they claim, even one argument.
JAPAN
Sep 12, 2005

Voter loyalties split but all seek better future

Voters turned out in droves for Sunday's Lower House election to cast ballots in favor of reforms, hoping the policy steps taken by the victors will strengthen the economy and make people's lives better.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 6, 2005

Small shops wake up and smell the coffee to fend off big chains

As self-service coffee shop chains saturate the market, their small-scale, often pricey predecessors are feeling the squeeze, and those in Tokyo and Osaka are struggling to survive by focusing on their uniqueness.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 4, 2005

Once more, with feeling

With a mane of wild hair and the darkly circled eyes of the sleep deprived, one could easily mistake Kieran Hebden for a grad student up too late at the lab. There is little evidence in his striped polo shirt and khaki shorts that he is one of the more sought after electronica producers and performers....
COMMENTARY
Sep 3, 2005

Europeans sing the blues

PARIS -- According to the latest Eurobarometer, a regular survey published by Harris, less than a third of European Union residents are "very satisfied" with their lives, and only 44 percent expect things to improve in coming months.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Aug 29, 2005

Worst abuse: being viewed as subhuman

NEW YORK -- World War II did not end neatly upon Japan's surrender on Aug. 15, 1945. Aside from scatterings of Japanese soldiers who joined local independence movements in Southeast Asia after the surrender, at least one sizable Japanese army unit fought on in China's northeastern province of Shanxi,...
JAPAN / POLL SHOWDOWN
Aug 29, 2005

Tanaka says New Party Nippon focusing on decentralization

Yasuo Tanaka, head of the brand-new New Party Nippon, is aiming his party at building public hope for a brighter future by working at the local and prefectural level to wrest power from central administrative and political authorities.
Features
Aug 28, 2005

Surrender seen close up

Col. Hervey Bennett Whipple was made logistics officer for U.S. Forces in the Southwest Pacific, operating from bases in Australia, in February 1942. In the following month he came to work for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who had arrived in Australia after a daring escape from Corregidor in Manila Bay.
CULTURE / Music
Aug 28, 2005

Cuban salsa godfather keeps his stories real

Despite the embargo imposed by the United States on Cuba since 1961, the music of this north Caribbean island has somehow made its way into every corner of the earth, including Japan. It is no coincidence that "The Sons of Cuba," the most recent film from the creators of "Buena Vista Social Club," culminates...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 28, 2005

Intelligent Design: One chance encounter explains it all

Ijust happened to be reading the Kansas City Star the other day when a fascinating article caught my eye. The Star reported, in its Aug. 2 edition, that the Kansas Board of Education has approved a draft of new science standards proposed by supporters of so-called Intelligent Design.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Aug 25, 2005

Illuminating responses to 'Glimmers of hope . . . '

One of the most entertaining things about being a columnist is getting feedback from readers.
Japan Times
Features
Aug 14, 2005

Tried to the limit and beyond

He was born in America, raised in Japan, and felt like a misfit in both societies. Had he lived somewhere else in some other time, he might have been a renowned scholar of Chinese classics, in which he was an outstanding student. Or an artist in the United States, like his daughter is now.
Features
Aug 14, 2005

Looking back on brainwashing

Koya Azumi leans over the living-room table at his home outside Tokyo on a warm afternoon, stirring coffee. Birds twitter outside, but otherwise there is only silence. It is a tableau of serenity, of peace.

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