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Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 11, 2004

Clever plot of "Dumb Animal" play

It was two years ago, that the three main actors in "Donju (Dumb Animal)," currently running at the Parco Theater, met up over a drink or three. Arata Furuta, Katsuhisa Namase and Narushi Ikeda, are all now in their late 30s and early 40s, but were very prominent in the energetic 1980s Shogekijo (small...
Japan Times
Features
Aug 8, 2004

The art of seeing

Photographer Jun Akiyama is taking ostrich strides down a Tokyo sidewalk, snapping pictures on a flimsy-looking tourist camera. Click! A child's curious glance is frozen in grainy black-and-white. Click! Akiyama catches a moment of anxiety on an old woman's face.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Aug 8, 2004

Hosoki Kazuko in TBS's "Zubari Iu Wa Yo! and more

Fortune tellers and paranormals used to be quite popular on Japanese TV until the Aum Shinrikyo affair made people a little nervous about certain kinds of unorthodox beliefs. In the past few years, however, such TV personalities have slowly made a comeback. The most striking example is Kazuki Hosoki,...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 8, 2004

All of Japan between two covers

JAPAN ENCYCLOPEDIA, by Louis Frederic, translated by Kathe Roth. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002, 1102 pp., 48 illus., 14 maps, $59.95 (cloth). This large, beautiful and indispensable volume is a translation of "Le Japan: Dictionnaire et Civilisation," published in 1996, the year of the author's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 4, 2004

No winners or losers in 'The Face of Jizo'

In the early 1960s, Hisashi Inoue, the author of the original play "The Face of Jizo," was working under contract as a writer at NHK. The idea for the play came when he was sent to Hiroshima in the summer to do a program about the anti-nuclear movement.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jul 30, 2004

Activist sees Japan as war addict, like U.S. in comic

The Japanese people should learn from their World War II defeat and put pressure on the government to stop the country from sliding back into militarism, the author of an American antimilitarist comic book says.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 25, 2004

DPRK diplomacy or brinkmanship?

TARGET NORTH KOREA: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe, by Gavan McCormack. New York: Nation Books, 228 pp., 2004, $13.95 (paper). Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's gamble on a trip to Pyongyang seems to have paid off, giving him a boost in the polls, reuniting some of...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 25, 2004

Way to go keigo: a loaded language of politeness

KEIGO IN MODERN JAPAN: Polite Language From Meiji to the Present, by Patricia J. Wetzel. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 206 pp. with illustrations, 2004, $45 (cloth). Keigo is often thought of as a separate kind of Japanese (often called "polite speech," "honorifics," or the like) that is used...
EDITORIALS
Jul 18, 2004

A little hit of sunshine

Forget that old squabble about which is smarter, dogs or cats. They're both smart. Look at them, lying there in the only patches of sunshine in the house, lazily hogging the beams as the sun shifts. It's almost as if they were addicted. "Well, of course we are," they would say if they could talk. Lying...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 18, 2004

The literary perfect crime

SAYONARA, GANGSTERS, by Genichiro Takahashi, translated by Michael Emmerich. New York: Vertical, Inc., 2004, 311 pp., $19.95 (cloth). A poet is talking to a refrigerator. The refrigerator with whom he is conversing is Virgil -- yes, that Virgil, author of "The Aeneid" and later Dante's guide through...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 13, 2004

The big squeeze

The news from Japan these days is untypically sunny. The economy is performing at its sharpest clip for 13 years, investment and profits are up and analysts are gingerly forecasting a sustained recovery.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 11, 2004

Bedroom poetry beckons

EROTIC HAIKU (bilingual), edited and translated by Hiroaki Sato, illustrated by Emi Suzuki. Tokyo: IBC Publishing, 2004, 114 pp., 1200 yen (paper). Since Eros was the god of love, in the sense of sexual desire, so "erotic," the dictionary explains, means "arousing or concerned with this." The cover of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 7, 2004

Darkness in teenage wizardland

Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5) Director: Alfonso Cuaron Running time: 136 minutes Language: English Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings] "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy has come and gone, but its fantasy film rival, the "Harry Potter"...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jul 4, 2004

Utagawa Hiroshige: Around the provinces in 69 plates

HIROSHIGE'S JOURNEY in the Sixty-odd Provinces, by Marije Jansen. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2004, 160 pp., 70 full-page plates and other illustrations, $34.95 (paper). Here is a beautifully printed and edited reproduction of the complete "Famous Views of the [Sixty-odd] Provinces" (Rokujuyoshu meisho...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jun 24, 2004

Girls to the fore in planning 'eye-for-an-eye' revenge

If there is an extraterrestrial college student orbiting Earth or floating invisibly among us while writing a thesis on human behavior, then current events have provided some good examples of one basic human trait: retaliation.
COMMUNITY / Issues
Jun 22, 2004

Nova's culture clash

Going to extremes Your article about the Nova no-contact rule was interesting, but seemed to overlook (or at least de-emphasize) one important aspect of the rule. It not only prevents Nova employees from having romantic or potentially romantic contact with any Nova student from any branch, but it also...
EDITORIALS
Jun 21, 2004

'Country, your sport is summer'

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year and the official beginning of the season that inspires so many mixed feelings. Reflect for a moment on the associations, literary and otherwise, that come to mind when you think of the word summer. There are happy ones: the boys of summer; the...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 20, 2004

Esoteric ways of the samurai

THE PERFUMED SLEEVE, by Laura Joh Rowland. New York: St. Martin's Minotaur, 326 pp., 2004, $24.95 (cloth). SENSEI, by John Donohue. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 258 pp., 2004, $23.95 (cloth). For the ninth time since his 1994 debut in "Shinju," Sano Ichiro ("the shogun's most honorable investigator...
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Jun 19, 2004

Selfishness short-circuited Lakers

NEW YORK -- If it helps them to sleep better at night thinking the result of The NBA Finals would be reversed had Karl Malone remained healthy, Laker fans, by all means, are encouraged to dream on.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Jun 10, 2004

Hormone therapy for menopause?

The age of menopause doesn't seem to have changed much in the last few thousand years. Records from ancient Egypt and Greece indicate that menstruation ended when a woman was around 50 years old. Before that we don't really know, as a woman was unlikely to live much longer than 50.
EDITORIALS
Jun 6, 2004

When slow is beautiful

A new book on an old theme, published last month, is slowly beginning to garner attention in the American and British media, although it has not yet made the best-seller lists. But that is probably just fine with the author, Carl Honore, a Canadian journalist based in London, because taking time is precisely...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 6, 2004

Shinya Tasaki: Sommelier supreme

Shinya Tasaki was a teenager when he made his first solo trip to France in 1977. Even back then, he was so eager to learn about French food and wine that he visited as many wineries as he could -- only to be turned away from most. But his determination kept him from giving up -- and now nobody will turn...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 6, 2004

Village Vignettes: Insiders seen from the outside

VILLAGE VIGNETTES, by Michael Smithies, illustrations by Uthai-Traisiwakul. Bangkok: Orchid Press, 2004, 168 pp, $17.99 (paper). Michael Smithies, the well-known scholar and eminent historian of 17th-century Siam, lives in northeast Thailand, near the village that he describes in these sketches of its...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 30, 2004

Freedom in a feudal land

FINDING MONJU, by Earle Ernst. Key West: Eaton Street Press, Inc., 186 pp., 2000, $19.95 (paper). The late Earle Ernst was the author of that seminal work, "The Kabuki Theater," first published in 1956 and still in print, and the editor of the 1959 "Three Japanese Plays." While a member of the Allied...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 30, 2004

Geography, history flex E. Asia's 'quadrilateral'

THE GEOPOLITICS OF EAST ASIA: The Search for Equilibrium, by Robyn Lim. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003, 208 pp., £65 (cloth). East Asia is a dangerous neighborhood and thus professor Robyn Lim admonishes Japanese leaders to abandon "head in the sand" pacifism and acknowledge that at the dawn of the 21st...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
May 27, 2004

Picking the brains of teenagers shows how we 'mature'

What an age we live in. Science is progressing in ever greater leaps and bounds. The way things are going, we might one day even understand that most enigmatic and mysterious of natural phenomena, the teenager.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 23, 2004

Obsessions with Japan's uneasy history

NEUTRAL WAR, by Hal Gold. New York: The Lyons Press, 426 pp., 2003, $22.95 (cloth). TOKYO, by Mo Hayder. London: Bantam Press, 364 pp., 2004, £10.99 (paper). Novels that tantalize readers by intertwining known facts about the Pacific War with historical what-ifs and maybes bring to mind such entertaining...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
May 22, 2004

Yuichiro Nakajima

World traveler and author Pico Iyer wondered "whether a new kind of being might not be coming to light . . . a 'Global Soul.' " In several ways Yuichiro Nakajima fits the definition. Without doubt he meets the requirement of achieving fusion of different cultures. Out of his 44 years, he has spent 18...
JAPAN
May 20, 2004

Never in Japan, can kin 'return' here?

OSAKA -- Many Japanese newspapers, magazines and TV stations are reporting that the offspring of five Japanese who were abducted to North Korea in 1978 and repatriated in October 2002 will be "returning" to Japan if North Korea lets them leave.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami