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Japan Times
Special Supplements / Work from Home Special
May 25, 2020

‘New normal,’ new perspectives

Getting used to life at home? For many around the world, staying at home 24/7 has become the new normal. For Japan, a country known for its corporate warriors who demonstrate dedication through spending most of their time in the workplace, the coronavirus pandemic could transform the nation's corporate world.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 29, 2020

Tax incentives needed to promote recurrent education

There are no countries in the world that do not wish for eternal prosperity. Nothing can ensure such prosperity except education of their people. Many people may take that to mean school education for children and youth. However, what will be far more important going forward will be recurrent education,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 14, 2019

Embracing the Japan of the past through music with Meitei

As the Reiwa Era begins, Japanese music producer Daisuke Fujita, aka Meitei, is looking forward while sticking to the traditions of the past. Fresh from last year's spook-summoning album "Kwaidan," which featured in "Best Albums of 2018" accolades curated by the likes of Pitchfork and Bandcamp, the Hiroshima-based...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 22, 2019

Morioka: Crafts, poetry and Tohoku’s bleak nature

Though Kenji Miyazawa was little-known in his lifetime, since his death he has been heralded as one of the most important Japanese poets of the early 20th century and one of Iwate Prefecture's most treasured sons. Miyazawa lived in and around Morioka for much of his life and, even now, there remain whispers of him throughout the city.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 12, 2019

Crossing 70 years of Katsushika Hokusai

Featuring an astounding 480 prints, spanning the entire 70 years of Katushika Hokusai's career, the new Hokusai exhibition at the Mori Arts Center Gallery is a great overview for ukiyo-e fans.
JAPAN
Nov 7, 2018

Japanese buzzwords of 2018 nominees reflect myriad influences and issues

Thirty candidates for buzzword of the year, announced Wednesday, highlight the numerous scandals that rocked Japan's amateur sports, the brutal summer of natural disasters as well as the country's response to the worldwide #MeToo movement against sexual harassment.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / CHILD'S PLAY
Oct 7, 2018

Art classes can help boost your kids' creativity

Take your kids to an art class and let their imaginations run wild.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / THE HIGH GROUNDS
Aug 11, 2018

Tokyo cafes serve up coffee with a side of cyclo-tourism

Although Tokyo's nascent cycling tourism sector is ostensibly aimed at inbound tourists, 'cycle cafes' are designed to create sustainable communities by combining coffee and culture.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 27, 2017

Northern exposure: Discovering silence in Okinawa

Learning to relax beyond Nago in the southern archipelago.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / Japan
Aug 17, 2017

For the sake of productivity, put a woman in charge

A shift from long hours to efficient, goal-oriented work is exactly the right medicine for white-collar Japan
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 23, 2016

Is the eel industry on the slippery slope to extinction?

Dwindling domestic population threatens a centuries-old tradition.
Restaurants
May 11, 2016

Spring gourmet special

Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 16, 2016

Dotonbori: Where Osakans eat, drink and be merry

Comparing Osaka with almost any other Japanese city is akin to likening a bloodied steak to boiled chicken.
LIFE / Language / MORNING ENGLISH
Aug 24, 2015

Let's discuss attitudes toward work

In an unstable time for young people looking at their future careers, a survey reveals that they maintain a rather cool attitude toward employment.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 14, 2015

Maya Inoue makes a play to refine her father's theatrical legacy

Hisashi Inoue's death at the age of 75 on April 9, 2010, at his home in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, was a major event in the postwar Japanese theater world. It moved many dramatists to stage works by the great author and playwright who combined comedy and searing social and political commentary into...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Dec 6, 2014

Code + culture: new media art from Japan

Domestic media artists have been using programming code in recent years to create some astonishing works of art. We look back at how this scene developed over the years and examine four contemporary artists who have defined the way the genre has evolved.
OLYMPICS / ROBERT WHITING'S 1964 OLYMPICS RETROSPECTIVE
Oct 21, 2014

'Witches of the Orient' symbolized Japan's fortitude

The 1964 Tokyo Olympics had a profound impact on the capital city and the nation. In the fourth installment of a five-part series running this month, best-selling author Robert Whiting, who lived in Japan at the time, examines the symbolism of Japan's gold medal-winning women's volleyball team.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 1, 2014

Kafka's worm takes a high-tech turn

"I work a lot in France, where manga and anime are enormously popular, although many theater producers think they are basically for children and are often too violent. However, they regard my robot theater as being an essentially Japanese art form," the pioneering dramatist Oriza Hirata said recently...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 18, 2014

The Uemuras were not quite like mother, like son

Shoko Uemura (1902-2001) was born to Shoen Uemura, the most revered and financially successful female painter of the early modern period, who arguably did more to popularize the bijinga genre (pictures of beautiful women) than any other. Artistically, however, his mother is said to have taught him nothing.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 31, 2014

A Korean who cherished her Japanese teachers

An 89-year-old Korean in Pennsylvania calls the latest spats between Japan and South Korea 'infantile and lamentable.' She remembers her Japanese teachers as loving people who 'poured their heart and soul into making good human beings out of us.'
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 21, 2013

Crossing the Himalayas through memory to Ladakh

I'm in a small van careering along a rough and narrow road beside a rushing river with brightly painted temples along its banks and craggy peaks towering overhead. We're traveling in the prescribed Indian fashion — drive as fast as you can and hope for the best or, better still, pray.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Aug 17, 2013

Shock-and-awe art fills festival streets with fun

"Are you tourist?" asked the man seated beside me on the early afternoon flight from Tokyo's Haneda airport to Kochi in Shikoku. He spoke in hesitant English.
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Mar 12, 2013

Right or wrong, corporal punishment can produce winners

It was shaping up to be just another day at practice. The high school's head basketball coach, who was young and still trying to establish himself, was picking on the captain of the once-famous girls' team, jumping on her every mistake and yelling at the top of his voice to make his point.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Jul 3, 2012

Strong winds linger from the microaggressions tempest

Readers' responses to Debito Arudou's May 1 Just Be Cause column, "Yes, I can use chopsticks: the everyday 'microaggressions' that grind us down," his followup June 5 JBC column, "Guestists, Haters, the Vested: Apologists take many forms," and Colin P.A. Jones' counterarticle, "Much ado, but microimportant"...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 10, 2012

Matsue: 'City of Water ' with a history set in stone

The train from Okayama to Matsue took nowhere near as long as the one the English writer Sacheverell Sitwell boarded in 1959 to the same destination: "Nine hours from Osaka, into a remote and little-visited part." The region still feels faintly remote, the train carriages clickety-clicking over rivers...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Mar 18, 2012

Ryunosuke Akutagawa in focus

Though he died by his own hand at the age of 35, novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa's accomplishments were such that, even after so brief a writing career, Japan's most prestigious literary accolade — the Akutagawa Prize — now bears his name.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 10, 2012

Cambodia experience facilitated aid effort in the Tohoku region

Cathy Hirano says it was "so painful to feel powerless in the face of such a huge disaster," recalling the day a year ago that the Pacific coast of Tohoku was hit by the huge earthquake and tsunami.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 15, 2011

The joy of taiko and cultural exchange

The booming noise coming up from the basement of the British School in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo, is a more visceral version of the magic flute: It's just impossible to resist its charm. You follow the deep, thumping beat down a flight of stairs and find a shouting, whooping little devil leading a group of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 29, 2011

Wright, Cera get 1-up in 'Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World'

"Scott in the comics almost reminds me of Homer Simpson; you get to see what's going on in his head, and there's not much going on," says Hollywood indie poster-boy Michael Cera when asked about his role as the title character in the adrenaline-soaked action comedy "Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World."
The full official records of Empress Kojun, the wife of former Emperor Hirohito, posthumously called Emperor Showa. The Imperial Household Agency plans to release all of the content of the records on Oct. 9.
JAPAN
Sep 19, 2025

Japan completes full records of Empress Kojun

The Imperial Household Agency took 17 years to complete the full records for Empress Kojun, the paternal grandmother of Emperor Naruhito.

Longform

Rock group The Yellow Monkey played K-Arena Yokohama in June as part of a nationwide tour. Concerts are increasingly popular in the age of social media as users value in-person experiences.
Inside Japan’s arena boom: Sports, sound and city-building