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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Oct 9, 2002

Pottery worth giving it all up for

Say the word "Momoyama" to any Japanese pottery connoisseurs, and their eyes will inevitably light up. Most ceramic enthusiasts would give up any Saturday-night vice to own just one Momoyama Shino, Bizen or Karatsu guinomi (sake cup) or chawan (tea bowl).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 9, 2002

Nu-girls on the block

Last June, Newsweek spotted a species of American teenagers that it called Gamma Girls: high school females who are ambitious about their futures and smart about the dangers of sex and drugs. Rolling Stone more recently ran an article profiling college-age women who exert "control" over their bodies...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Oct 9, 2002

A celebratory cake to get your teeth into

The good news: Sensational Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist, 40, is doing but a single gallery show this year, and it is happening here in Tokyo, right now, at the Shiseido Gallery on the Ginza strip.
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Oct 9, 2002

Steve Earle: "Jerusalem"

The fuss over "John Walker's Blues," Steve Earle's look-see into the mind of the American Taliban, barely survived the actual release of the song a few weeks ago. John Walker Lindh, who is portrayed by Earle as a naive but well-meaning young idealist, has since tearfully owned up to his mistakes and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 9, 2002

The ugly truth about Pre-Raphaelite beauty

Had Sigmund Freud psychoanalyzed whole eras, not mere individuals, the late 19th century would have been a prime candidate for his therapist's couch. Take the example of empire-building Britain. Victorians may have been prudish to the extent of covering shapely table legs, but they were sexually voracious....
BASEBALL / BASEBALL BULLET-IN
Oct 9, 2002

CL, PL awards going down to wire

The Central and Pacific League pennant races were decided weeks ago, but the Japanese baseball season continues until the 12 teams have completed all 140 games on their schedules. The last game is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 18, and the next week-and-a-half of baseball, despite no flag chases, will...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 8, 2002

U.N. aims higher with sweeping reforms

Shakespeare's aphorism is as applicable to organizations as to individuals: "the evil they do lives after them, the good is oft interred with their bones." Let it not be so with the United Nations. Rather, let us recall with pride the process of reform in the organization. Much, in fact, has already...
EDITORIALS
Oct 8, 2002

The U.S. returns to Pyongyang

The visit by Mr. James Kelly, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, to Pyongyang yielded no breakthrough in relations between North Korea and the United States. Nonetheless, the two sides are talking and appear committed to a serious dialogue. The U.S., like Japan, should give...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / NATURE TRAVEL
Oct 8, 2002

Nature's poster-bear on the brink

No animal, with the possible exceptions of the dolphin and the whale, has won more hearts and minds for the cause of wildlife conservation than the giant panda.
BASEBALL / MLB
Oct 7, 2002

Time running short for Cabrera

Seibu Lions slugger Alex Cabrera got a hit in Sunday's game against the Nippon Ham Fighters, but not the one he wanted.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 7, 2002

EU needs a common purpose

LONDON -- Since the original European Common Market was founded in the mid-1950s, the Continent sought a common economic role, to be followed by growing political integration. Now, there is general agreement on the first count that a new institutional framework is needed to give the community more political...
COMMENTARY
Oct 7, 2002

Howard vs. Mahathir -- who's correct?

LOS ANGELES -- In the Asia-Pacific reEgion, there is no uniform view on the Iraq issue. Many support the Bush adminisEtration, while hoping that somehow the war clouds will pass. Only a few are speaking up loudly. From Australia, plain-spoken Prime Minister John HowEard is supportive and hopes for the...
MORE SPORTS
Oct 7, 2002

Carlsen, Craybas end big week with AIG Japan Open titles

For 19 months, Kenneth Carlsen wasn't aching to pick up a racket. From September 1999, the Dane was cherishing his time off the rigid schedules of the tour after two major shoulder surgeries.
COMMENTARY / JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL ERA
Oct 7, 2002

Brainstorming to bring positive change

LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- In an article on the IMF/World Bank meeting in Washington last month entitled "A Washington gathering of incompetents," Gerald Baker, while lambasting policyma- kers in the United States and the European Union, handed the first prize for incompetence to Japan. "Every time it...
COMMENTARY
Oct 7, 2002

Political reform the only option for China

HONG KONG -- China's late paramount leader Deng Xiaoping deserves much credit for trying to modernize the country and remove it from its Maoist ideological straitjacket. He emphasized pragmatism, not ideology. He put China on the path to a market economy. And, perhaps most important, he tried to lift...
EDITORIALS
Oct 6, 2002

A pair of magic hands

I t is a case as egregious, and as puzzling, in its way as the case of Mr. Shinichi Fujimura, the eminent Japanese archaeologist who was found two years ago to have faked a number of key discoveries. When Mr. Fujimura could not find the prehistoric stoneware pieces he was looking for, he did the next...
COMMENTARY
Oct 6, 2002

Hussein finds 'useful idiots' in Washington

WASHINGTON -- Hitler found "Lord Haw Haw" -- William Joyce, who broadcast German propaganda to Britain during World War II -- in the dregs of British extremism. But Iraqi President Saddam Hussein finds American collaborators among senior congressional Democrats.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 6, 2002

Lifelong learning makes a dream come true

"Youth," said George Bernard Shaw, "is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children." Could he have said the same of a college education?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 6, 2002

Building bridges by degree

Life was tough for Yanan Shen at his undergraduate alma mater, located between Shanghai and Nanking in China's Chang Zhou area.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 6, 2002

Takafumi Goda: the man at the helm

As director of the university division of the higher education bureau at the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry, Takafumi Goda is at the helm of national policy on university education. Recently, one of his chief tasks has been to oversee long-awaited reforms to Japan's university...
COMMENTARY
Oct 6, 2002

A very busy month for Japanese politics

Last month, the political situation in Japan was roiled by three big events: Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's surprise visit to North Korea (Sept. 17); the confused leadership election in the Democratic Party of Japan (Sept. 23); and a Cabinet reshuffle (Sept. 30).
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 6, 2002

No looker, but a great personality

BANGKOK, by William Warren. Reaktion Books, 2002. 160 pp., with monochrome photos, £14.95 (paper) Thailand's ebullient capital is many things, but it is not beautiful. True, there are many lovely things in it, but it can no more be considered comely than can Tokyo, a city it in some ways resembles....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Oct 6, 2002

Postmodern tales of the unexpected

"NEW JAPANESE FICTION," The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Summer 2002: Vol. XXII, No. 2. 262 pp., $8. Japanese literature, at least as it is known to those of us who cannot read it in the original, is in a position similar to that of Western classical music. Just as classical music lovers are likely...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Oct 6, 2002

When every channel is the same channel

Ever since the advent of that popular programming idea known as the "wide show" in the mid-1980s, so-called hard news and tabloid news have slowly merged into an alloy of informational reporting that defies easy categorization.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 6, 2002

Tuning into the changing face of higher education

Japan's universities are at a crossroad. The notion has been voiced in some quarters for many years, but now -- by common consent -- the fact of the matter is impossible either to deny or to ignore.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 6, 2002

Koizumi almost pulls it off

SHANGHAI, China -- My perspective for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to North Korea is that of the Chinese. I have been in Shanghai since just before his visit. The reports I have been reading and listening to are those of the Chinese media and my Chinese friends and colleagues.
COMMUNITY
Oct 6, 2002

Teachers take the strain of a system in flux

Hiroshi Sato, 37, is an assistant professor of political science at a private university in Tokyo that, while not among the nation's top-ranked seats of learning, nonetheless enjoys a high status and popularity.
COMMUNITY
Oct 6, 2002

Making every day count

Apathetic youths with nothing but partying on their minds. All too often parents and professors bemoan how well this description fits today's university students.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / FUZZY LOGIC
Oct 6, 2002

Asagiri Jam keeps it real

"Are we all going to wake up dead tomorrow?" asks my pal Dave as our taxi crawls up a steep, winding road on a fog-drenched mountain.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
Oct 6, 2002

Down on the farm with the Tokio boys

According to research, currently the only TV show that men over age 45 can stomach, other than NHK's "Project X," is "The Tetsuwan Dash" (Nippon TV, Sundays, 6:55 p.m.). In the show, the boy band Tokio -- collectively and individually -- embark on large, time-consuming projects involving agriculture,...

Longform

"Shake hands with Lima-chan," a statue that shares the name of the Peruvian capital looks in the direction of Peru, where a sister statue, "Sakura-chan," is located. Erected in Yokohama's Rinko Park in 1999, it commemorates Peruvian-Japanese friendship.
The journey of Peru’s Nikkei: Finding identity in Japan