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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 9, 2010

'Io, Don Giovanni'

A pivotal moment in Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni" is when sex fiend Giovanni's servant tells one of his master's conquests how many women he has had over the years. In Europe and Turkey, the total tops 3,000 and, upon hearing this, the girl swears vengeance.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 9, 2010

'Yukai Rhapsody (The Accidental Kidnapper)'

Hollywood constantly remakes and reworks its old product — "Avatar" references everything from "Dances with Wolves" to the Tarzan movies — but sometimes it falls out of love with stories, even ones once widely popular.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 9, 2010

'Roppongi Crossing' may be better when crowded

At the opening press conference for "Roppongi Crossing 2010," the U.S-based French artist Jules de Balincourt said that he was impressed how the exhibition revealed to him that the contemporary art being produced in Japan could just as easily have been created anywhere in the world — that trends in...
JAPAN
Apr 8, 2010

Japan's eco-credentials assailed

OSAKA — Six months before Japan hosts a major U.N. conference on biodiversity, the government and major corporations involved in the issue are conducting a series of events to raise public awareness about threats to the world's ecosystems and what can be done to save natural habitats.
COMMENTARY
Apr 7, 2010

How Google got too hot for China's kitchen

It is one of the positives of my largely happy life that I never found myself in the field of public relations with a client like Beijing. It's not that there aren't many wondrously good stories about China — hundreds of millions of otherwise dirt-poor people moving up into a better economic life,...
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Apr 7, 2010

Softbank's brings a smartphone named Desire to Japan's shores

Object of desire: Not content with having the famous Apple iPhone in its stable of smartphones, Softbank is now bringing the HTC Desire and its Android 2.1 operating system to the local market. Also known in Japan as the X06HT, the new phone has already created waves overseas. It seeks to live up to...
JAPAN / ARRIVAL OF E-READERS
Apr 3, 2010

Publishers don't see iPad revolution anytime soon

Many in the U.S. publishing industry feel Apple's release of the iPad, a multipurpose tablet computer with a built-in electronic reading device, will revolutionize the way consumers read and push the market into the digital age — just as the firm's iPod and iTunes did with music.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 2, 2010

There's always a missing piece

The daughter of actor/director Eiji Okuda and sister of actress Sakura Ando, 28-year-old Momoko Ando has a deeply international background, including a nine-year stay in Britain, as well as thorough fluency in English. In person she was also articulate, straightforward, and gracious enough to give The...
EDITORIALS
Mar 28, 2010

Women's pay imbalances

A nother International Women's Day was celebrated March 8, though "celebrate" is perhaps not the right word. Most women around the world were too busy making ends meet to find time to celebrate.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 28, 2010

Treason for the most patriotic of reasons

The subtitle informs us that this is a "casebook" — that is, not a monograph on the Sorge spy ring, but rather a miscellany of pieces around that topic. Happily, the assembled parts are not the hodgepodge they might have been, but instead a kaleidoscope of views that resonate well together. In his...
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Mar 28, 2010

Japanese women can't get no satisfaction

Several weeks ago, star economist and self-help guru Kazuyo Katsuma was the special guest on the TBS variety show "Kinyobi no Sumatachi e." The program's title conflates "kinyobi no tsumatachi" (Friday Wives), which once referred to Friday night "trendy drama" series centered on well-to-do housewives,...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Mar 28, 2010

Sea change: Can science, sense turn the tide?

In "The Tempest," William Shakespeare writes of a human body deep beneath the waves undergoing "a sea-change into something rich and strange," transmuting into coral and pearls.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Mar 28, 2010

Our man, Mr. Pound

On May 15, 1939, readers of The Japan Times were introduced to a new correspondent — although, in literary circles, at least, he needed no introduction. He was Ezra Pound, then a 53-year-old American Modernist poet who could boast accomplishments that included having launched the career of T.S. Eliot....
EDITORIALS
Mar 22, 2010

Those aging overpasses

In making recommendations to the infrastructure and farm ministries concerning the maintenance of the nation's road overpasses, the internal affairs ministry has said that the number of overpasses at least 50 years old will rapidly increase and that serious damage frequently happens already.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Mar 21, 2010

Savoring the beauty of winter's final fling

An indefinable quality in the light somehow signals the air temperature. Airflows from the north and northwest have, for many days this late February just gone, kept Hokkaido frigid. An intangible crispness in the atmosphere combines with the luminosity to forewarn of seriously subzero temperatures....
BUSINESS
Mar 20, 2010

Global retailers may 'welcome' shift to thrift: McKinsey

Consumers' newfound propensity to shop for discounts and shun luxury goods marks a sea change that may boost foreign retailers in Japan, according to McKinsey & Co.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 19, 2010

'Hana no Ato (After the Flowers)'/'Hanbun no Tsuki ga Noboru Sora'

Women have been wielding swords in Japanese period actioners for decades now, from the days when Junko Fuji and Meiko Kaji were slicing up bad guys, Fuji with stoic grace, Kaji with icy rage.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Mar 16, 2010

Political hopeful eyes tax law changes

Citizens of the United States living overseas of working age are required to file a U.S. Internal Revenue Service tax form every year, and if they have incomes, may have to pay U.S. income taxes, on top of any levies they also face in their place of residence.
COMMENTARY
Mar 12, 2010

Rule of law vs. security

LONDON — Politicians in Britain and in Japan often talk glibly about the importance of the rule of law. But how many of them have a clear idea of what this important phrase means?
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 12, 2010

Family-friendly exhibit celebrates mammals

From Ueno Zoo's giant panda, Ling Ling, to a 2.5-meter-tall polar bear, around 280 stuffed specimens, fossils and skeletons of mammals will go on display at the National Museum of Nature and Science in Tokyo from March 13. Titled "Mammals: Diversity in Terrestrial Life," the exhibition examines the evolution...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / ART BRIEF
Mar 12, 2010

'Showa no Joseitachi'

Kiyokawa Taiji Memorial GalleryCloses March 22
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 12, 2010

The world's most eclectic renter

"When you go out on the street and walk on the sidewalk, someone has decided where the sidewalk is. You take your car and drive the car; someone decided the roadway — you have a red light and a green light. Actually, we are funneled 24-hours around the clock through highly regulated spaces designed...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 11, 2010

Free Tilly and other circus animals

MELBOURNE, Australia — Last month, at the Sea World amusement park in Florida, a whale grabbed a trainer, Dawn Brancheau, pulled her under water, and thrashed about with her. By the time rescuers arrived, Brancheau was dead.
COMMENTARY
Mar 11, 2010

The U.S. media badly needs a wakeup call

Different societies allow their news media different roles. In most countries the media is subordinated to power, whether of the government or the ruling class. Surprisingly or not, the American model is not widely emulated globally.
COMMENTARY
Mar 9, 2010

Intolerance in India putting artists to flight

CHENNAI, India — Indians have always taken pride in being a tolerant and understanding society, and the country's predominant religion, Hinduism, has often been described as a way of life that never relies on conversions, force or violence. These virtues, however, appear to be fading.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO
Mar 9, 2010

Belt up — protect our children

To the ministry of education,
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 5, 2010

'The Hurt Locker'

There's a moment near the end of "The Hurt Locker," Kathryn Bigelow's masterful look at life and death on Baghdad's mean streets, where one American sergeant — a cool, tough professional on mission after mission — finally breaks down and loses it after yet another close brush with death. "Another...

Longform

An illustration features the Japanese signs for "ganbare" (good luck) and the Deaflympics, which will be held between Nov. 15 and 26.
A century of Deaf sport finds its moment in Tokyo