Search - works

 
 
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 14, 2011

Busan festival takes a bold step, but is Asian cinema ready?

"Change" was the key word at this year's Busan International Film Festival, and not just because the organizers finally succumbed to the host South Korean port city's request to change the name from "Pusan." Lee Yong Kwan took over as festival director from founder Kim Dong Ho, who is credited with turning...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 14, 2011

"Kasuga Landscapes: Elegant Images of a Sacred Sanctuary"

Mount Mikasa in Nara Prefecture is a well-known sacred site, said to be where the Shinto kami (gods) first appeared on Earth. In the middle of the 8th century, the powerful aristocratic Fujiwara clan built Kasuga Shrine on the Kasuga plains at the foot of Mount Mikasa, and it is now known as one of the...
Reader Mail
Oct 13, 2011

Useful film about depression

Mark Schilling's Oct. 7 review of the Japanese film "My S.O. Has Depression (Tsure ga Ustu ni Narimashite)" said two things to me:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 13, 2011

Honeydew "Don't Know Where"

"Don't Know Where" lacks prerelease hype, sub-subgenre classification or needless gimmicks (unless consistant lyrical allusions to driving cars qualifies — autocore, anyone?). Honeydew's debut album is a simple collection of feedback-assisted indie pop reminiscent of U.S. group Yo La Tengo's catchier...
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 13, 2011

Jobs leaves questions behind

Steve Jobs of Apple Inc. deserves praise as a remarkable radical thinker and businessman who made path-breaking innovations to transform modern life, from the Mac computer to the smart — both in looks and in performance — iPhone, iPod and iPad. But I would like to raise some deliberately jarring...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Oct 13, 2011

Shedding new light on architecture and art

The floor is made of white concrete, but it hugs the contours of the ground so closely that it could be satin cloth. And the roof, apparently anchored to the ground only by a curtain of glass at its perimeter, appears to float in mid-air like a giant magic carpet.
EDITORIALS
Oct 12, 2011

Scrutinize dam evaluation method

In its manifesto for the 2009 Lower House election, the Democratic Party of Japan called for stopping the construction of the Yanba dam project in Gunma Prefecture as a symbol of wasteful public-works projects.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 12, 2011

Missing the boat to Myanmar

Where is Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda's foreign policy? A neighboring country that has suffered years of isolation and plunder by the misruling junta may be signaling that it wants to come in from the cold. Japan, which could offer the greatest help, seems to be asleep to the opportunity.
JAPAN / EXPLAINER
Oct 12, 2011

Nuclear fears reawaken mass anger

Compared with the West, and recently the Middle East, which has been swept by civil uprisings, Japan is not commonly known for having large-scale demonstrations or violent antigovernment protests.
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 10, 2011

Millionaires don't have it made

President Barack Obama has been trying to sell his new "millionaires' tax" to the Rust Belt. "What's great about this country is our belief that anyone can make it," he said in Cincinnati on Sept. 22, praising "the idea that any one of us can open a business or have an idea that could make us millionaires."...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Oct 9, 2011

Like Astro Boy, humans may be able to live with radiation

"It makes good media. It's the emotional pulling on the idea that radiation kills you. But you talk to our cancer patients: Radiation cures you."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 6, 2011

"MAM Project 15: Tsang Kin-Wah"

Mori Art Museum, Gallery One Closes Jan. 15, 2012
COMMENTARY / World
Oct 3, 2011

What political moderates can learn from America's political extremes

What is a campaign platform that most Americans would support but will never get a chance to vote for?
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / ONE-ON-ONE WITH ...
Oct 3, 2011

Scoring standout, defensive ace Parker brings fresh energy to Shimane

The Japan Times features periodic interviews with players in the bj-league. Michael Parker of the Shimane Susanoo Magic is the subject of this week's profile.
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Sep 29, 2011

Chim↑Pom and the art of social engagement

Most commercial art galleries in Tokyo — or anywhere in the world, for that matter — would be happy to get 100 visitors through the door in a day. Artist collective Chim↑Pom's most recent exhibition, "Real Times," which was held over six days in May at Mujin-to Production in Tokyo's Koto Ward,...
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Sep 29, 2011

The esoteric architect: building on artistic ardor

Architecture isn't rock 'n' roll, so I've always had my suspicions of any architect whose fame seems to be on the inflated side. Although Arata Isozaki is something of a superstar in the world of Japanese architecture — and has also written interesting and thought-provoking books, such as the excellent...
BUSINESS / Japan Pulse
Sep 27, 2011

Traditional charcoal keepin' it fresh

A variety of 'new' products draw on the traditional odor-eating properties of bamboo charcoal.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 27, 2011

Merits of a layman as Japan's defense minister

Japan has suffered from a leadership deficit since the charismatic Koizumi Junichiro stepped down in 2006.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Sep 25, 2011

Welfare system not faring well

Ten years ago, in her book "Nickel and Dimed," Barbara Ehrenreich chronicled her own experience as a subsistence-level American wage-earner during a period of relative economic vigor. She found a whole class of workers who lived — and would always live — from paycheck to paycheck. In the afterword...
BUSINESS
Sep 23, 2011

Honda spending $50 million on Ohio plant to restore full production in U.S.

Honda Motor Co. is spending $50 million to expand a transmission factory in Ohio as it upgrades U.S. assembly operations and works to restore full production slowed by an earthquake.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 22, 2011

"The Design of Katagami"

ICU Hachiro Yuasa Memorial Museum
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Sep 22, 2011

Flattening the art world with gentle avant-gardism

The avant-garde probably never looked as moderate and conservative as it did in 1888, when a group of young, bearded French painters founded a group known as "Les Nabis." The facial hair was not incidental either, helping to give the group its moniker: "Nabi" is Hebrew for prophet; the joke being that...
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Sep 22, 2011

Tradition that hides in abstraction

Abstraction came into vogue during a reinvigorated period of the 1950s and '60s, following on from its introduction by experimental Japanese artists of the 1910s, who were influenced by European importations of Expressionism, Cubism and Futurism.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Sep 21, 2011

Battery life, prices may dent EV sales drive

Klaus Doerrzapf, who has installed solar panels on his roof but has no plans to buy an emission-free car, is one of the reasons automakers such as Nissan Motor Co. won't recoup investments in electric vehicles anytime soon.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 19, 2011

India and China in deep water over sovereignty

An unidentified Chinese warship demanded that the INS Airavat, an amphibious assault vessel, identify itself and explain its presence in the South China Sea after it left Vietnamese waters in late July, London's Financial Times reported.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 17, 2011

Hong Kongers share postdisaster insights

Most Hong Kongers are enthusiastic about Japan — its fashion and pop culture have been popular for years, hundreds of thousands vacation in the country each year, and more of its food is imported there than anywhere else, with fresh sashimi flown in daily from Narita airport.
JAPAN / CABINET INTERVIEW
Sep 17, 2011

Edano won't rush restarts

Newly appointed trade and industry minister Yukio Edano said he won't set a time frame for deciding whether to restart halted nuclear reactors currently undergoing stress tests.
BASKETBALL
Sep 17, 2011

Jets sign hard-working center Moliva

Gaston Moliva is the expansion Chiba Jets' latest signing, the bj-league club revealed Friday.

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