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Reader Mail
Jul 14, 2011

Volunteers get wrong message

Regarding Tomoko Otake's July 10 Timeout article, "Company team helps fill Tohoku gap": I am a "long-term" volunteer who has been in Ishinomaki (Miyagi Prefecture) for almost a month, and have no plans to return to my home in Osaka in the near future.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 14, 2011

For the Greeks, the human body laid bare the divinity of beauty

How many of the artworks being made today will stand the test of time and still be appreciated more than 2,000 years in the future — as the sculptures in "The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece" exhibition are today? I would say almost none, because, rather than seeking beauty, modern artists are more...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 14, 2011

"On the Road"

National Museum of Modern Art Closes July 31
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 12, 2011

Foreign students back but numbers look likely to fall

They're back. Worries that foreign students would abandon Japan following the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and accompanying fiasco at Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant have proven to be largely unfounded.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 10, 2011

Watch your manners!

MANNERS AND MISCHIEF: Gender, Power and Etiquette in Japan. Edited by Jan Bardsley and Laura Miller. University of California Press, 2011, 245 pp., $22.95 (paper) Don't let the cutesy Hello Kitty cover fool you. "Manners and Mischief" disdains frivolity and stands firm as an academic text for students...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 10, 2011

Salvation through baffling wisdom

PURIFYING ZEN: Watsuji Tetsuro's Shamon Dogen. Translated by Steve Bein. University of Hawai'i Press, 2011, 174 pp., $24 (paper) Zen is baffling: You find yourself wrestling with thoughts such as "It is easy to grasp body-mind. The world is like rice or flax or bamboo or bulrushes."
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Jul 8, 2011

Women sound off on Super Cool Biz fashions

Is Super Cool Biz bringing out the best or worst in men's office fashions?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 7, 2011

The art of spying on bathing beauties

Women at times are like canvases. You see them on the trains, painting their faces, or else walking around wearing intriguing outfits, usually somewhat poker-faced. Consequently, the thought keeps occurring that perhaps they want to be looked at rather in the same way that a painting is looked at —...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 7, 2011

TCY Radio aims to revive club scene

Aside from being one half of successful J-pop duo m-flo, Taku Takahashi is also one of the most established DJs in Japan's club scene. So when Takahashi talks dance music — people listen. Just as well, as that's exactly what he's doing with his latest project, the online station TCY Radio.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 7, 2011

Rethinking Japan's Myanmar policy

An historic meeting June 29 between parliamentary Vice Foreign Minister Makiko Kikuta and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in Yangon highlights Japan's increasing willingness to look beyond its self-interest and promote democracy in the region.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jul 3, 2011

Kotaro Horiuchi: A life spent in uncharted waters of boat design

Considering the current state of Japan's economy, it's remarkable to recall that 60 years ago there were hundreds of companies both old and new jockeying restlessly to fill the vacuum left after almost all the nation's cities were heavily bombed in World War II — jockeying, that is, with the kind of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 1, 2011

"A Fateful Journey: Africa in The Works of El Anatsui"

Ghanian sculptor El Anatsui is one of today's leading modern artists. He studied at the College of Art and Social Science at the University of Science and Technology, in Kumasi, Ghana, and went on to teach at the University of Nigeria for many years. He is now known worldwide and has exhibited his works...
Reader Mail
Jun 30, 2011

Better trip for Japanese retirees

Regarding the June 26 Kyodo article "Ogasawara Islands join World Heritage family": Last year I was part of a delegation of foreigners sent by the Japan Tourism Agency to assess the overseas tourist potential of the Ogasawara Islands.
EDITORIALS
Jun 29, 2011

Boosting Japan's flagging tourism

In 2010, a record number 8,612,000 tourists from abroad visited Japan — up 26.8 percent from 2009 — and it was hoped that more than 10 million tourists would visit this year. But the March 11 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters dashed this hope.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Jun 28, 2011

Travel writer gets intimate with Japan

Freelance travel writer Beth Reiber knows Tokyo inside out — maybe much more than most Tokyoites.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 28, 2011

"Hello, It's We: New Paintings by Rob Judges and Mike Ness"

Moscow, Nakameguro Closes Aug. 25
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
Jun 27, 2011

Dealing with addiction to the 'war on drugs'

Earlier this month a spate of reports and commentaries came out on the failure of the U.S. "war on drugs," beginning with the Global Commission on Drug Policy flatly stating the war "has failed."
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
Jun 26, 2011

Readers offer 3/11 insights, valuable resources

As Japan has struggled with the physical and emotional challenges of the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and tsunami of March 11, and the ongoing nuclear crisis that resulted, I have written three Our Planet Earth columns related to those events: one on Japan's response (March 27); one on alternative...
EDITORIALS
Jun 26, 2011

Post 3/11 Japan: war literature

One's immediate reaction to the start this month of a new collection of war literature to mark publisher Shueisha's 85th anniversary might well be puzzlement. Why now, after more than half a century of peace in Japan, are we offered 20 volumes on literature related to war?
Japan Times
LIFE
Jun 26, 2011

Inside Aokigahara, Japan's 'Suicide Forest'

I am walking through Aokigahara Jukai forest, the light rapidly fading on a mid-winter afternoon, when I am stopped dead in my tracks by a blood-curdling scream. The natural reaction would be to run, but the forest floor is a maze of roots and slippery rocks and, truth be told, I am lost in this vast...
BUSINESS / YEN FOR LIVING
Jun 24, 2011

Joyful Honda and the rise of the car-centric 'home center'

Are American-styled home centers Japan's retail model for the future?
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 24, 2011

Foreign residents take part in Japanese traditional dance contest

With summer just around the corner, the spirit of dancing will radiate in the heart of Tokyo as The 6th Foreigner's Traditional Japanese Dance Exhibition takes place June 25.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 24, 2011

Director Ishii brings style to family drama

Japanese directors with any kind of ambition usually end up making a family drama, which is to Japanese cinema what the Western used to be to Hollywood: the core national genre.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan