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CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jun 12, 2005

It keeps coming back to haunt us

JAPANESE HORROR CINEMA, edited by Jay McRoy, preface by Christopher Sharrett. Edinburgh University Press, 2005, Traditions in World Cinema Series, 220 pp., £16.99. (paper). Latest among the packaged movie trends is the Japanese horror film. Every month more samples appear, all of them scrutinized for...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 12, 2005

'Woe is me' nation awaits return of its sadsack heroes

In the last days of May, news reached Japan that two former soldiers in the Imperial Army had been found in the Philippines. Apparently the two men, who had been hiding during the entire postwar period in an area around the town of General Santos close to the southern tip of the island of Mindanao, now...
EDITORIALS
Jun 8, 2005

Wisdom for an aging world

In the 21st century, the world faces a dual demographic problem. First, the world population will continue to grow, increasing from about 6 billion in 2005 to more than 9 billion in 2050. Second, by around that time, the waves of an aging society now enveloping the developed countries as a result of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 8, 2005

House of babel that bubbles over

Hot on the heels of Hisashi Inoue's new play "Hakone Gora Hotel," which opened at the New National Theatre in Tokyo, "Kokugo Gannen (The First Year of the Japanese Language)," a vintage classic by the same playwright that premiered on the other side of Shinjuku at the Kinokuniya Hall in 1986, has now...
COMMENTARY
Jun 7, 2005

Kudos here, detention there

LOS ANGELES -- Journalism free from government constraint just isn't for everybody. It certainly wasn't for Richard M. Nixon while he was president. Unrestrained investigative journalism of the Watergate variety ultimately pushed Congress in the direction of potential impeachment and shoved Nixon onto...
EDITORIALS
Jun 5, 2005

Sex crime recidivism

In view of recent crime trends, measures to prevent the repetition of crimes have become an issue. What especially needs to be addressed is how to prevent the same people from repeating sex crimes. In November, the public was alarmed by the kidnapping and murder of a 7-year-old girl in the city of Nara....
JAPAN
Jun 4, 2005

LDP postal rebels turn up the heat

Liberal Democratic Party opponents of postal reform redoubled their efforts to thwart the plans of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Friday, demanding that Japan Post remain a public corporation.
BUSINESS
Jun 4, 2005

'Cool Biz' blitz expected to heat up clothing sales

The government's "Cool Biz" campaign to encourage casual office attire this summer is expected to give the economy a 100 billion yen boost, a private think tank said Friday.
JAPAN
Jun 4, 2005

'Dead Man Walking' author seeks to end control of the noose

The death penalty is part of the same societal paradigm as war, as both are used by the state to impose control through violence, according to Sister Helen Prejean.
BASKETBALL / NBA / NBA REPORT
Jun 3, 2005

Nobody believes Brown's latest charade

NEW YORK -- This farce has gone far enough.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / NAME OF THE GAME
Jun 2, 2005

Racer for PSP is a real drag

The appeal of the "Shutoko Battle" series (known as "Tokyo Xtreme Racer" abroad) has always been the way it gives players a free pass to race through a digital representation of Tokyo. For car enthusiasts and armchair racers thirsting for the thrill of hitting Kasumigaseki at 150 kph, the lure of "Shutoko"...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OLD NIC'S NOTEBOOK
Jun 2, 2005

'Weed' of wonder fresh from the sea

I first consciously ate kelp when I came to Japan in 1962. Slowly stewed, it took the form of those small, almost black bows of a soft and tasty vegetable in the traditional, souplike dish of oden. Later I ate it wrapped around fish, or used it with dried bonito as a base for soup stock. I chose the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jun 1, 2005

A voyeur for today

The photographer Richard Kern grew up in a small town in North Carolina, the son of a newspaperman. As a teenager, Kern had a part-time job changing the marquee at the local cinema, and one of the perks was free films. It was during a screening of Roger Vadim's camped up 1968 sci-fi flick "Barbarella"...
COMMENTARY
May 30, 2005

Japan's paradox of wealth

On his first visit to Japan in 1995, French sociologist Jean Baudrillard came up with a paradoxical hypothesis that Japan was affluent because Japanese were poor. Acknowledging that he was not an expert on Japanese affairs, Baudrillard made the suggestion in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun after...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 29, 2005

Diva sings hot and cold on solo debut

It is 11 on a Sunday morning and Roisin Murphy has just arrived back at her London flat. Another big night out in the city's kinetic clubland?
Japan Times
Features
May 29, 2005

Tragedy and miracles on the same wave

COLOMBO -- In Sri Lanka, it seems everyone has a tsunami story to tell. Wherever you go, from Jaffna in the north, Tricomalee in the east, Kalutara in the west and Hambantota in the south, people recount near-miraculous escapes and tragic, life-changing episodes.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming / CHANNEL SURF
May 29, 2005

Former Takarazuka star comes back in Fuji's "Rikon Bengoshi 2" and more

Former Takarazuka (all-female musical) star Yuki Amami returns as attorney Takako Mamiya in "Rikon Bengoshi 2 (Divorce Lawyer 2)" (Fuji TV, Tuesday, 9 p.m.). In this week's episode, a young woman named Mari comes to Takako's office for advice.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
May 26, 2005

Mining the Earth's problems for drama

'It starts with the Earth. How can it not?"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 25, 2005

Designs to refresh the spirit

Some Westerners, when faced with Oriental creativity, have a tendency to gush. Instead of taking a calm, rational, inquisitive point of view, they tend to ascribe the aesthetic effect of what they see to some mysterious, spiritual force -- whether they call it Zen, Tao, yin and yang -- something they...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 22, 2005

Clifton Karhu's years in print

KARHU @ 77: A Personal Tribute, by Mary and Norman Tolman, bilingual text: English & Japanese. Tokyo: Abe Publishing, Ltd., 2004, 124 pp., 77 full-page color prints, 6,500 yen (cloth). Last November Clifton Karhu, Japan's most famous foreign resident artist, turned 77 years of age, and his dealer, Norman...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 18, 2005

A woman scorned

The continuing shock appeal of "Medea" by Euripides (480-406 B.C.), is not simply due to its dramatization of infanticide and the rage of a woman who has been scorned by her lover, but also because it touches on other universal themes such as the perennial position of underdogs in society, and how they...
EDITORIALS
May 15, 2005

Standing up to the death industry

Maple trees are famous for the gaudy show they put on each fall as their leaves change color. But they put on a spring show, too, as you may have noticed lately. In their anxiety to propagate, maples have evolved a stunningly efficient method of seed distribution. Winged pairs of seeds are released en...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 12, 2005

Middle-aged men seek reconciliation with wives

Oh boy. It's happened at last: the junai (pure love) boom of last year that changed even the behavioral patterns of Sentagai no Jyoshikousei (the high school girls of Center-Gai, Shibuya) has reached the last and most difficult segment of the Japanese populace: the over-45 salaryman.
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / JAPAN LITE
May 7, 2005

A golden week of Jakarta traffic chaos

I admit, I fled. I wanted to go somewhere for Golden Week but I didn't want an organized, efficient, clean vacation like I'd have traveling around Japan. I wanted something more spontaneous, more edgy, with a little more risk. I longed for the chaos of a big South Asian city, and people with big natural...
COMMENTARY
May 5, 2005

Britain's apolitical election

LONDON -- So powerful has been Prime Minister Tony Blair's dominance of British politics that Thursday's General Election has resolved into one question: Are you for or against his leadership?
BUSINESS
Apr 29, 2005

Golden Week may add 200 billion yen to GDP

This year's Golden Week holidays from Friday to the first week of May will likely add 200 billion yen to the nominal gross domestic product by fueling expenditures, according to a private think tank.
EDITORIALS
Apr 22, 2005

Reform remains pope's top priority

In one of the swiftest conclusions to a conclave in a century, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, a German theologian, has been elected pope to succeed the late John Paul II, who pursued pacifism, human rights protection and inter-religious dialogue. The hope for Pope Benedict XVI -- the name is said to suggest...
JAPAN
Apr 21, 2005

Pneumonia kills famed writer Niwa at age 100

Veteran novelist Fumio Niwa, whose works depicted modern life and historic Buddhist monks, died of pneumonia early Wednesday morning at his home in Musashino, western Tokyo, his family said. He was 100.

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