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SOCCER / SOCCER SCENE
Nov 23, 2008

J. League title chase enters home stretch

The J. League title race going down to the wire is nothing new, but this year's championship is shaping up to be the tightest yet.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Nov 23, 2008

Judging Japanese architecture as the epitome of environmental art

"We sense the natural in things that form a happy link with their surroundings. . . . A natural architecture is architecture that creates this propitious connection."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 21, 2008

Juana Molina: 'Music overwhelms me'

On the cover of her latest album, "Un Dia," Juana Molina's face is distorted beyond all recognition; the effect is both intriguing and disturbing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 20, 2008

Lost in the heartland

How would Gauguin be remembered if he hadn't chanced upon the lurid earthiness of Tahiti and its women? Would Van Gogh have made the same impact without sunflowers and cornfields to unleash his frenzy for yellow? After mastering the basics of their craft, the next important thing for painters is to find...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 20, 2008

Japanning for southern barbarians

During the 16th-century age of exploration, Portuguese traders landed in Japan looking for exotic goods to sell in markets back in Europe and their newly founded colonies. Lacquerware was high on their list, not only for its decorative beauty but also for its more prosaic quality of being the only waterproof...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 20, 2008

"Yodogawa Technique: Diamond Dust"

Yukari Art Contemporary
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 19, 2008

Muscle cars giving 'otaku' new platforms to flex their fetishes

Masaya Taniguchi has a "heartache" plastered across the hood of his flaming red Audi TT Roadster.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Nov 19, 2008

Be a walking drive-in with mini projector

Marketing 101: Make use of a brand, even if it is not your own. Electronics pioneer Texas Instruments does so with its DLP Pico projector, the PK-101. Sold under the Optoma brand, the PK-101 is said to be the world's smallest and lightest projector. It goes on sale from Dec. 1 at the Apple Store in Japan...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 16, 2008

Seven-year journey to a safer life

KABUL — We began a journey in Afghanistan seven years ago with the war that ousted the Taliban from power. Much has been accomplished along the way, for Afghanistan and for the world.
JAPAN
Nov 15, 2008

Flame of love thrives, even with in-law in tow

Victoria Kobayakawa, a 29-year-old Filipino, was kept busy by her children during a recent interview with The Japan Times in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 15, 2008

Taking a structural stance on culture

It was at the groundbreaking ceremony of Osaka's Breeze Tower in the spring of 2006 that architect Yuichiro Edagawa met a German woman by the name of Sybille Fanelsa and happened to tell her about his cherished plan to publish a photo book that would introduce the splendor of Japanese culture and tradition...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / SHORT TAKES
Nov 14, 2008

The X-Files: I Want to Believe

Director: Chris Carter
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 14, 2008

Tora-san in English

This year marks the 40th birthday of arguably the most popular character in Japanese cinema — Tora-san. To celebrate the occasion, Shochiku is releasing the complete set of its Tora-san films, remastered and subtitled in English.
JAPAN
Nov 14, 2008

LDP panel mulls easing law on dual citizenship

Liberal Democratic Party member Taro Kono said Thursday he has submitted a proposal to an LDP panel he heads calling for the Nationality Law to be revised to allow offspring of mixed couples, one of whom being Japanese, to have more than one nationality.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 13, 2008

Tokyo's Rokku laughs it up again at film festival

The objectives of the First Old Town Taito International Comedy Film Festival, which runs Nov. 21 to 24 in the Tokyo districts of Asakusa and Ueno, sound ambitious. Noting on the festival's English-language Web site that "there are innumerable film festivals held throughout the world," the executive...
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / IGADGET
Nov 12, 2008

iPhone accessory gives you TV on the go

iPhone TV: Apple's amazing iPhone does just about everything, right? Nope. It's come up short in Japan for various reasons, including its lack of the TV function available on the newest generation of mobile phones.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Nov 11, 2008

Comedian Esper Ito

Comedian Esper Ito is famous for putting millions of TV viewers — and even Japan's funniest entertainers — in stitches. Wrapped in a gold cape and sporting red tights, he cuts a tragicomic figure, a court jester who's never afraid of risking bodily harm as long as he can make others' lives more...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 8, 2008

Translating in the spirit of samurai

Iehiro Tokugawa arrives at the publishing house Kobunsha, for which he works on occasion as a translator, accompanied by his Vietnamese wife. He is all in black; she is in blue jeans with a waterfall of shining hair down her back, and very lovely too. Speaking in fluent English, he extends his hand to...
COMMENTARY / World
Nov 6, 2008

Pregnant Afghan women face deadly odds

KABUL — In Badakhshan, Afghanistan, for every 100,000 births, 6,500 young mothers die. This is a record unrivaled anywhere in the world. In other parts of Afghanistan, too, the rates of maternal mortality continue to be among the highest in the world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 6, 2008

A place for women

Seian Shima's "Untitled" (1918), in "Women Artists in Osaka" at the Osaka City Museum of Modern Art till Dec. 7, is a remarkable work. A self-portrait — uncommon in Japanese painting generally — it conforms to no ideal form of beauty, unlike images done in the bijinga (beautiful woman pictures) genre....
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 6, 2008

Mock vote lets youths speak out

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama won big Wednesday, and a mock poll held at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo indicates the senator is popular with young Japanese, too.
COMMENTARY
Nov 5, 2008

Hindu fanatics threaten Indian secularism

MADRAS, India — India's secularism has gone up in smoke along with the festival of Diwali. Weeks preceding this joyous event — which nowadays has more noise and smoke brought about by unrelenting burst of crackers rather than light and luminosity — the rape and murder of Christianity in parts of...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Nov 5, 2008

Escapee gives glimpse of North prison camps

Shin Dong Hyuk had just turned 14 when he was forced to watch the executions of his mother and older brother for trying to escape from North Korea's "total control" prison camp No. 14, a Stalinist gulag for political prisoners. His mother was hanged; his brother was shot nine times.
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Nov 4, 2008

Truth: a delicate matter of give and take

Every activist and essayist must deal with a singular phenomenon when addressing the public: just how "truthful" one should be.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Nov 2, 2008

Probing the real Japan with Kenneth Pyle

Kenneth Pyle says his first memories of Japan were of watching war films when he was a child — "all the dogfights with Zero fighters and all that."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 2, 2008

Some 19th-century blood and gore

THE STRAW SANDAL OR THE SCROLL OF THE HUNDRED CRABS by Santo Kyoden, translated by Carmen Blacker, introduction by P.F. Kornicki. Global Oriental, 2008, 116 pp., 28 b/w illustrations by Utagawa Toyokuni, £35 (cloth) Santo Kyoden (pen name Iwase Samuru, 1761-1816) was among the most popular authors of...
JAPAN
Oct 31, 2008

Prime minister's crisis political, not financial

Prime Minister Taro Aso's desire to address the global financial crisis appears to be why a snap election won't be called anytime soon, but political analysts have another take: He just wants to avoid a losing battle.

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?