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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2007

Tokyo's dark side

Welshman John Williams first came to Japan in 1988, intending to stay two years, write a script and return to Britain to make a movie. He ended up making eight shorts, a documentary and finally a feature film -- the drama "Firefly Dreams" -- all in Japan and with Japanese casts and crews. Released in...
SOCCER
Jan 27, 2007

Wanchope looks to lift FC Tokyo

Paulo Wanchope can't help but be labeled with the "veteran journeyman" tag, even though the striker is keen to point out he is still only 30 years old.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 27, 2007

SpongeBob soaks up young fans in Japan

Square and loud, SpongeBob wasn't supposed to have much chance for success in Japan, a nation famous for its love of more cuddly characters like Hello Kitty and Pikachu.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jan 25, 2007

A great space waiting to be filled

Wow. It's huge.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 25, 2007

Dairakudakan dancers play with Josef Nadj

Speaking in Tokyo a year ago, Josef Nadj, one of the most respected choreographers in the contemporary dance world, said that for his next project in Japan he wanted to create something playful for the audiences in collaboration with Japanese dancers and Japanese culture. The 49-year-old Yugoslav-born...
BUSINESS / Q&A
Jan 24, 2007

Election puts overtime-pay exclusion on hold

Wary of an upcoming election, the ruling bloc is backing off on a highly contentious bill that would exclude certain white-collar workers from overtime pay.
CULTURE / Books
Jan 21, 2007

An old way for modern business

Japan's Business Renaissance: How the World's Greatest Economy Revived, Renewed, and Reinvented Itself, by John C. Beck and Mark B. Fuller. McGraw-Hill, 2006, 226 pp., $27.95 (cloth) There was a time when you couldn't walk past a bookstore without seeing scores of books preaching Japanese business knowhow....
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 21, 2007

Sex in the Forbidden City

Rene Leys, by Victor Segalen, translated and with an introduction by J.A. Underwood, preface by Ian Buruma. New York: New York Review of Books, 2003, 210 pp. $14 (paper) "Who is this lad, this Belgian youth, who forbids Manchu princes possession of their future concubines? . . . . Who . . . has attained...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 21, 2007

Ah, those good old bad old '80s days

W hen did Japan begin to change and enter its present phase of burgeoning nationalism? (I hesitate to call it "new" nationalism, because it's actually just a rehashing of old myths for 21st-century consumption.)
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Jan 20, 2007

The child in me, the child in you

Mirrors don't lie, but they can mislead. Mine, for example, will sometimes offer unkind reflections upon my age. Especially in the morning.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 19, 2007

Lots of good records

"We don't play any cr*p records," say Bobby Gildea and Richard Colburn of indie-pop group Belle & Sebastian when asked to define their DJ music policy via e-mail from their Glasgow base. The two musicians will take a break from the day job to play an exclusive DJ set at Shibuya Game on Jan. 19.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 19, 2007

Isis and Boris

In the age of digital downloading, it's still possible to get people to buy CDs and records. You've just got to be smart about it.
Reader Mail
Jan 17, 2007

Town opts for isolation policy

As the new year begins, we are approaching the "awards" season: the Academy Awards, Grammies and my favorite, the Darwin awards (given to people who improve the human-gene pool as part of the natural-selection process by accidentally killing or sterilizing themselves during a foolish or careless mistake)....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WORDS TO LIVE BY
Jan 16, 2007

Hiroo Onoda

Hiroo Onoda, 84, is a former member of an Imperial Japanese Army intelligence unit, an elite commando during World War II who was sent to Lubang Island in the Philippines in 1944 to conduct guerrilla warfare and gather military intelligence. Trained in clandestine operations, his mission was to sneak...
Reader Mail
Jan 14, 2007

Shades of emperor worship

Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hakubun Shimomura is a perfect example of the sort of people that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has stacked his Cabinet with: ultra-nationalists who would like to take Japan back to the kind of country it was during World War II.
EDITORIALS
Jan 14, 2007

ETA's fatal miscalculations

When is a ceasefire not a ceasefire? When it is punctuated by bombings. Yet, even after taking responsibility for a blast that killed two people, the Basque separatist group ETA claims that it is adhering to a permanent ceasefire declared in March.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 14, 2007

Once in keeping with some of the best company

In the Company of Men: Representations of Male-Male Sexuality in Meiji Literature, by Jim Reichert. Stanford University Press, 2006, 282 pp., illustrations XI, $60.00 (cloth). The search for modernity in the Meiji Era (1868-1912) involved not only the discovery of some new subject matter but also the...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 12, 2007

Folk spirit, dub groove

Like many aspects of Ainu culture, the music of Hokkaido's indigenous people is distinct from that of the rest of Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 12, 2007

Afrirampo

'We get our influences from food -- cucumbers, carrots and spring onions and rosemary." If Afrirampo's supposed musical inspiration seems a bit bland, their tracks certainly are not.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / COUNTER CULTURE
Jan 12, 2007

No curtain call for this duo

The world of fashion is no stranger to an excess of marketing hype surrounding creations with a singular lack of substance, and Tokyo is no exception.
EDITORIALS
Jan 9, 2007

Driving a train under pressure

On the morning of April 25, 2005, a "rapid service" (express) commuter train derailed along a curve between Tsukaguchi and Amagasaki stations on the West Japan Railway Co.'s Fukuchiyama Line in Hyogo Prefecture, slamming into a nine-story condominium building near the tracks. The accident killed 106...
Reader Mail
Jan 7, 2007

Christmas surprise in Japan

Regarding the Dec. 26 article "Four sent to the gallows": While enjoying a wonderful visit to Kyoto, I was shocked to learn of the execution of four people on Christmas Day.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / LIFELINES
Jan 6, 2007

Rockin' poet reaches out with messages of caring

It's hard to predict when Tsuyoshi Yumoto will be sitting on the pavement outside Harajuku Station, just before the right-hand turn toward Meiji Shrine. It depends on the weather, you see, and what else he is up to in life.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 5, 2007

Win a chance to 'do' the Awa-odori

"Yokoso! Japan" is the government-led campaign that aims to increase the number of foreign visitors to Japan. As part of the campaign, on the third Friday of every month, it organizes a Japan Night.

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami