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May 04, 2025
 

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EDITORIALS
Oct 18, 2000

The case of Bessie's gaur

Cloning is in the news again, as it has been regularly since the birth of Dolly the cloned sheep in Scotland in 1996. The last four years have seen a flurry of Dollies -- more sheep, cattle, pigs and mice -- and numerous bulletins on their progress, which has mostly proved surprisingly normal. In the...
CULTURE / Books
Oct 17, 2000

Calm rejoicing in simple, ordinary things

OLD TAOIST: THE LIFE, ART, AND POETRY OF KODOJIN (1865-1944), by Stephen Addiss, with translations of and commentary on Chinese poems by Jonathan Chaves, Columbia University Press, 2000, 173 pp., $27.50. The photograph of Kodojin inside this book is very much what the title leads us to expect -- an elderly...
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Oct 9, 2000

Festival highlights the myriad sounds of Africa

The South African province of KwaZulu-Natal, I was told upon my arrival, has everything, from snowboarding in the morning to surfing in the afternoon. And from the itinerary that Swize, from the local tourist board, handed me, it looked like I would be doing it all: a trip to a game reserve and a Zulu...
CULTURE / Music / HOGAKU TODAY
Oct 7, 2000

Tales of romance and bloodshed come alive in Shinnai song

Some of the performing arts of Japan are so spectacular that they grab your attention and immediately make you feel a part of the music. Taiko drumming is one; rhythm speaks directly to our bodies, and the beating of a stick on a drum has a physical appeal to all, regardless of language or culture.
EDITORIALS
Oct 1, 2000

Life after the Olympics

What do we do now with our evenings and weekends? For two happy, mindless weeks, we have flopped down in front of the TV any spare minute we had, just to get our daily fix of the big show going on in Sydney. Cynicism, the pre-Games attitude du jour, went out the window the second the teams entered the...
CULTURE / Books
Sep 19, 2000

A fascinating figure of 13th-century Japan

CHARISMA AND COMMUNITY FORMATION IN MEDIEVAL JAPAN, by S.A. Thornton. Ithaca: Cornell University East Asia Series, 1999, 290 pp., unpriced. The "charisma" of the title of this carefully researched and impressively thorough work of scholarship refers, in the first instance, to the medieval Buddhist...
MORE SPORTS
Sep 5, 2000

NHL's Crisp pumped for Japan games

Former NHL player and coach Terry Crisp shakes hands with Nashville Predators hopeful Yujiro Nakajima in Tokyo on Monday in front of the Stanley Cup. If the Nashville Predators put on half the show that Terry Crisp did Monday afternoon, the National Hockey League has nothing to worry about.
LIFE / Travel
Aug 30, 2000

In the realm of the accidental tourist

While there are women who work exclusively as travel writers, many women writers, journalists and novelists among them, have chosen at one time or another to temporarily commandeer the travel vehicle to get their ideas or dreams across.
CULTURE / Art
Aug 19, 2000

Colors just the way she wants them

What we have here is a gallery whose walls are bare.
EDITORIALS
Aug 16, 2000

Malaysia makes a martyr

To no one's surprise, former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was found guilty of sodomy last week and sentenced to nine years in prison. This conviction follows last year's ruling that Mr. Anwar had abused his power while in office; only when that six-year prison term is complete will the...
CULTURE / Art
Jul 30, 2000

Brown as they wanna be -- ganguro phenomenon on film

Katrin Paul is making good use of her time studying photography in Tokyo. Full of intense Germanic energy, Paul observes the social environment of Tokyo from the perspective of an outsider in "Playing Summer," her second exhibition in as many months. A closer look at the Shibuya youth scene, the exhibition...
COMMENTARY
Jul 25, 2000

Media credibility is at risk

Two recent incidents have revealed the cozy relationship between government and the media in Japan. One is the appointment of a former Yomiuri Shimbun chief editorialist as a member of the National Public Safety Commission. The other is the fact that a member of the Cabinet press club wrote a memo for...
CULTURE / Music
Jul 16, 2000

Berlin Phil brings greetings: from one capital to another

Political and economic capital of Germany and home of the famed Berlin Philharmonic, Berlin is high on the list of cities Tokyoites most wish to visit and explore, as I did recently. Berlin and Tokyo have much in common, certainly including the quantity and quality of the musical scene.
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Jul 16, 2000

When dream makers walk among us

Socrates' bestial laugh washes into the cosmic map where Blake digs with his spade and Sam stands bathed in the sparks of his youth Among colored shapes, Sam embraces the warmest softest things a woman's spirit in the shape of clouds in the shape of foam in the shape of a womb The white space of the...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 13, 2000

It's Karl Marx vs. Jackie Chan, and the old, fat guy wins

CITY ON FIRE: Hong Kong Cinema, by Lisa Odham Stokes and Michael Hoover. London: Verso, Sept. 1999, 372 pp., $22 (paper). It began as a buzzing, multicultural confusion. The year is 1909. Hong Kong's cinema is born with a silent effort titled "Stealing the Roasted Duck." It is the handiwork of Liang...
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 7, 2000

China's unruly, untrustworthy territory

TOM CLIFFORD Staff writer HONG KONG -- The Hong Kong handover three years ago provided some of the most contradictory TV images of our age. An imperial drama, a colony being returned, was played out in the dying days of the 20th century. All that was missing was the setting sun.
COMMENTARY
Jun 14, 2000

The chancy politics of weather

In less than two weeks, on Sunday, June 25, Japanese voters will cast their ballots in what will be Japan's last general election of the 20th century. This may well turn out to be the most important Japanese general election since July 18, 1993, which resulted in the inauguration, on Aug. 9 of that year,...
EDITORIALS
May 22, 2000

China's hope, Beijing's anger

Saturday was a historic moment in Chinese history. For the first time in that country's long past, the leader of the opposition party took power democratically and peacefully. The inauguration of Mr. Chen Shui-bian as president was celebrated -- and feared. The government in Beijing has made it clear...
CULTURE / Art
May 7, 2000

Jewels of the printmaker's art

"I call these my jewels," said Joanna H. Schoff, as we bent to catch a gleam of silver in the softly lit museum. Treasures indeed, but instead of the brilliance of diamonds we were looking at far gentler beauties: rare gems of Japanese printmaking from the 1800s.
COMMUNITY
Apr 27, 2000

Celebration to wash away tears

A water festival without any water may sound like a contradiction in terms, but in Tokyo that's exactly how the Myanmarese community celebrate the New Year.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 13, 2000

Tiny Qatar brings freedom of the press to the Arab world

QATAR -- On a recent visit to Qatar, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak wanted to satisfy his curiosity about something bothering him and most other Arab rulers. It was past midnight when he descended unannounced on the Jazeera TV station. His surprise was hardly less than that of staff still around at...
BASEBALL / MLB
Mar 24, 2000

Cubs, Mets set to make history in Japan

Sports history will be made next Wednesday and Thursday when the first official Major League Baseball games ever to be played outside North America will take place right here in Japan. The New York Mets and Chicago Cubs will square off at the Tokyo Dome to open the Year 2000 National League championship...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 23, 2000

Beijing all bark and no bite? Think again

Tensions over the Taiwan Strait are palpable after China did its best to intimidate Taiwanese voters in the runup to last weekend's election. First, the Cabinet released a white paper that drew an unmistakable line -- thickened with a new condition -- regarding the limits of acceptable Taiwanese behavior...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 20, 2000

Troubling truths about India's bomb

INDIA'S NUCLEAR BOMB: The Impact on Global Proliferation, by George Perkovich. University of California Press, 1999, 597 pp., $39.95 (cloth). In many ways, the remarkable thing about India's nuclear bomb test on May 11, 1998 is not that it occurred, but that it didn't happen sooner. Ever since India...
EDITORIALS
Mar 9, 2000

Pyongyang's intransigence must end

The Japanese government on Tuesday formally announced that it will provide 100,000 tons of rice to North Korea through the U.N. World Food Program. Japan is taking humanitarian action to follow up an agreement that the countries recently reached to resume the normalization talks -- which broke down in...
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 4, 2000

Dance fests spotlight solo performances

Tokyo is awash with festivals of dance this month, mostly by solo dancers, which is not surprising since the majority of performers here prefer the controlled environment of one-man shows. But what is surprising is that even with all the organization involved in planning these events, the sudden accumulation...
SPORTS
Jan 27, 2000

Vermeil: the epitome of coaching, class

ATLANTA -- The old coach has done it again.
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jan 26, 2000

The menu's a long fellow at Coffee House Poem

As "the new millennium" approached, there were endless arguments over whether we actually had cause to celebrate. The "Is it 2000 or 2001?" debate continues, but certainly no one would dispute that the number 100 represents a long life, a perfect score or the number of coffees available on the menu at...
EDITORIALS
Dec 30, 1999

A marker in the river

Amid the rising din of millennium-inspired commentary, a single remark floated free recently, then fluttered down to lodge quietly in the mind. It didn't come from a pundit looking to say something portentous. It came from the British pop-music composer turned classicist Joe Jackson, introducing his...
EDITORIALS
Dec 18, 1999

The need for policing the police

It is a sad commentary on the times when the nation's police forces, which must rely on the public's trust to be effective, find themselves under a cloud of suspicion over repeated incidents of questionable, even criminal, behavior by their members. Yet that is the situation confronting Japan's law-enforcement...
Britain responds after Expo 2025 afternoon tea brews outrage
The café space at the Osaka Expo's British pavilion
Woman says archbishop of Tokyo ignored her pleas after priest allegedly raped her
In a news conference in Tokyo on Friday, Tokie Tanaka, 64, details her allegations of sexual abuse against a Catholic priest.
Israel protests after Kyoto inn seeks war crime declaration from tourist
A street in Kyoto in March 2023. An Israeli tourist was asked to sign a document stating that he had not committed war crimes when he checked in at a Kyoto guesthouse in April, prompting a response from Israel's ambassador.
Second round of U.S.-Japan tariff talks ends inconclusively in Washington
U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick (far left), U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (left) and Ryosei Akazawa, Japan's chief tariff negotiator. The second round of tariff negotiations between Japan and the United States were held on Thursday in Washington.
Inflation and high hotel prices curtail Golden Week travels
Travelers in front of a flight information panel in a departure hall at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on April 26
Japan’s ‘tabi’ sock mecca runs on thread and memories
A seamstress at Kineya Tabi sews together split-toe "tabi" socks, once a major industry for the town of Gyoda, Saitama Prefecture.
Despite shifts in Japan's political landscape, constitutional revision still far off
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has been a staunch advocate for constitutional reform.
'Ukiyo-e in Play' showcases traditional art carved anew
The Adachi Institute has been working on creating brand new ukiyo-e prints in collaboration with contemporary artists such as Yayoi Kusama, whose “Mt. Fuji in Seven Colours: When life boundlessly flares up to the universe” (2014) can be seen on display at “Ukiyo-e in Play.”
Ishiba hears advice from across the aisle on how Japan should handle Trump
Prime Minister Shigaru Ishiba and CDP head Yoshihiko Noda at a parliamentary session in Tokyo on April 23.
Don't send in the clones: AI event nixed as Alt accounts get reality check
A screenshot from the website for Alt's AI conference, which was canceled after the company disclosed an investigation into its sales figures.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

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
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after
Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

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