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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 19, 2013

Darren Johnston: dance's accidental controversialist

In 2003, prominent arts writer Allen Robertson wrote in The Times: "If there was a Turner Prize for dance, Darren Johnston would undoubtedly be on the shortlist."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jun 30, 2013

Cultural agency doles out awards to those promoting Japan

Twelve distinguished figures, including eight foreigners, received awards Friday from the Cultural Affairs Agency for their efforts in cultural exchange and promotion of Japanese culture abroad.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jun 15, 2013

Actor Ethan Hawke: still playing all the angles

Ethan Hawke is out and about in New York, the city he's lived in for 30 years, a place where famous faces slide past every day. He's wearing a baseball cap, a hoodie and a pair of cords. It's an outfit you might think he chose especially to look nondescript, but in reality it's because he likes corduroy...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 2, 2013

Searching for Mount Fuji

Japan is full of good place names. Who can resist Utsukushigahara (Beautiful Field) in Nagano Prefecture, Ginza (Golden Seat) in Tokyo or the sad irony of Fukushima — Isle of Good Fortune?
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
May 14, 2013

Czech promoter sings way to cultural identity

For singer Eva Miklas Takamine, who also has been head of the Czech Center in Tokyo since March, singing both Czech and Japanese songs is a way of expressing her identity.
Japan Times
WORLD / EU SPECIAL 2013
May 9, 2013

Europa House one-day event opens doors to all

The Delegation of the EU to Japan will open its premises to the public during the Europa House Open Day event on May 25.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 10, 2013

Why South Korea has already won

Pop stars, bourgeois lifestyle commentary and funny videos often seem to interest young South Koreans more than the latest provocation by the North.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 1, 2013

Working around others who work works better

Yahoo!'s new CEO recently created a fuss when she no longer let employees work from home. Is her edict a step backward or a boon for creativity?
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Tech
Mar 23, 2013

The digital pioneer who became a Web rebel

Jaron Lanier is that rarest of rare birds — an uber-geek who is highly critical of the world created by the technology he helped to create. Now 52, he first came to prominence in the 1980s as a pioneer in the field of "virtual reality" — the development of computer-generated environments in which...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 21, 2013

Japan needs to rebrand for SXSW

The purpose of the South By Southwest (SXSW) Music Conference and Festival in Austin, Texas, is for musicians to woo new fans and industry insiders. The five-day festival, though, hasn't been about bands for a while — it's about brands.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 3, 2013

The days may be numbered for English as a universal second language

How long will English last as a major world language? The answer must be: a very long time.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues
Feb 26, 2013

'Love With a Western Woman: A Guide for Japanese Men': some choice cuts

Some choice cuts from 'Love With a Western Woman: A Guide for Japanese Men.'
WORLD / Crime & Legal
Feb 21, 2013

Domestic violence blights South Africa

Oscar Pistorius was the perfect South African sports hero because victory over his disability made him a universally admired figure in a still-divided society. The profoundly macho culture he grew up in spans racial groups and provides some explanation for the country's shocking rates of domestic violence....
Japan Times
JAPAN / INTERPRETATION & TRANSLATION
Feb 18, 2013

Making a living using foreign language skills

What would it be like to make a living using foreign language skills as a freelance professional? Missa Takahashi, an interpreter and translator of English, French and Italian, shares how she established her career, expanded her work and deepened her understanding of language and culture.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Dec 22, 2012

Dutchman keeps paper-making traditions alive at his Shikoku studio

Rogier Uitenboogaart, who has been charmed by the world of washi (traditional Japanese paper) for the past three decades — especially its deep relationship with nature and people's everyday lives — is trying to help preserve both nature and the traditional craft in this country.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 19, 2012

U.S. school massacre won't change views on guns

We live in a society that makes it very, very easy to kill kids, though we want to pretend that isn't true.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 9, 2012

Globe-trotting acrobat left a mark on Japan

PROFESSOR RISLEY AND THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE TROUPE: How an American Acrobat Introduced Circus to Japan — and Japan to the West, by Frederik L. Schodt. Stone Bridge Press, 2012, 336 pp., $35 (hardcover) When a storyteller wields a scholar's pen, history truly comes alive. When that history crosses the...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHEN EAST MARRIES WEST
Nov 3, 2012

In the valley of the uncanny

I am at this bar, see, and with me are two friends.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Oct 28, 2012

Context the key at alt fashion fest

Watching the Fashion Week Tokyo models pounding polished catwalks in the glitzy Hikarie building in shopping-central Shibuya, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Paris.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 14, 2012

Developing a natural aesthetic

JAPAN AND THE CULTURE OF THE FOUR SEASONS: Nature, Literature and the Arts, by Haruo Shirane. Columbia University Press, 2012. 311 pp., $29.50 (hardcover) The starting point for this illuminating study lay in the author's curiosity about the formation of the saijiki, or seasonal almanacs, that have been...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Oct 13, 2012

Manga artist wields 'fude' brush in samurai epic

Illustrator and comic book artist Mulele Jarvis came to Tokyo just as he reached adulthood. It was five years after he had first discovered manga near his home in San Francisco, at Kinokuniya Bookstore, next door to Japantown: "That's where I found Katsuhiro Otomo's 'Akira.' I was so impressed by it,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Sep 1, 2012

Patrick W. Galbraith: Willing prisoner of Akihabara

For better or for worse, some of contemporary Japan's most recognizable cultural products come from the ever-ebullient world of pop culture. If this country's heroes in the 1950s and '60s were such intellectuals as film director Akira Kurosawa and author Yukio Mishima, today Japan's calling cards —...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: FASHION
Jul 10, 2012

The beautiful future of fashion

The "Future Beauty: 30 Years of Japanese Fashion" exhibition first showed at the Barbican Art Gallery in London in 2010 and traveled to the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 2011. Highly acclaimed by art critics and fashion fans, the show is finally making a pit stop in Japan, at Tokyo's Museum of Contemporary...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Jun 10, 2012

The Marshall Islands: Tropical idylls scarred like Tohoku

With all its American, European and Asian cultural influences, it's easy to forget that Japan is also an island nation in the Pacific.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 1, 2012

'Midnight in Paris'

A guy's on a trip to Paris with his fiancee. Gil (Owen Wilson) is a hack Hollywood screenwriter bemoaning the fact that he never became a "real" author and, besotted by the city's charms, toys with the idea of staying and doing just that. Inez (Rachel McAdams) is a castrating harpy who won't buy into...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 6, 2012

A postcard from Kauai's 'South Pacific' paradise

Those who know me know I tend to pick up and go quite easily, as the travel bug has never loosened its hold. This time, I've made the ultimate getaway to paradise to escape my regular routine of work and college. I'm talking about Kauai, Hawaii.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / THE ZEIT GIST
Mar 27, 2012

False eyelashes, an authentic Eid, but we're not in Karachi anymore

As soon as I told any of my friends in Pakistan I was going to study for a semester in Tokyo, it was as if my facial features suddenly started turning Japanese.
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Mar 6, 2012

A few of readers' favorite things; heated discussion on the burning issue of warmth

A selection of readers' responses to Debito Arudou's Feb. 7 Just Be Cause column, "These are a few of my favorite things about Japan":
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Oct 18, 2011

Greenthumb plants 'kolonihave' seed

Jens Jensen makes almost anything he needs for his weekend life from scratch, from a doorknob to a window frame to a small wooden hut.

Longform

Ichiro Suzuki, one of the most iconic players in NPB and MLB history, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.7% of the vote.
With Hall of Fame induction, Ichiro makes himself heard loud and clear