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CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jan 12, 2005

Blue skies over architectural utopias

The latest offering from the Mori Art Museum lives up to its big name: "Archilab: New Experiments in Architecture, Art and the City, 1950-2005." The first architecture exhibition at the Mori, this is a big show, ambitious in both scale and manner of presentation. Featuring drawings, videos and maquettes...
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jan 11, 2005

Gaijin in cyberspace

It's a pretty lively gathering. A group of eikaiwa teachers are noisily denouncing their employers, while nearby a pair of leery Charisma Men are swapping tales of sexual conquests, and next to them some language students are loudly debating the Yasukuni Shrine.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 9, 2005

Highlights and lowlights of a year in the media

Media Person of the Year: Bae Yong Joon
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 8, 2005

Kabuki for just a song

The International Theatre Institute is offering half-price tickets to foreigners living in Japan for a Kabuki Night in mid-February in Tokyo. This is the first time half-price tickets have been offered to foreign residents for a night of kabuki.
EDITORIALS
Jan 5, 2005

Easier path for foreign investors

Japan is beginning to open the door wider to foreign direct investment. The Justice Ministry has completed a skeleton draft of a new law that will make it easier for foreign companies to purchase Japanese ones. Japanese executives understandably fear that their companies might become targets for foreign...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 4, 2005

Home schooling finds foothold but not official favor

Mariko Komuro was of the firm belief that children should go to school even if they experienced problems -- at least until her 8-year-old son, Kazutoshi, began to feel sick and throw up in the morning on school days.
JAPAN
Dec 31, 2004

Princess a 'tenacious' bird-watcher; fiance collects camera parts

Princess Nori is a "tenacious" lover of nature, while her fiance likes foreign cars and antique cameras, according to their friends.
EDITORIALS
Dec 31, 2004

Year of shattered ideals

This year was widely expected to be a pageant of democracy. Elections were scheduled around the world, and they went off, almost without exception, without a hitch. That happy outcome was the brightest result in a year colored by disappointment. The year 2004 may well be remembered for the many promises...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Dec 30, 2004

Japan gripped by obsession with pure love

2004 was the year of jun-ai (pure love), epitomized by the huge popularity of Yon-sama (the reverential nickname for Bae Yong Joon, star of the hit Korean drama "Winter Sonata") and a craze for sentimental love stories that gripped the nation from Hokkaido to the Okinawa.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 29, 2004

Alternative to fading away

In the annals of mankind, various nations that rose and fell over centuries are recognized for what they left for posterity. The Romans laid the foundations of Western civilization with Roman Law and built the infrastructure that enabled the spread of Christianity. The world owes the British for the...
JAPAN
Dec 28, 2004

Japan as seen through Hollywood's eyes

OSAKA -- Over the past year or so, Japan has figured in several popular Hollywood films.
COMMUNITY / How-tos / LIFELINES
Dec 28, 2004

Boating, studying and moving to Japan

The last column of the year! Where did the weeks go?
Dec 28, 2004

Japan as seen through Hollywood's eyes

OSAKA -- Over the past year or so, Japan has figured in several popular Hollywood films.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 26, 2004

Mapping out a metropolis

TOKYO CITY ATLAS: A Bilingual Guide, supervised by Atsushi Umeda. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2004, 124 pp., 2,205 yen (paper). Here is the third revised, updated edition of the handiest of all Tokyo atlas guides. Since the 2001 edition came out, there has been, as always, an amount of change in this...
COMMENTARY
Dec 26, 2004

The will to clean up politicos

MANILA -- Political parties are essential components of democratic governance. Democracies require political parties as these offer the voter political choices at election time. They also represent and channel divergent social interests and diffuse them in what is typically a protracted political process....
COMMENTARY
Dec 25, 2004

Waiting for Japan to change -- or can it?

LOS ANGELES -- For as long as I write this column on Asia, which enters into its 10th year next month, I doubt I'll ever witness anything as amusing or telling as the flareup that took place at the close of the University of Southern California's Asia Conference last month.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Dec 23, 2004

Taiwan bullet train project stalled by adjustments

Taiwan's high-speed railway system linking Taipei and the southern city of Kaohsiung will probably not start on schedule next October due to delays in adjusting the Japanese bullet train system to European specifications.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 22, 2004

The lady takes to King Lear

Utopia may be a little while coming in the real world, but -- earthquakes and broken bullet-train lines notwithstanding -- Ryutopia is not too hard to find if you are in Niigata, where it is the name given to the city's magnificent Performing Arts Center. Opened in 1998, the vast oval-shaped glass building...
JAPAN
Dec 21, 2004

Four youth-exchange figures plead guilty to subsidy fraud

A former vice chairman and three other staff members of a now-defunct association for youth exchanges pleaded guilty Monday to defrauding the government and a public organization out of 26.8 million yen in subsidies in 2001.
JAPAN
Dec 21, 2004

Salsa fanatics defy rigid Japan

A pulsating mambo fills the air at a cavernous club near Tokyo Bay. "Ayyy-esssooo!" the song calls in exhortation as a sea of dancers -- sweaty, skin bared, clothes clinging -- roll their hips and hurtle into turns with increasing abandon.
EDITORIALS
Dec 20, 2004

Seeing eye to eye with a neighbor

Grass-root ties between Japan and South Korea look better than at any time since the end of World War II. Mutual understanding and friendship have deepened visibly over the past few years, as demonstrated by the successful cohosting of the 2002 World Cup and the surge of Japanese interest in South Korean...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 19, 2004

Wheeler-dealers can always go home if the going gets dicey

UGLY AMERICANS: The True Story of the Ivy League Cowboys Who Raided the Asian Markets for Millions, by Ben Mezrich. William Morrow, 2004, $24.95 (cloth). The financial tycoons depicted in "Ugly Americans" were once dubbed Masters of the Universe, but they emerge here as hedonistic clowns. Their story...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 18, 2004

Aboriginal policy raises storm

SYDNEY -- Aborigines in the remote Australian Outback are going blind amid filthy conditions while white Australians luxuriate in some of the world's most sophisticated cities. It's a disaster waiting to happen, and that day looks close.
CULTURE / Books / THE BOOK REPORT
Dec 17, 2004

Book Trade Booms in 2004

2004 was a prosperous year for the Japanese book trade with revenues exceeding the previous year's figures for the first time in seven years. Despite many small bookstores going out of business, innovative marketing from publishers and book retailers produced several million-sellers.
BUSINESS
Dec 16, 2004

IRCJ makes Wal-Mart iffy on Daiei rehab

The Industrial Revitalization Corp. of Japan has shortlisted seven of 13 candidates to sponsor the rehabilitation of struggling retail giant Daiei Inc., industry sources said Wednesday.
LIFE / Lifestyle / MATTER OF COURSE
Dec 16, 2004

Reflections on rich learnings we all shared

When I began writing this column, I thought it would be a one-year gig. My editors thought so too. But things went well, and for nearly four years now I've reported in this space about my children's experiences in Japanese school.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 15, 2004

Godzilla is dead, long live Godzilla

What do most non-Japanese, Western or otherwise, know about Japanese films? About Japanese pop culture, period? More than they did a decade ago certainly, but let's get real: Go to a typical family gathering in America — blue state or red, it doesn't much matter — and ask those assembled for the...
JAPAN / BY THE NUMBERS
Dec 14, 2004

Sake trendy abroad but hard sell here to young

It has a deep, delicate and definitely cultural flavor. Yet sake does not appeal to many of today's Japanese, who would rather clink glasses of "shochu" liquor or wine.

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