Search - works

 
 
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Jan 12, 2003

Facing economic facts, even if it hurts

STRADDLING ECONOMICS AND POLITICS: Cross-Cutting Issues in Asia, the United States, and the Global Economy, by Charles Wolf Jr. Santa Monica, CA.: Rand, 2002, 210 pp., $20 (paper) You have to give Charles Wolf credit. It takes courage to reprint articles when some of the predictions included are flat-out...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Jan 11, 2003

Luigi Cerantola

It is unusual to meet someone so unconventional as professor Luigi Cerantola. He has impeccable credentials in his publications of poetry, art and literary criticism, and in his collaborations with musicians for opera librettos. He presents himself with whimsy as a maverick who has a nonconforming wry,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 11, 2003

Prepared to stand by his principles, pay the price

Francis Higashiki is on the move, passing through Tokyo's Hamamatsucho on his way to Haneda Airport. He works near Oita in Kyushu, in a home for 35 abused children. "After the war, orphanages were full of orphans. Now most children have parents, but sadly there is so much domestic violence."
MORE SPORTS
Jan 10, 2003

Takahashi setting sights on another Olympic gold in 2004

This is the second and final installment of an exclusive interview with Naoko Takahashi, the gold medalist in the 2000 Sydney Olympic women's marathon.
JAPAN
Jan 8, 2003

Chinatown to be more tourist-friendly

Yokohama Chinatown, proud of its 140-year history as a symbol of the city since the early days of the port's opening, is gearing up for a makeover that it hopes will draw tourists back to its streets.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jan 8, 2003

Redeemers with feet of clay

Of the 14 ceramic objects designated as national treasures in Japan, the fact that no fewer than eight are chawan (tea bowls) is a clear sign of their importance in the culture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 8, 2003

What goes around, comes around . . .

The career of the Austrian author and playwright Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) unfolded in Vienna during the heady 19th-century fin de siecle era, when major social and intellectual shifts were sweeping the city.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 7, 2003

Bacteria spreads across nation to create slimy, healthy treat

Across the country, from Hokkaido to Okinawa, bacteria brought back by a Japanese scholar from a remote village in the former Soviet Union have been multiplying like crazy.
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM MOSCOW
Jan 6, 2003

Little progress, little protest

MOSCOW -- The Russian capital is gridlocked. This grim observation applies both physically and metaphorically: The city cannot manage its traffic, and the nation cannot handle its problems.
Japan Times
JAPAN / PREFECTURAL FARE
Jan 4, 2003

Center pushes Shiga culture, history

You can't talk about Shiga Prefecture without mentioning Lake Biwa, which takes up one-sixth of its area.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / NEW ART SEEN
Jan 1, 2003

So you thought '02 was good? Well, there's Mori to come

It looks, at first glance, like a refreshing case of "out with the old, and in with the new": In late 2002 the Tokyo art community bade a teary goodbye to its Mecca, when the falling-down old Sagacho building, home for years to some of Japan's most progressive gallery spaces, finally closed its doors...
CULTURE / Music
Jan 1, 2003

Mash it up, tear it up

The battle over music copyrights continued to rage this year. To combat the song pirates, the record industry unveiled copy-proof CDs and AudioGalaxy, one of the biggest music file-sharing networks in the post-Napster era, was shut down. It was a heavy blow, but MP3 hounds just regrouped and shared elsewhere....
EDITORIALS
Dec 29, 2002

What 'McDonaldization'?

I t wasn't all that long ago that American journalist Thomas Friedman was making headlines with his so-called Golden Arches Theory of conflict prevention: No two countries that both had McDonald's, he wrote in 1996, had ever fought a war against each other. Around the same time, McDonald's was drawing...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / GARDENS FOR ALL
Dec 26, 2002

Turning over new leaves

Time seems to fly by. With 2003 just around the corner, major housework operations are in order to enter the year with everything sparkling. Garden companies, too, will be busy cleaning up gardens. Pruning pine trees and cutting hedges, known as hagari (lit. "leaf-cutting") is an important part of the...
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Dec 26, 2002

It came from the alphabet soup

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void. And darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters."
EDITORIALS
Dec 24, 2002

Afghan revival depends on security

Sunday marked the first anniversary of the establishment of an interim government in Afghanistan following the collapse of the Islamic fundamentalist Taliban regime. Earlier this month, Mr. Hamid Karzai, head of the transitional government that took over from an interim administration in June, noted...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / NOTES FROM THE SMOKE
Dec 24, 2002

Veering from Brookside Close to Robocop

As Notes From the Smoke afternoons go, the one I spent in Monzennaka-cho got off to an unpromising start.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 22, 2002

Kazuko Shiraishi does it her way

KAZUKO SHIRAISHI: Let Those Who Appear. Translated by Samuel Grolmes and Yumiko Tsumura. New Directions, 2002, 49 pp., $12.95 (paper). I've met the poet Kazuko Shiraishi three times, on each of her visits to New York. Shiraishi made her latest trip to this city in the spring of 2002, to mark the publication...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / THEN AND NOW
Dec 19, 2002

An oasis on a trail of luck

Winter sees Shinobazu Pond in Ueno come alive with winged visitors from the North. Pintail and wigeons arrive early in September, followed by shovelers, mallards, pochard and tufted ducks arriving by November. Along with the resident gallinules, spot-billed ducks and cormorants -- and the perennial sea...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Dec 18, 2002

Ivy: "Guestroom"

Before Adam Schlesinger penned the catchy title song to Tom Hanks' directorial debut, "That Thing You Do," and formed the excellent power-pop band Fountains of Wayne with Chris Collingwood, he was the impetus behind Ivy, the New Jersey trio that pioneered the French pops revival on the U.S. East Coast....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / HIGH NOTES
Dec 18, 2002

Chris Botti: "December" & Ella Fitzgerald: "A Swinging Christmas"

At the end of the year, music takes an ugly turn. Blaring from speaker after speaker are the same feeble renditions of songs that sound worse with each passing commercialized year. And what's worse, you probably know all the words. Even on hearing background music, the lyrics start to circle uncontrollably...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 18, 2002

Asia, in a nutshell

In Douglas Adams' future dystopia novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," a giant computer finally determines the answer to the meaning of life: 42. The joke was that nobody knew the question.
COMMENTARY
Dec 16, 2002

Highways amid the shambles

In its final report submitted Dec. 6, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's advisory commission for privatizing four road-related public corporations called for a halt to runaway highway construction. The report warns against the "triangle of collusion" among "road tribe" legislators, related bureaucrats...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 15, 2002

Screen dreams of the good old samura days

With the stock market heading south and the political situation taking an uncanny resemblance to the last sclerotic days of the Soviet Union, no wonder Japanese moviegoers want to be anywhere but here and now. Even so, the number of new and recent Japanese films set in the past is extraordinary, given...
LIFE / Travel / ON THE ARCHIPELA-GO
Dec 15, 2002

What's Uwajima so bullish about?

Long before you step into the firszt gift shop peddling the usual range of touristic fripperies, you are in no doubt about how serious Uwajima is on the subject of bulls. In fact, the first thing you see as you get out of the station is a great bronze statue of a bull, standing implacably before the...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 14, 2002

No surprise tourism suffers

LOS ANGELES -- The government plan to privatize Narita airport in 2004 is welcome news to international travelers who know what good travel service is. The plan, which also includes a halt to building new airports, upgrading existing airports and improving customer service, could go a long way toward...

Longform

Dangami House is a 180-year-old former samurai residence of the Kato clan, who ruled over Ozu, Ehime Prefecture, until the Meiji Restoration.
A house, a legacy and the quiet work of restoration in rural Japan