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COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 14, 2011

Barriers to multiculturalism are as low as they've ever been in Japan

Second of two parts
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 11, 2011

Summer Sonic prepares for an Asian invasion

Amid all the rivalry between Japanese and South Korean pop groups and the contrived debates about whether the manufactured crap from one country is better than the manufactured crap from the other, fans of independent or alternative music have been left scratching their heads.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 5, 2011

Art triennale to explore quake, life's mysteries

The summer just gets hotter and hotter for visual-art fans in Japan. Following on the heels of Art Fair Tokyo, which attracted 43,000 visitors to Tokyo International Forum last weekend, the nation's largest art event of all, the once-every-three-years Yokohama Triennale, opens Saturday.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Aug 2, 2011

The loneliness of the long-distance foreigner

A few months ago I had beers with several old Japan-hand guys (combined we have more than a century of Japan experiences), and one of them asked an interesting question:
LIFE
Jul 31, 2011

Most unlikely bedfellows

"How wonderful! How marvelous! From here to the southeast is what the Westerners call the Pacific Ocean and the American states! They must be very close!" — Watanabe Kazan, artist and samurai, in a diary recording a sojourn in Enoshima, an island off Kamakura in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jul 16, 2011

Canadian martial artist finds the way to tea of tranquility

The intricate stained glass window in the heavy wooden door provides an artistic and unusual welcome. Stoop inside the restored Kyoto machiya (town house) and step into a future melded with the past. Drinking in the Art-Deco/Taisho roman decorations, your eye moves away from the geometric stained glass...
COMMENTARY
Jul 14, 2011

The blame goes beyond a tabloid

After 168 years of titillating Britons over breakfast, the News of the World has closed. Last Sunday's edition was the tabloid's last. Allegations of police bribery and phone tapping by Britain's best-selling newspaper were met with public outrage. But are these revelations really so surprising?
BASEBALL / HIT AND RUN
Jul 12, 2011

Carp pitchers Bullington, Sarfate making most of first year in Japan

Sometimes an open mind can be as valuable to a pitcher as a good fastball.
Reader Mail
Jun 30, 2011

Differences in experiencing grief

In his June 12 Counterpoint article, "Barber's cutting comment denies others' humanity — and hers, too," Roger Pulvers lamented his young Korean barber's stereotypical and dehumanizing view of the Japanese and her inability to see other cultures from any viewpoint other than her own.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 20, 2011

Let one character lead to enlightenment and civilization

Many of Japan's admired historic figures were adulated for being "warrior scholars," since they were equally adept at leading armies and composing poems. This ideal is referred to as 文武両道 (bunbu ryodō). Bun refers to writing and by extension the literary arts. Bu relates to martial or military...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 5, 2011

Sadly, the pleasant diversion of literature is losing its appeal

Radiation and rubble — that's Japan's reality now and for the foreseeable future; the only escape is to seize the bull called "relevance" by the horns and fling it to the devil. Gladly I accept the challenge. If I need an excuse, the bimonthly magazine Brutus provides one. Its June 1 edition, 118 pages...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 5, 2011

Amon Miyamoto: Globe-trotting dramatist seeks new horizons

Fifty-three years ago, Amon Miyamoto was born into a world in which he grew up listening to spirited exchanges between leading lights from the stage and showbiz in his father's coffee shop across from the modern-leaning Shinbashi Enbujo outpost of the venerable Kabuki-za theater in Tokyo's smart Ginza...
COMMENTARY / THE VIEW FROM NEW YORK
May 30, 2011

Bedfellows of those 'lax,' 'insular' Japanese

Are some of those who write for The New York Times utterly unaware of the rest of the world — including the United States?
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
May 29, 2011

Japanese genius shines eclectic in its extravagant simplicities of style

"Live your era, surmount your era!" With these words, written in 1935, the young woodblock artist Yoshio Fujimaki gave out a cry for genius. Certainly his words apply to the genius of Bob Dylan (whose 70th birthday was celebrated on these pages last week), since both he, Fujimaki and others of genius...
ENVIRONMENT
May 29, 2011

Serendipities at every turn on this island 'pearl'

The sound of Buddhist chanting grew louder as my travel companions and I entered the compound around the "temple," where flickering torches lit the smiling faces of sedately circling monks as the warm tones of their voices carried through the impenetrable darkness on a chilling, flag-fluttering breeze....
CULTURE / Art
Apr 29, 2011

ArtGig offers 'Dirty, dirty! Sex, sex!' — for free

When curator Shai Ohayon says he's organizing 12 hours of "dirty, dirty, sex, sex" in Shinjuku, he's not making a sordid offer.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
Apr 12, 2011

Classics scholar seeks to repay debt

When the earthquake and tsunami hit the northeast on March 11, Robert Campbell, an Irish-American scholar of Edo Period to early Meiji Era literature, was in Tokyo.
Reader Mail
Apr 7, 2011

Credit for Japan's modern success

Regarding Michael Hoffman's Timeout April 3 article, "Renewed national pride will shape Japan's future": The Japanese never lost their "Japanese spirit" after World War II. Nor did they become "Americanized" and lose their unique culture. We might have whipped them, but all America did was point Japan...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 23, 2011

Knightley learns about life from Ishiguro adaptation

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — Keira Knightley, at age 26, has proven herself much more than just a pretty face. Born March 26, 1985, she requested a showbiz agent at age 3 — not all that surprising, considering that her father, Will Knightley, is an actor and her mother is the acclaimed playwright Sharman...
Reader Mail
Mar 6, 2011

Blurry separation of generations

The March 2 Kyodo article " 'Kawaii' culture taking hold in U.K." gives an an interesting contrast of the differences in the perception of "kawaii" (cute) between the United Kingdom and Japan. But I'm surprised that the writer didn't look beyond street pop culture to examine publishing.
BUSINESS / ANALYSIS
Mar 5, 2011

Kodansha ends export strategy

Publishing giant Kodansha Ltd.'s recent decision to close down its subsidiary, Kodansha International Ltd., by the end of April reflects the firm's change in its business strategy from shipping its English-language books made in Japan to publishing and distributing them in its largest market, North America....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 5, 2011

Harmonia Opera marks milestone

Emiko Iinuma's voice has a distinctive sugared drawl, a sweet residue from her early years as a student at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. It is more than the drawl that attracts — her voice dances, leaps across decades, travels up and down pitch, whispers hardship and rises in forthright determination....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Feb 11, 2011

Miila and the Geeks take Tokyo 'riot grrrl' sound international

A small girl, stylishly dressed in a short, black-and-white dress crouches hunched over a microphone, spitting out vocals that might be English or might be Martian for all the audience can tell beneath the thick overlay of distortion; a sax player with crazy hair is engaged in some kind of intense, seemingly...
Japan Times
Events / WHERE IT'S AT
Feb 1, 2011

Diplomats relate cultures in Japanese

"Goseicho arigato gozaimashita" (thank you for listening), a regular way of ending a speech, echoed in the meeting room after each foreign speaker gave their presentations and received a big round of applause from the audience.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 29, 2011

New Yorker finds success within himself in Kyoto

American restaurateur Charles Roche, 62, credits his love of feting others to having grown up in the warm and noisy embrace of an extended Italian-American family in the Bronx. As part of a food-loving clan he jokingly refers to as "the Sopranos without the crime," he remembers splitting chestnuts and...
Reader Mail
Jan 13, 2011

Americans should avoid lecturing

In his Dec. 30 letter, "Conceptions of rape, sexism differ," James Hicks chides me for making a statistical comparison of Japan and the United States in my Dec. 26 letter ("Statistically Japan does value life") "as though their history, culture and tendency toward liberalism were irrelevant." Mine was...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Dec 28, 2010

Mind the gap, get over it: Japan hands

Things have changed for the better for foreigners since the old days in Japan.
CULTURE / Music
Dec 17, 2010

Shock-rock act Dir En Grey snub cartoons for cred

It's no secret that, in recent years, certain styles of Japanese music have benefited massively from a surge of interest in anime and manga in the West. J-pop acts such as Puffy and AKB48 and visual-kei artists including Miyavi and L'Arc-En-Ciel have enjoyed exposure where before there was none. That's...

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