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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 25, 2006

Art of Africa

Everyone has an idea about "Africa." Pestilence, famine and genocide top many people's lists. Others think of boundless natural wonder and sprawling metropolises bursting with life. But the truth of it is, there is no one "Africa." There are only Africans, and they defy generalization.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 20, 2006

As it was in Japan then, so it is now

Much can be learned about the factual bones of history by reading books, but the pictures that have survived the years flesh out better what life was actually like before the arrival of the electricity, running water and phones that we now take for granted.
Japan Times
Features
Feb 6, 2005

Drawing on experience

At age 82, Shigeru Mizuki (above) is undoubtedly among the most popular -- and certainly one of the longest-standing -- cartoon artists in Japan. There is probably no Japanese adult who is not familiar with his name, or who has not at least glanced at the voluminous comics/animation series "Ge-ge-ge...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 1, 2004

Mixing madness with magic music

De-Lovely Rating: * * * * (out of 5) Japanese title: Gosenfu no Love Letter Director: Irwin Winkler Running time: 126 minutes Language: English Opens Dec. 11 [See Japan Times movie listings] "You have a dazzling talent and a life to go with it. What can you possibly be afraid of?" says...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Feb 16, 2003

When you need a hand ...

Married with two children, 46-year-old Kumiko Mashima thinks her life is just about perfect. She met her loving husband through an omiai -- a formal introduction arranged by a go-between with a view to marriage -- and they both adore their daughters. But before she found her way into her husband's arms,...
COMMUNITY
Sep 15, 2002

Love in a lovelorn land

Once upon a time, at a temple where homeless families were sheltering after a fire, a girl and a boy fell in love. Months passed. The burned-out neighborhood was rebuilt. The lovers were separated. Oh, misery! Oh, fleeting, unreal world!
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Jan 6, 2002

Dewi Sukarno: 'Miss Ambition' who's done it her way

Ratna Sari Dewi Sukarno has become a well-known Japanese media figure in recent years and has just raised some $90,000 for victims of terrorist attacks in the United States.
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATURAL SELECTIONS
Dec 20, 2001

Extra-terrestrial squid seen in the abyss

The world's largest ecosystem? Not the Amazon rain forest, nor the Great Barrier Reef. It is the abyss.
BUSINESS
Oct 20, 2001

Yasuda cracks the whip on merger procedure

Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance Co. and two other nonlife insurers will try to hasten work on their coming merger, the insurer's president said Friday.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 5, 2001

Evidence of microbes from outer space

LONDON -- The biggest news so far this year is not George W. Bush's plans for intergalactic defense, or even the Code Red virus that was supposed to eat our computers and then our brains. It is the discovery of bugs in the upper atmosphere.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 22, 2001

Dead-end lives in the suburbs of Tokyo

LIFE IN THE CUL-DE-SAC, by Senji Kuroi. Translated by Philip Gabriel. Berkeley, Calif.: Stone Bridge Press, 2001, 231 pp., $12.95. To read this version of "Life in the Cul-de-Sac" is to experience two conflicting emotions. On the one hand, there is admiration for the storyteller, as the dozen linked...
JAPAN
Jun 27, 2001

Insurance-yield cuts put forward in plan

A government panel presented a plan Tuesday that would enable life insurers to reduce yields promised to policyholders as a way to help weak insurers restructure.
COMMUNITY
Feb 18, 2001

Forest flamenco and snake salsa

Ana Maria Cristina starts her classes at the Asahi Culture Center in Shinjuku with stretches, bends, dynamic shakes of the upper torso and even punchier wiggles of the hips. She then demonstrates how to produce a voice from deep inside, as if reaching into her very soul. Japanese students have trouble...
BUSINESS
Dec 27, 2000

Chiyoda's debts likely much higher

Chiyoda Mutual Life Insurance Co.'s liabilities are estimated to have exceeded its assets by some 500 billion yen, about 15 times higher than its earlier publicized negative net worth of 34.3 billion yen, industry sources said Tuesday.
BUSINESS
Mar 29, 2000

DoCoMo ordered to pay 11 billion yen for tax dodge

Tax authorities have said NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc. (NTT DoCoMo) and its group failed to properly declare a 26 billion yen-plus taxable investment in equipment for its personal handy-phone system over a one-year period beginning in April 1998, NTT DoCoMo announced Tuesday.
CULTURE / Art
Dec 5, 1999

Fantasy, drama: visions of a blind artist

When Carter's, the biggest children's clothes maker in the U.S., chose to use blind artist Emu Namae's pastel drawings on their children's line, new doors opened in Namae's life.
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 5, 1999

The politics of love and hate

LONDON -- Here we are on the second anniversary of the death of Princess Diana, and neither her life nor her death seems as momentous as it did this time last year. Does this mean she really was just a media phenomenon, ephemeral, superficial, appearing and disappearing in our lives without consequence?...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 20, 2022

Memento mori: Photography in the face of the inevitable

The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum examines how we face our own mortality in the new exhibition “TOP Collection: The Illumination of Life by Death.”
Japan Times
WORLD
Jun 25, 2022

U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade abortion-rights ruling

The court voted along ideological lines, 6-3, to uphold Mississippi's ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy, and 5-4 to go further and explicitly overturn Roe.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital / Japan Pulse
Jun 11, 2022

YouTuber PewDiePie's 'honeymoon phase' brings positive vibes to Japan content

The YouTuber's relocation heralds a shift toward content focused on newcomers enthusiastically exploring the country and living out their dreams after years of pandemic restrictions.
JAPAN / Crime & Legal / Longform
Apr 25, 2022

Inside the mind of a mass murderer: Japan's killers increasingly seek notoriety

Violent offenders in Japan are increasingly seeking the notoriety that comes with being sentenced to death for their crimes.
Japan Times
WORLD
Dec 19, 2021

Hidden Pentagon records reveal patterns of failure in deadly U.S. airstrikes

A trove of documents lays bare how the U.S. air war has been marked by deeply flawed intelligence, rushed and often imprecise targeting and the deaths of thousands of civilians.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Oct 13, 2021

‘I never believed that would happen’: After 20 years of war, an abrupt end

Five Afghans speak about the sudden end of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, and the uncertainty that lies ahead.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 4, 2021

The future will be weirder than we think

The future may become unthinkably weird and that weirdness will likely come sooner than we think.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Nov 21, 2020

A frank conversation is needed on euthanasia

In October, New Zealand voters approved a referendum proposal to legalize medically assisted suicide, thus joining a small group of countries and territories that allow euthanasia under specific circumstances. The proposal sprang from a lawsuit brought by a lawyer dying from a brain tumor, and while...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / 2010S: DECADE IN REVIEW
Nov 23, 2019

Let us put an end to Haruki Murakami's decade-long Nobel Prize pilgrimage

The 2010s have flown by and still there is no end in sight for Haruki Murakami's Nobel Prize drought. William Lang offers tips to end this sorry state of affairs.

Longform

Koichi Tagawa’s diary entry from Aug. 9, 1945, describes the day of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.
The horrors of Nagasaki, in first person