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JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jul 19, 2014

'Leaving the world' to gain freedom

A challenge: Scan Japanese history in search of freedom fighters. You won't find many. Not freedom but submission was the proud Japanese ideal.
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 16, 2014

Parisians hail beauty of Nomura's oeil de boeuf

Mansai Nomura’s recent staging of “Macbeth” at the Maison de la culture du Japon in Paris drew a varied and enthusiastic audience.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 14, 2014

When Warren Harding bared all to a mistress

Long before the age of texting, U.S. President Warren Harding likely was more unguarded in his love letters to a mistress than any modern politician could hope to be.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 10, 2014

Angelina Jolie takes evil to new places in 'Maleficent'

Websites such as Buzzfeed have made an art of the "listicle," a news article that comprises a top 10 on a designated topic. Thanks to childhood nostalgia, Walt Disney characters often make their way onto such listicles, and a quick look at the Top 10 Disney villains of all time often ends with one woman...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 10, 2014

Combinations that break the surface like a lotus flower

At exhibitions, ancient ceramics tend not to be the draw card that contemporary photography can be. With this in mind, The Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, has combined the two together.
Reader Mail
Jul 9, 2014

Selling out a postwar conscience

Japan's current prime minister is now officially the man who sold out Japan's postwar pacifist conscience. In his own personal second coming to the position of premiership, and surrounded by the most bellicose Cabinet in 70 years, Shinzo Abe has rammed through a pacifist-piercing package despite majority...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 9, 2014

'Into Great Silence'

Imagine a movie that's not a movie at all, but an act of contemplation. This is "Into Great Silence." Sometimes a prayer, more often a rumination, it's a film that sprung from one man's urge for silence. Director Philip Groning wanted to make a documentary about the monks living in the Grande Chartreuse...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 8, 2014

Japan's innovation challenge

The Abe administration's capacity for deciding how to raise the birthrate, improve child-care facilities, realize an appropriae work-life balance and promote other 'innovations' that enable Japan to solve its many problems is now being tested.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Jul 4, 2014

Watch out for Nendo

Nendo's latest work to catch the attention of this column is its Fusion collection — an entirely new series of furniture and houseware comprising 13 pieces for Danish furniture maker BoConcept.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / JUST BE CAUSE
Jul 2, 2014

Complexes continue to color Japan's ambivalent ties to the outside world

A sense of isolation gave rise to Japan's 'cult of uniqueness,' which still dominates Japan's self-image today, constantly vacillating between superiority and inferiority when dealing with foreigners.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 2, 2014

Babylon still trembles at Jamaica's cult classic

Flashback: It's midnight at the Orson Welles Cinema, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1980. Perry Henzell's breakthrough Jamaican film "The Harder They Come" has been playing here every weekend for nearly a decade now, but tonight it's still a full house. As the lights go down, the audience sparks up, and within...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 2, 2014

'Nanpu (Riding the Breeze)'

Movies about women who fly off to foreign climes to reboot their lives are a thriving subgenre, though the heroines are mostly from well-off countries, Japan included. Women from the more troubled parts of the world may also cross borders to start new lives, but their motives are less often self-discovery...
COMMENTARY / Japan
Jul 1, 2014

Japan's status quo crumbles with an apology to a woman

When Tokyo city assemblyman Akihiro Suzuki bowed to assemblywoman Ayaka Shiomura and apologized for publicly heckling her over her unmarried status, some people caught their breath, convinced that they were witnessing something epochal in Japan.
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 1, 2014

Rome's Trevi Fountain gets face-lift

Rome unveiled the most drastic face-lift for the Trevi Fountain in its 252-year history on Monday, the latest in a series of privately funded restorations to Italy's prized landmarks.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Jun 28, 2014

Not ducking tradition in Higashi-Ueno

With its lotus-laden Shinobazu pond, park grounds, and national museums, the Ueno area in Tokyo draws millions of visitors a year. Nearby Higashi-Ueno (Eastern Ueno), however, seems to be another world altogether. When I exit Shin-Okachimachi station, under skies portending summer heat, this low-lying...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 26, 2014

Who is the better player, Messi or Maradona?

Who is the better soccer player, Lionel Messi now or Diego Maradona?
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jun 26, 2014

Osaka's Aizen Festival begins

Even though it is mid-rainy season, the Aizen Festival anticipates the hot summer ahead with a parade of women wearing cool and attractive yukata (light kimono). As Osaka's first summer festival of the year, this is held from June 30 to July 2 at Shoman-in, also known as Aizendou, a 1,400 year-old temple...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 25, 2014

Insects inspire butoh master Maro

"I think if you looked at Earth from space, you'd see that the ones who really hold the reins here are not humans, but insects," Akaji Maro, a master of the expressionist Japanese dance genre butoh, declared in a recent interview for The Japan Times.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 25, 2014

The evolution of Seiki Kuroda

In all too-common sophomoric slight to artists is: 'A child could have done that.' Seiki Kuroda (1866-1924), the most significant Western-style painter in Japan's early modern history, however, shows that even some young adults can not accomplish what takes years to hone.
Japan Times
Events / Events In Tokyo
Jun 19, 2014

Dancing the praises of a Hawaiian lifestyle

Whether it's the beautiful flowers, the music or the gentle moves that promise women a flat stomach, hula, the traditional dance of Hawaii, has found international appeal. Hula Lehua, a clothes brand bringing Hawaiian fashion to Japan, cashes in on the popularity of hula, and as a celebration of Hawaiian...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Jun 16, 2014

Venice Biennale lays down the past

The Venice Architecture Biennale, first staged in 1980 and recurring every two years, has grown to become the world's largest and most influential gathering of architectural thought leaders. The event has come to be seen as providing a global snapshot of contemporary practice and as a weather vane of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 11, 2014

'Beauty on the Edge: Contemporary Art Nara — Magic of Materials and Wisdom'

Sculptors Takashi Kikuchi and Kei Takemata, stone artist Kota Kinutani, print artist Chihiro Shimotani, wood artist Chuichi Fuji, video artist Yutaka Moriguchi and painter Natsunosuke Mise are all connected by their strong afflilliation to Nara Prefecture.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Jun 9, 2014

Cool Biz 2014 inspires refreshing designs

Dressed in a gray suit, a model stops at the end of the runway and strikes a pose before taking off his jacket. Still standing at the end of the runway, instead of throwing the jacket over his shoulder, he begins to casually flip and fold it. Then he holds it up. What had appeared at first glance to...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jun 7, 2014

Kengo Kuma: 'a product of place'

Renowned architect's new book, 'My Place,' reflects an awareness of humanity's close affinity to the world around us.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Jun 4, 2014

JR East takes the wraps off new luxury train

East Japan Railway Co. has unveiled the designs for a luxury train that's scheduled to roll into operation around spring 2017.
JAPAN / History / JAPAN TIMES GONE BY
May 31, 2014

Japan called lackadaisical; simple-living laws introduced; tourist recommendations questioned; China's use of force deplored

'Of course it may be all that you say it is, and all that the guide books assure that it is, but to me Tokyo is insufferably dull, very muggy and generally uninteresting!'
Japan Times
CULTURE
May 31, 2014

Essential summer festivals 2014

A summer without festivals simply wouldn’t be a proper summer in Japan, so now that the humidity has returned, it’s time to slop on an extra layer of sunscreen and line up some outdoor activities.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 31, 2014

Modern cat tale echoes former feline fiction

That the Japanese are great cat-lovers should come as no surprise: a taste for the elegant, the mysterious and the quirky leads in a feline direction, after all. There are paintings of cats from the classical period of the imperial court and prints from the more popular ukiyo-e of the Edo Period (1603-1867)....

Longform

After the asset-price bubble crash of the early 1990s, employment at a Japanese company was no longer necessarily for life. As a result, a new generation is less willing to endure a toxic work culture —life’s too short, after all.
How Japan's youth are slowly changing the country's work ethic