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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 22, 2011

Generation gap nonexistent on album of minyō tunes

Seventy-five-year-old Misako Oshiro is widely regarded as Okinawa's greatest living singer of minyō (traditional folk song). In the 1970s her recordings with the late great Rinsho Kadekaru produced some of the finest moments of Okinawan music, and she continues to sing and record — and runs her own...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 22, 2011

Red Hot Chili Peppers

After a triumphant appearance at this year's Summer Sonic music festival, the Red Hot Chili Peppers are coming back to Japan via cinemas.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 22, 2011

"The Design of Katagami"

ICU Hachiro Yuasa Memorial Museum
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Sep 22, 2011

Flattening the art world with gentle avant-gardism

The avant-garde probably never looked as moderate and conservative as it did in 1888, when a group of young, bearded French painters founded a group known as "Les Nabis." The facial hair was not incidental either, helping to give the group its moniker: "Nabi" is Hebrew for prophet; the joke being that...
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Sep 22, 2011

Tradition that hides in abstraction

Abstraction came into vogue during a reinvigorated period of the 1950s and '60s, following on from its introduction by experimental Japanese artists of the 1910s, who were influenced by European importations of Expressionism, Cubism and Futurism.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 22, 2011

Mop Of Head praises recent past on debut

Mop Of Head founder Takashi "George" Wakamatsu had a pretty standard musical upbringing. He studied piano from the age of 3, and says he listened mostly to classical music and old jazz. Then he heard a track that changed his life ...British dance duo The KLF's "F-ck The Millennium."
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 20, 2011

Osama bin Laden made news, not history

Ten years after 9/11, the instant history is being written. In the French newspaper Le Monde, a highly intelligent commemorative supplement dubbed the period "The Decade of Bin Laden." But is that right?
Japan Times
Reference / SO WHAT THE HECK IS THAT
Sep 20, 2011

Anzan kigan

Dear Alice,
COMMENTARY
Sep 19, 2011

'Our prosperity is not a threat to our neighbors'

Modern-day China still seems to search for a clear-headed sense of its true self and its proper place in the 21st-century sun.
BUSINESS / THE VIEW FROM EUROPE
Sep 19, 2011

Japan faces crossroads for rebranding itself after Fukushima crisis

The Fukushima power plant crisis has clearly damaged Japan as a country brand. There has been an outpouring of sympathy for the victims and a widespread admiration for Japan's perseverance, stoicism and orderly response, but the overwhelming perception overseas is negative: disbelief that such an accident...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Sep 17, 2011

American out to save boat-building art

Douglas Brooks is a man on a mission. A boat builder and craftsman originally from Connecticut, Brooks is committed to helping keep afloat the dying craft of traditional boat building in Japan.
JAPAN
Sep 16, 2011

Mainali's kin submit retrial request

The wife and brother of Govinda Prasad Mainali, a Nepalese man serving life in prison for the 1997 robbery-murder of a 39-year-old woman, on Thursday called for his immediate release and demanded a retrial be held to prove his innocence.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Sep 16, 2011

Fun is brewing in Yokohama

More than 9,000 people slurped and swilled at last year's 200-beer extravaganza in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, but this time there's added incentive to sip up. The Japan Craft Beer Association invites you to raise a glass toward those in their industry suffering in the aftermath of the Great East...
Reader Mail
Sep 15, 2011

A comment on Muslims' views

Regarding the Sept. 9 JIJI article "Muslims here feel misunderstood": I would like to add that it seems to me that "feeling misunderstood" is inherent to a certain faction of Muslims all over the so called Western world. That some Muslims feel "misunderstood" increases with their percentage of the population....
Reader Mail
Sep 15, 2011

Reasons for Osaka's ranking

In his letter "Tokyo doesn't get enough respect", I don't know where Satoshi Sato found the information that Osaka has no museum, no concert hall, no drama theater. I find myself in perfect agreement with the Global Livability Survey ranking Osaka higher than Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Sep 15, 2011

Building future cities from grains of sand

As the last of the debris is cleared from the Great East Japan Earthquake and plans are drawn up to reconstruct the devastated towns and communities, architects and planners are pondering not just to how replace what was lost, but how to improve upon it. With fortuitous timing, Tokyo this September is...
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Sep 15, 2011

Don't miss those fleeting moments

The closest English photographer, and former night porter, Chris Shaw ever came to Japan was listening to stories at home in Merseyside from his Irish ex-merchant navy father. Sailor Shaw told his wide-eyed son of an extraordinary stopover in Osaka before the war in 1939, when he was granted shore leave....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 15, 2011

"Matthew Herbert"

Matthew Herbert can hardly be called a one-trick pony. Leaving his background in classical violin early on in his career, he has traversed many genres of dance music with his Doctor Rockit, Wishmountain and Herbert aliases. He has also conducted his own jazz big band and scored films and dance productions....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Sep 13, 2011

The loneliness — or otherwise — of the long-distance foreigner

The Japan Times received a large number of readers' emails in response to Debito Arudou's Just Be Cause column published Aug. 2, headlined "The loneliness of the long-distance foreigner." Here, belatedly, are a selection.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / STYLE WISE
Sep 13, 2011

The strength of Tokyo's minimalists, Knit for Japan and rediscovering Beams

MISHA JANETTE and PAUL McINNES 'Irving Penn and Issey Miyake' For 13 years, celebrated fashion photographer Irving Penn took inspiring images of every Issey Miyake collection, without the designer himself ever stepping foot into the studio to guide him.
JAPAN
Sep 11, 2011

Plugging leaks will end crisis, not cold shutdown: analysts

Ever since the nuclear crisis erupted six months ago, the public has been clamoring to know when the damaged reactors at the Fu ku shi ma No. 1 power plant will be brought under control and when the nightmare will end.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 11, 2011

The annual Kerala festival in Tokyo

This is the traditional season for the Keralan festival called Onam, the one time a year when the mythical King Mahabali leaves the netherworld where he now rules and visits his people to help them celebrate the harvest and their traditions.

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji