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Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Aug 26, 2011

Tokyo Jazz Festival plays to a plethora of tastes

Jazz is always progressing. When the first jazz cafes began appearing in Yokohama around 100 years ago, nobody could have imagined the world they'd be a part of. Bebop and blues, tap dancers and turntables — the essential ingredients of the genre have evolved, and that is the main focus of the Tokyo...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Aug 23, 2011

Peace Boat-Rolls Royce talks lay bare ethical minefield

Convinced the recovery in Tohoku will result in the birth of widespread corporate philanthropy in Japan, in the same way the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake prompted the proliferation of volunteerism, Peace Boat director Tatsuya Yoshioka spent a day in June shepherding a busload of businesspeople on a...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 22, 2011

Whose fault is the rise and fall of the Japanese ojisan?

The Japanese ojisan (おじさん, middle-aged and older male) hasn't been too genki (元気, full of cheer) or assertive lately. Just the other day, I witnessed a company nomikai (飲み会, drinking party) at a beer garden where the only persons swilling nama (ナマ, draft beer) by the tankload, pulling...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 22, 2011

Apple core of capitalism

For a few hours this month Apple, once regarded as a maverick upstart company, became the world's biggest company by stock market capitalization, until Exxon Mobil again seized the title.
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 19, 2011

It's Erdogan's turn to try a new conservative design

As the Ottoman Empire vanished after World War I, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk created a new Turkey in the mold of Europe. Controlling all levers of power, including the military, Ataturk implemented his vision by mandating a separation between religion, public policy and government, and by telling his compatriots...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Aug 19, 2011

Women's soccer team gets People's Honor Award

The national women's soccer team received the People's Honor Award Thursday in recognition of their victory at the Women's World Cup in July in Germany.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 18, 2011

Yokohama Triennale rewards leisurely visit

Yokohama Triennale 2011, the fourth installment of this large-scale art event, differs from its predecessors in that it is being held primarily in a venue designed for showing art — the Yokohama Museum of Art. This has allowed the curators — the director general, Eriko Osaka, and the artistic director,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 14, 2011

Shimi time is party time for Okinawans alive and not

How would you like to spend a fun Sunday partying on a grave surrounded by hundreds of other tombs in a huge cemetery? Well, if you happen to be in Okinawa in April, shortly after the vernal equinox, you'll find thousands of families doing just that in high-spirited family outings at the festival time...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 14, 2011

A heady witches' brew of midsummer nightmares

Aside from the Summer High School Baseball Tournament at Koshien Stadium and NHK documentaries reminiscing about World War II, mid-August tends to be a quiet time and most of Japan's weekly magazines skip an issue.
JAPAN / History
Aug 14, 2011

Film mines rich seams of history

Hiroko Kumagai will never forget the day in 1998 when she first stepped inside the red-brick building at the entrance to the closed and shuttered Miyahara shaft in the Miike coal mine in Omuta, Fukuoka Prefecture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 12, 2011

'The Tree of Life'

When "Days of Heaven" was finally released in 1978 (see last week's review) after two years of perfectionist fiddling in the editing room, director Terrence Malick was given a blank check by his patron at Paramount, industrialist Charles Bluhdorn, to develop his next project. Malick assembled a small...
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 12, 2011

Ireland excoriates Vatican over new reports of abuse

In my first few days as editor of The Universe, the leading English-language Catholic newspaper, I had a long conversation with the monsignor who was a member of the board, an adviser to the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, and who wrote a religious "Agony Aunt" column for us.
SOCCER
Aug 7, 2011

Nadeshiko League attendance on rise

Saturday's Nadeshiko League game between Albirex Niigata Ladies and INAC Kobe Leonessa featured another record-setting crowd of 24,546 at Tohoku Denryoku Big Swan Stadium in Niigata.
SOCCER / J. League
Aug 6, 2011

Nakazawa hoping to return to national team

On Tuesday afternoon, Yuji Nakazawa could never have imagined the events that would unfold over the course of the week.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / HOTELS & RESTAURANTS
Aug 5, 2011

Help children's summer assignments

The Royal Park Hotel in the Nihonbashi area of Tokyo is offering special activity-based summer accommodation plans through Sept. 30.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 4, 2011

'Tokyo Tango': A fairy tale to keep you on your toes

When the mayor of a village is told by a frog king, who is fascinated by the elegance of swans gliding in the lake, that his villagers should wear toe shoes (ballet pointe shoes) all the time, he instructs everyone between the age of 8 months and 88 years to do so. Though at first this seems like a fun...
COMMENTARY
Aug 3, 2011

U.S. reputation suffers in Asia

U.S. prominence in Asia since World War II has rested on a widespread belief among friends, foes and nonaligned nations alike that Washington would use its economic and military power to prevent what it saw as dangerous challenges to the region's peace, stability and growth.
COMMENTARY
Aug 1, 2011

The rightwing terrorism threat

Three articles about Muslims ran in the same paper on the same day (The Independent, July 25):
Reader Mail
Jul 31, 2011

Avoid meat and feed more people

The July 21 article "What it takes to banish starvation," by former European commissioner for agriculture Franz Fischler, repeats all the silly ideas that the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization has been promoting for years, and that has led directly to the development of gene-modified food and seeds....
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,...
SOCCER / J. League
Jul 31, 2011

Reds complete season double over Frontale

Urawa Reds stretched their unbeaten run to eight J. League games and dented Kawasaki Frontale's title hopes into the bargain with a 1-0 win on Saturday night.
COMMENTARY / World
Jul 27, 2011

Moscow must also look to the east

Over the past 18 months, Russia's relations with Asia have begun to improve. Both President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have repeatedly pointed to the need for an economic turn to Asia. Dozens of protocols and agreements on new projects have been signed with China. Some are already...

Longform

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.
The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers