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COMMENTARY / World
Oct 15, 2000

India shooting itself in the foot

During a recent trip to India, the heretical thought took hold that ardent nationalists can be de facto anti-nationals.
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Oct 13, 2000

Wire's sonic zeitgeist knows no boundaries

Certain music magazines do more than just chronicle the ins and outs of bands and fans. In their pages they capture the mood of a particular era. Thus Rolling Stone was more than just a San Francisco rock magazine, and so London's The Wire is more than just a magazine about modern music.
JAPAN
Oct 13, 2000

Bringing Japan to Canadian kids

SARNIA, Ontario -- While the number of Japanese language learners and educators in Canadian schools is growing, elementary schools like Gregory A. Hogan, a Catholic institution here, are eager for teaching intern Akiko Samukawa's volunteer services.
CULTURE / Art
Sep 30, 2000

Korean folk traditions come alive on porcelain

Folk art motifs on the painted plates of Kim So Sun In our contemporary world, where art is commissioned for anything from airplanes to automobiles, the transposition of 17th-century Korean folk art to modern porcelain dishes should not prove too surprising. In a wonderful burst of innovation, artistKim...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Sep 19, 2000

Laos' fractured human map

LAO HILL TRIBES: Traditions and Patterns of Existence, by Stephen Mansfield. Images of Asia: Oxford University Press, 2000. 120 pp., 21 color plates, 24 monochrome, unpriced. In a sense, Laos remains closer to a conglomeration of tribes than it does to a conventional state composed of a unified people....
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 20, 2000

Suffer the stolen children

Mahatma Gandhi, asked what he thought of European civilization, replied, "I think it's a very good idea."
CULTURE / Books
Aug 16, 2000

The 'third way' goes via Japan

CULTURE AND TECHNOLOGY IN MODERN JAPAN, edited by Ian Inkster and Fumihiko Satofuka. 2000, I.B. Tauris, 39.50 British pounds / St. Martin's Press, $59.50. THE JAPANESE AND EUROPE: Images and Perceptions, by Bert Edstrom. Japan Library, 35 British pounds / $55. In less than 150 years, Japan has changed...
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 22, 2000

Inspiring words into action, play staged for world peace

"Respect for life," "Reject violence in all its forms," "Rediscover solidarity." These lofty ideals are the substance of a six-point statement put forward earlier this year by a group of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, when asked to formulate a declaration for the United Nations' International Year for...
JAPAN
Jul 20, 2000

T-shirts keeping traditional Miyako tattoos alive

GINOWAN, Okinawa Pref. -- "She lies with her arms folded, in peace / Where blue are the marks of fidelity"
CULTURE / Books
Jul 18, 2000

Get in the game with 'Ultra Nippon'

ULTRA NIPPON: How Japan Reinvented Football, by Jonathan Birchall. Headline, 2000, 256 pp., 16.99 pounds (cloth). Hundreds of books have been written about the J. League since its launch in 1993, and now one has been written in English.
LIFE / Travel
Jul 5, 2000

Get back to the garden, the perfect summer oasis

There's a reggae-loving bar owner in Fukuoka who loathes the stereotype that reggae is "summer music." Truth is, though, his business does extremely well during summer. It seems that atmosphere-building is still an essential part of the seasons in Japan.
COMMENTARY
Jun 26, 2000

English is not the answer

Earlier this year, the Forum on 21st Century Japan, a private panel to the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, proposed a national debate on whether English should be used in Japan as a second official language. That proposal has added fuel to the long-standing discussions on English education in this...
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 21, 2000

Two Kims now face a win-win situation

SEOUL -- Both North Korea's Kim Jong Il, the younger host, and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, his older guest, have come off last week's world-dazzling summit with a bounce. But can they keep the momentum going?
JAPAN
May 19, 2000

Summit elates Osaka's Okinawans

OSAKA -- Osaka lost the bid for the 2000 Group of Eight summit to Okinawa, shocking and disappointing many local business and political leaders who had believed their city was the clear favorite.
COMMUNITY
May 7, 2000

Activist with gypsy soul returns to roots

Reading years ago that the majority of us end our lives within 30 km of where we were born, I remember thinking: Not me. But after meeting Margareta Weisser, who knows.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 30, 2000

Subverting reality with waste

Sporting longish brown curly hair and a skittish glance, American Tom Sachs bounded into Tokyo for his first Tokyo exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery, bringing with him a refreshing whiff of New York art culture.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 23, 2000

Neo-Japonisme takes stage

One of the highlights of the Golden Week holiday this year is the Philip Morris Art Award 2000 Exhibition, on display April 24-May 7 at Yebisu Garden Place. The show presents a refreshingly diverse grouping of 100 contemporary works of art including paintings, prints, photographs, sculptures and installations,...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Mar 15, 2000

Seeds of knowledge

Welcome to the digital revolution, where we crunch numbers, process information and mine data. Maybe we don't get grease under our fingernails, but one wonders how far we've progressed beyond the industrial revolution. Though the metallic cling-clang of factories is rare, isn't there something familiar...
COMMUNITY
Mar 5, 2000

Researcher dives deep, flies high, blows bubbles

Minoru Yamada thinks there is something rather beautiful -- poetic even -- about the location of the headquarters of JAMSTEC (Japan Marine Science and Technology Center) in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture. And this has nothing to do with being right beside the sea, with a great view across Tokyo Bay to...
COMMUNITY
Feb 27, 2000

'Dalit' priest researches caste system in Japan

As a child the Rev. Busi Suneel Bhanu had no inkling of his status in the Indian caste system. Enlightenment came in his early teens, when a teacher voiced shock on being told that Suneel was "Dalit," the name used for those Indians regarded as "untouchable" because of the traditional nature of their...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 22, 2000

When paranoia is in power, prepare to be surprised

WHY VIETNAM INVADED CAMBODIA: Political Culture and the Causes of War, by Stephen J. Morris. Stanford University Press, 1999, 315 pp., $49.50/30 British pounds (cloth), $18.95/11.95 British pounds (paper). In July 1973, the Khmer Rouge launched an offensive against Cambodia's capital city, Phnom Penh....
CULTURE / Music
Feb 4, 2000

Rescuing abandoned electones from a grim fate

The electone, better known as the home organ, might recall memories of drunken uncles playing shambolic versions of Christmas songs, or upwardly mobile parents forcing a bit of culture down junior's throat. In many family homes, it is a dust-gathering fixture, a hulking monument to the musically dasai....
JAPAN
Feb 4, 2000

Exhibition teaches U.S. kids there are no samurai in Ginza

Staff writer Attention American kids! There are no samurai striding down the streets of Tokyo anymore. And, you know, the "Pokemon" character you're so crazy about actually originated in Japan. Despite the long-standing partnership with Japan and the permeation of Japanese products into daily life in...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 25, 2000

From 'either/or' to 'both/and'

FATHER INDIA: Westerners Under the Spell of an Ancient Culture, by Jeffrey Paine. New York, HarperCollins, 1999, 324 pp., with b/w photos, $14. Toward the middle of this detailed and thoughtful book, the author says his work is "about how different hopes for the West -- visions of another kind of West...
COMMUNITY
Jan 19, 2000

Lafcadio Hearn: interpreter of two disparate worlds

He created an illusion and lived his days and nights within its confines. That illusion was his Japan. He found in Japan the ideal coupling of the cerebral and the sensual, mingled and indistinguishable, the one constantly recharging the other and affording him the inspiration to write.
CULTURE / Music
Jan 7, 2000

Japan's cultural underground exposed in edgy new guide

The slow days of winter are upon us, making an evening on the couch with a good book or tune more enticing than the sweaty confines of a live house or club. As folks slowly stream back into town from the New Year's holidays, there isn't a lot happening in the first few weeks of January anyway, so kick...
JAPAN
Dec 30, 1999

Gay magazine Fabulous targets lifestyles of 'matured' community

Staff writer Five years working as supervisor of a mainly pornographic gay magazine convinced Toh Ogura, 38, that gays in Japan need a lifestyle magazine. Although a handful of pornographic magazines have been available, no lifestyle magazine targeted gays before Ogura started Fabulous in November....

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