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COMMENTARY
May 1, 2000

Racism and human rights

LONDON -- Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara's recent remarks suggesting that many foreigners in Japan are criminals and could cause trouble in a time of crisis have inevitably aroused fears abroad that Japanese rightwing politicians are continuing to pander to popular prejudice and have their eyes on re-election...
COMMUNITY
Apr 30, 2000

'English Patience' thickens plots

I found Yukichi Arai eating fruit sherbet in the lobby of the Tokyo Station Hotel. It was hot, I agreed, whereupon he ordered another. After four days sitting in a booth at the Tokyo Book Fair at Tokyo Big Site, promoting his book (titled in "katakana" as "English Patience"), he felt the world deserving...
CULTURE / Art
Apr 30, 2000

A century of Japanese-style painting

"Glue painting?" Rather unattractive.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 29, 2000

Mission to preserve and protect

Official art criticism has a long history in Japan. The Heian Imperial Court and the Muromachi and Tokugawa shogunates all had staffs of experts to classify, authenticate and evaluate works of art. Many famous artists doubled in this capacity, and not a few emperors and shoguns were known for their critical...
COMMUNITY
Apr 27, 2000

Sushi contest garners raw enthusiasm

WASHINGTON -- Sushi captured the hearts and stomachs of Edoites and quickly became a trendy fast food when it was introduced in the early 19th century. Over 170 years later, it has become a signature Japanese food, with lovers all over the world.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 25, 2000

The 400-year-old bridge

BRIDGING THE DIVIDE: 400 Years The Netherlands -- Japan, edited by Leonard Blusse, Willem Remmelink and Ivo Smits. Leiden: Hotei Publishing, 2000, 288 pp., $60. Japan and the Netherlands have a special relationship. No two other European and Asian countries have maintained such long and continuous contact...
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Apr 25, 2000

Marco Polo's fantastic truths

MARCO POLO AND THE DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD, by John Larner. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999, 250 pp., with plates (14) and maps, unpriced. In 1271, a mere 17 years old, Marco Polo left Venice in company with his uncle and several other merchants. Twenty-four years later, in 1295, he returned,...
CULTURE / Music / MUSIC NOMAD
Apr 25, 2000

Virtuosos from the fringes of Europe

Perhaps it's still too early to be talking about gigs of the year but the upcoming Altan Festival might prove hard to beat. There will be three outstanding acts. All come from the fringes of Europe, from peoples with a history of persecution, but all have an equally long and proud music tradition that...
COMMUNITY
Apr 20, 2000

The TW200 takes a ride on the wild side

If the TW200 was a person rather than a motorbike, it would be flooded with offers to star in before-and-after ads for a trendy esthetic salon.
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 15, 2000

Flamenco Fiesta: Andalucia in Japan

Iberia, a company that has brought Spanish culture to Japan for 29 years, is presenting Fiesta Andalucia 2000. As a part of the festival, Israel Galvan, 26, one of the world's most popular male flamenco dancers, and four female dancers, Isabel Bayon, Rosario Toledo, Manuela Reyes and Pastora Galvan,...
CULTURE / Music / PLAY BUTTON
Apr 14, 2000

Communing with Kerouac

Spoken word, the increasingly hip combination of poetry and music, has never really cut it in Tokyo. While New York, Chicago and London boast regular spoken-word club nights and poetry slams, one of Tokyo's few regular events is the Johnbull-sponsored event dubbed Bookworm.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 12, 2000

The wellspring of pacifism in Japan

PROPHETS OF PEACE: Pacifism and Cultural Identity in Japan's New Religions, by Robert Kisala. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999, 242 pp., $24.95 (paper). The so-called Peace Constitution is a defining feature of modern Japan. In the aftermath of World War II, Japan has perceived itself, and...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Apr 9, 2000

Jane Marwick

In the late 1980s the Tokyo International Learning Community began in a very small way as a support group for parents of children with special needs. TILC opened a school in a church room, where children suffering from a wide range of disabilities were brought together in a learning environment.
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 8, 2000

Shall we hula dance?

MATSUSHIGE, Tokushima Pref. -- "It began with a cold," Lance Kita, 24, replied when asked how he came to teach hula in Japan. Kita, raised in Hawaii, had never taught or even performed the dance native to his home state before coming to Shikoku, Japan's least visited major island.
LIFE / Travel
Apr 5, 2000

Bacchanalian bliss under the blossoms of spring

Dozens of spring perennials are in bloom right now, but none are revered so much in Japan as sakura, or cherry blossoms. The pale pink blossoms hail the true arrival of spring, and their brevity (the shower of petals lasts about a week only) has symbolized the fragility of life for centuries.
COMMUNITY
Apr 2, 2000

Activist monthly comes to Japan

When Caitlin Stronell first came to Japan in 1984 to spend a year in Tochigi Prefecture, her father gave her a subscription to the U.K. cooperatively produced monthly magazine New Internationalist. "He thought it'd keep me in touch with social and political activism in the rest of the world, while giving...
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / PERSONALITY PROFILE
Apr 2, 2000

Benchapa Krairiksh

This year's Asian Festival charity bazaar, organized by the Asian Ladies Friendship Society, will be held April 27. Benchapa Krairiksh, wife of the ambassador of Thailand to Japan, says she is "honored and delighted to serve as chairperson of the festival in the year 2000."
COMMUNITY / How-tos / GETTING THINGS DONE
Apr 2, 2000

Time traveling

There have been many observations about nostalgia. Nostalgia's not what it used to be, There's no "stalgia" like nostalgia -- but nostalgia is where I am today. I have just returned from three weeks in California, and it is a nostalgia mix, what I have left behind, what I have gained, from living so...
EDITORIALS
Mar 31, 2000

Familiar faces in a new Cabinet

In France, Prime Minister Lionel Jospin resorted to a compromise strategy in a Cabinet reshuffle announced earlier this week. Rattled by a series of missteps, Mr. Jospin needs to rebuild public confidence. To do so, he appointed two prominent rivals from his Socialist Party to key positions. It is a...
CULTURE / Music
Mar 28, 2000

Tried and true not always the way to go

As mentioned last time in this column, a new restaurant/venue, Tribute to the Love Generation, will open in Odaiba on Tokyo Bay next month. It is not, as you may expect, a hangout for "Dead-heads," or ex-flower power hippies hiding out in Tokyo, but in fact will host mainly "world music" concerts. With...
COMMUNITY
Mar 26, 2000

A fighting chance in the ring

VIENTIANE, Laos -- While tourists settle at the outdoor eateries along the levee beside the Mekong River to catch another stirring Vientiane sunset, a handful of Laotians nearby gawk equally intently at a middle-aged Caucasian man punching a local youth.
LIFE / Travel
Mar 22, 2000

Dejima getting back into shape

First-time visitors to Dejima, Nagasaki's historic artificial island, are usually puzzled on arrival. Looking around for water, they find only a kitsch scale model of the island and several oldish buildings. Although Dejima's front sea wall looks authentic enough, landfills have gradually enclosed the...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 19, 2000

Found language and fragmented identity

Yuriya Julia Kumagai's first volume of poetry, "Her Space-Time Continuum," originally written in English and published in 1994, used text layout, language "found" in everyday life, as well as literary theory and language poetry techniques to shape her own idiom. This hybrid approach reflected the speaker's...
CULTURE / Art
Mar 18, 2000

Getting your roots crossed

Contemporary art on the cutting edge and traditional crafts firmly rooted in the past seem poles apart. But what if their paths crossed? One answer to the question is currently on show in Tokyo's Sumida Ward, where various crafts -- from ivory carving to hagoita battledores -- have been given a new twist...
CULTURE / Music
Mar 18, 2000

Distant echoes from a desert lute

"We are not reviving the original music of over 1,000 years ago," says Sukeyasu Shiba, director of the leading independent gagaku (court music) group Reigakusha, which will present a concert March 23 of music from over 1,000 years ago.
JAPAN
Mar 16, 2000

Olympic gold medalist to aid education reform

Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi will appoint Olympic gold medalist Yasuhiro Yamashita and 25 others to his advisory panel on education reform to be launched this month, Obuchi's adviser on education issues said Wednesday.
JAPAN
Mar 16, 2000

Osaka convention center ready to open

The long-awaited Osaka International Convention Center has now been completed in the Kansai capital's Nakanoshima area and will open April 1.
COMMUNITY
Mar 15, 2000

More than a pit stop in the Hita of the moment

It may not be on the typical tourist itineraries, and its name may sound almost like a home appliance, but Hita is a lovely town. It sprawls between two highland rivers in a lush valley at the back of Oita Prefecture, surrounded by forests and fruit trees. Hita is just 70 minutes from Fukuoka, and easily...
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 15, 2000

Putting post-Seattle pieces back together

Billed as the most important meeting of the new millennium, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD X) in Bangkok in mid-February deserved its designation as "mother of all conferences." While it might not have had the cachet of a Davos World Economic Forum, it did not lack for luster and...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 15, 2000

Fertile soil for Japanese environmentalist groups?

ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS IN JAPAN: Networks of Power and Protest, by Jeffrey Broadbent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, 418 pp., $13.95, (paper). Given Japan's economic growth after World War II -- a period often termed "miraculous" -- it is not surprising that the worst problems of ecological...
Japan braces for more quakes as authorities dismiss doomsday hype
Evacuees from Akuseki Island, located in the Tokara island chain in Kagoshima Prefecuture, arrive at Kagoshima Port on Friday.
Hidden AI prompts in academic papers spark concern about research integrity
Waseda University is one of 14 institutions in eight countries found to have used hidden prompts in research papers.
A prophesied disaster (likely) won’t strike Japan this weekend
A viral manga prediction of a July 5 disaster has gripped Japan with anxiety and triggered an economic impact, but experts warn that while such dates are unreliable, the threat of a massive earthquake remains real. 
Residents of Tokara Islands begin evacuation as seismic swarm continues
Details about evacuations from Akuseki Island, located in the Tokara island chain in Kagoshima Prefecture, is seen written on a whiteboard in the city of Kagoshima on Thursday.
U.S. military apologizes over Okinawa sexual assault case
Col. Neil Owens (right), chief of staff for the 3rd Marine Division, bows in apology at the Okinawa Prefectural Government office in Naha on Thursday.
Ghibli’s Isao Takahata exhibit shows how beloved anime is made
“The man who planted Japanese animation” exhibition includes a variety of sketches, drawings and animation cels from Isao Takahata films such as color design for characters by Michiyo Yasuda from "Grave of the Fireflies."
Flag football facing challenges and opportunities ahead
Japan’s women’s flag football team at the 2025 International Bowl in Los Angeles in June. The sport is enjoying continued growth in the country.
From Hokusai’s Great Wave, shinkansen to One Piece: a cultural treasure box for Lego Japan
Michael Ebbesen, general manager of Lego Japan, says Lego bricks based on Japanese culture have a rich global appeal and are sellable around the world.
With farmed fish, RelationFish swims against the tide in fine dining
Chef Hideaki Matsuo (middle) and the staff of Oseto Suisan Fisheries prepare to check on their sustainably farmed fish.
As Southeast Asia heats up, a Japanese cooling giant sees a major opportunity
An employee of Daikin Cambodia explains the use of different tools during an air conditioner installation training session in Phnom Penh. Daikin is one of Japan’s oldest air conditioning companies, but as Japan’s population falls, the firm is keying in on overseas growth.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

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
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after
Smile! It’s ‘Sanrio Time,’ now and ever after

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