"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, in 1821.

Close indeed. Closer than he or any Japanese then knew. Just around the corner, in fact.

"Intercourse shall be continued forever." — Shogun Tokugawa Iesada (under duress), to U.S. Consul Townsend Harris, 1857.

Our Planet

Hidetaka Ishii, an official at the Chiba Municipal Government, says close coordination with private-sector operators is key for regional decarbonization efforts.
Japan’s climate heroes show potential and limits of local initiatives

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan