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March 28, 2025
 

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Mark Brazil

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Mark Brazil
Mark Brazil, a Briton based in Hokkaido, has written about the natural history of Japan in his Wild Watch column for over 30 years. After careers in conservation and natural history television, Mark taught for nine years at a university in Hokkaido before going freelance. He now travels the world as a lecturer and leader on wildlife-focused expeditions.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 17, 2013
Trekking back in time among Okinawa's fronded wonders
A heavy fog hangs around the forested area of Yambaru in the northern hills of Okinawa. On this rainy-season morning in June, there's a steady dripping all around, though what I can see of the sky is cloudless. Instead, this "rain" is droplets that the trees have garnered into their canopies from...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jul 20, 2013
Building a case for birds
Many people would consider Stonehenge in southwest England or the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt — which both date from around 4,600 years ago — among the crowning glories of human achievement.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jun 16, 2013
Cycads: 'living fossils' with a deadly twist
Almost two months after revelers in most of Japan began partying beneath cherry blossoms in mid-March this year, we hardy northerners in Hokkaido were still waiting patiently for warm zephyrs to waft in with a late promise of spring.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
May 26, 2013
Kan Yasuda's tactile art brings new life to Bibai
Kan Yasuda's art somehow draws in the landscape, and entices in people, so that it is natural to explore the view through his structures and keyholes, to sit awhile atop a sculpture or to pose within their frames.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 19, 2013
Dwarf bamboo's no pushover whatever the season
An unseasonably cold spring wind blasts in from the north shaking all before it. Oak trunks tremble; mast-like young white birches sway alarmingly and ineffectively rattle their branches at it.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Apr 21, 2013
Nature art: It's in the 'I' of the beholder
When a thing of beauty is perceived, the observer experiences some kind of a reaction; but what defines “beauty”? Is it art?
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Mar 17, 2013
Ski sortie takes a shrewd turn for the cuter
It was cold and snowing and my mind was far away: I was already imagining returning to the warmth and color of the indoors after this, my latest winter sortie outdoors. It was only the rhythm of my skiing that was keeping me on track and bound for home.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Feb 17, 2013
Dancing Demoiselles of the desert
In a dry, dusty, desert landscape, the clamoring of cranes seems so surprising. I am used to the great winter assembly of more than 10,000 cranes in Kyushu at Izumi, where they congregate on winter-fallow rice fields; and I regularly frequent the winter gatherings of Red-crowned Cranes in snowy eastern...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jan 19, 2013
Impossible forests where tides ebb and flow
A ripple flows gently inland across an expanse of dark-gray mud. It washes in, then drains back, dampening the surface; it briefly fills, then empties from, tiny holes made by innumerable small crabs. The ebb is over, and the flow tide has begun.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 23, 2012
Journeying to the ends of the Earth ...
Travel is an addiction for which there seems no cure. Once under its sway, it is best just to ride out the alternating fevers and chills and see where they take you.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Dec 16, 2012
Beware: Devil birds at work in the woods
The final months of the year seem something of an afterthought following the delightful palette of autumn colors; they offer only fickle moods and fickle weather.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Nov 18, 2012
The little 'black bird' is a hit, from Liverpool all the way to Asia
It is 50 years this year since the best-selling band in history, The Beatles, released their first single, "Love Me Do." They were set to catapult Britain into the Swinging '60s and launch a global musical phenomenon.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 4, 2012
Lake Shikotsu: a Hokkaido wonderland awaits
I have spent the last four hours perspiring under the summer sun, moving slowly and photographing wildflowers. Having hiked the circuitous, twin-peaked route around the caldera of constantly active 1,041-meter Mount Tarumae, I then loped up and down a small peak known only as Kyu-san-ni (its height,...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Oct 21, 2012
Singing the praises of greenery
This year's annual hop between the hemispheres in my capacity as a globetrotting nature-tour guide took me to my namesake country, Brazil, with strange and unusual hopes.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Sep 16, 2012
Living the botanical high life
Japan, though it has a very different image, is on the same latitude as southern Europe and North Africa, while my nearest city, Sapporo, is oddly enough on the same east-west parallel as France's boisterously cosmopolitan second city of Marseille on the Mediterranean.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 2, 2012
Man on a mountain
In the very center of Hokkaido lies a landscape so far removed from the urban sprawl of much of lowland Japan that you might be forgiven for asking: "Is this really Japan?" Far more reminiscent of the higher latitudes of Kamchatka and Chukotka (northeastern Russia) or of northern central Alaska (United...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Aug 19, 2012
The air around us is teeming with life — it's just too tiny to see
As I approached the top of Mount Tarumae's western peak, located in Hokkaido's Shikotsu-Toya National Park, for a brief moment I thought an early reward was awaiting me in the form of clusters of ripe blueberries in the bush tops. At first glance it appeared that the bushes were in fruit, and it was...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jul 15, 2012
Slugs, snails and astonishing tales
Late last month, I arrived at my friends' house in the historic southwest English town of Stroud a little too early, only to find both Ian and Caroline Redmond out. So, with time on my hands, I wandered into their lovely garden on the slope of a hill overlooking the town and began to "potter about."...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
Jun 17, 2012
Rock on down to a geopark near you
To naturalists and hikers, the renown of 810-meter Mount Apoi near the southern tip of Hokkaido towers mightily above its lowly elevation.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / WILD WATCH
May 20, 2012
The wonder of feathers
A soft flake of seeming sky falls, wafts and floats earthward catching the light. Lightly, and soft as gossamer, it lands to add a splash of color to the greenery of spring. It may be no more than a tiny feather that's fallen from a passing bird, but it carries with it a message of mystery and miracle...
Yellow sand blankets cities across Japan
The Meteorological Agency forecast the yellow sand to move away from eastern Honshu by 6 p.m. on Wednesday. But it will continue to cover parts of western Honshu and Shikoku until Thursday morning, it said.
Japan considers all possible options as Trump threatens new auto tariffs
Subaru cars awaiting export at a port in Yokohama on Thursday.
JR's 'futuristic' Takanawa Gateway complex set to open in Tokyo
The Gateway Park at Takanawa Gateway City on Tuesday
In the wake of several scandals, Fuji TV ‘emperor’ Hieda steps down
Hisashi Hieda, a 41-year veteran of Fuji TV’s board of directors and dubbed the broadcaster’s “emperor,” has stepped down.
Hanami season to have record ¥1.39 trillion economic impact on Japan
Cherry blossoms along a road in Tokyo on Tuesday. The 2025 cherry blossom season is expected to have an economic impact of around ¥1.39 trillion on Japan.
Recent spate of wildfires in Japan and South Korea linked to climate change
Smoke and flames rise from a wildfire in Andong, South Korea, on Tuesday.
Hanami season to have record ¥1.39 trillion economic impact on Japan
Cherry blossoms along a road in Tokyo on Tuesday. The 2025 cherry blossom season is expected to have an economic impact of around ¥1.39 trillion on Japan.
Tokyo Series proves to be big business for MLB — and Japanese companies
An advertisement featuring Shohei Ohtani in Tokyo.
New SDF command will be key for contingency planning, Australian commander says
A Maritime Self-Defense Force SH-60K "Super Auk" from JS Shiranui prepares to land on HMAS Brisbane during Exercise Malabar 2023 while off the coast of New South Wales, Australia.
Japanese wages likely to rise more than 5% again this year
Wages are set for another big increase this year as annual negotiations secure generous agreements.

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One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
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