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Matt Treyvaud
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jul 18, 2015
'Mystical Realist' Eihei Dogen's 13th-century writings
Eihei Dogen (1200-53), founder of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism, is a key figure in the intellectual history of Japan, but for many centuries his work was not widely read. This changed in 1926, when the publication of Watsuji Tetsuro's "Shamon Dogen" ("The Monk Dogen") reframed him as a philosopher...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jul 11, 2015
Lafcadio Hearn's timeless anthology of ghost tales
What is it about "Kwaidan"? It wasn't Lafcadio Hearn's first take on Japanese ghost stories — it wasn't even his first such book whose title was a single Japanese word starting with "K" ("Kotto" was published two years earlier, in 1902). But it's "Kwaidan" that still claims a place in literary history,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Jul 3, 2015
Rice organization uses fried food and folklore to revive a Shinto purification ritual
Traditions are just innovations that happened to catch on. Culinary traditions are no different. Some self-organize out of circumstance, such as yakisoba (literally "fried noodles"), which triumphantly emerged as the iconic food of summer festivals in large part thanks to a particular combination of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jun 27, 2015
'Harp of Burma' is an adventure story concealing weighty themes
"Harp of Burma" was published in Japan in 1946, but it would be 20 years before Michio Takeyama's story of Japanese soldiers stranded in Burma after the close of World War II was translated into English. In fact, Kon Ichikawa got there first in 1956, with his stark cinematic adaptation, "Biruma no Tategoto"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jun 6, 2015
Osamu Dazai's travel guide 'Return to Tsugaru' is more concerned with people than place
In the northernmost reaches of Honshu, Japan's largest island, lies Tsugaru, an area isolated even from its neighbors in Aomori Prefecture, let alone the rest of Japan. As a celebrated author and son of Tsugaru himself, Dazai Osamu must have seemed the perfect choice for this 1944 volume in Oyama Shoten's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
May 30, 2015
'Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings' reveals intricacies of Edo Period architecture and interiors
"Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings" was first published in 1886, less than two decades after the Meiji Restoration, a time when Japan reopened itself to the world. But the same openness that allowed Morse to document Japanese architecture as a living tradition would soon transform the urban landscape...

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Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?