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November 24, 2024
 

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Stephen Mansfield

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Stephen Mansfield
Photojournalist and author Stephen Mansfield's work has appeared in over 70 publications worldwide, on subjects ranging from conflict in the Middle East to cultural analysis, interviews and book reviews. A longtime Japan Times contributor, his latest book is "Japan's Master Gardens: Lessons in Space & Environment."
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 31, 2013
The 'eternal modern' gardens of Matsuo-taisha
When new buildings were constructed in 1971 at Matsuo-taisha in Kyoto, one of Japan's oldest shrines, the largely self-taught landscape master Mirei Shigemori was commissioned to create a series of gardens on the site.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 17, 2013
Playing to the beat of the gods
TAIKO BOOM: Japanese Drumming in Place and Motion, by Shawn Bender. University of California Press, 2012, 259?pp., $29.95 (paperback)
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 10, 2013
If you do like to be beside the seaside, try Kamogawa
Chiba is a large prefecture, something you notice while traveling from Tokyo to the southern seaside resort of Kamogawa. The journey takes a good two hours — and this by express train.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 24, 2013
Beyond a shadow of doubt in new Higashino mystery
SALVATION OF A SAINT, by Keigo Higashino. Little Brown, 2013, 376 pp., £12.99 (hardcover)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 24, 2013
Recommended reading
Donald Richie was a scrupulous writer who paid finite attention to language and content. The following are 10 outstanding choices — titles that should be on any discerning readers' bookshelf.
Japan Times
LIFE
Feb 24, 2013
An inclined view: The life and work of Donald Richie
It was with a heavy heart that I heard from Donald Richie's longtime friend and editor Leza Lowitz that he had passed away on the morning of Tuesday, this week. He was 88.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 10, 2013
Japan's animal spirits
BONES OF CONTENTION: Animals and Religion in Contemporary Japan, by Barbara R. Ambros. University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 255 pp., $29 (paperback)
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 13, 2013
Sapporo's wonders of winter
It seemed to me on a recent winter's visit to Sapporo that everyone was a performer: from the flamboyant gestures and bullhorn announcements of the tour guides, to the showy dismembering of crabs by vendors, to the owners of the cubbyhole restaurants in Ramen Yokocho, the alley of mostly one-man operations...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 30, 2012
Landscaping the doors of perception in Japan
ZEN GARDENS: The Complete Works of Shunmyo Masuno, Japan's Leading Garden Designer, by Mira Locher. Tuttle Publishing, 2012, 224 pp., $39.95 (hardcover) Although the term zen-tei (Zen garden) exists in Japanese, its usage is a largely Western one, first coined by the American garden scholar Lorraine...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 4, 2012
Windmills on the poetic mind
FAREWELL TO NUCLEAR, WELCOME TO RENEWABLE ENERGY: A Collection of Poems by 218 Poets. Coal Sack Publishing, 2012, 321 pp., ¥3,150 Japan in many ways is the land of myth, of cozy self-assurances, national delusions and unfounded assertions. Incredulous claims, such as racial homogeneity and the absence...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 21, 2012
Hagi: restful cradle of a revolution
I had just been re-reading Paul Theroux's African travelogue, "Dark Star Safari," and was up to a part where he explains that he never books rooms on his journeys, just turns up and leaves the rest to chance.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 14, 2012
Spirits linger on storied Kudaka Isle
The 25-minute hop from Azama Port to Kudaka Island provides just enough time to glimpse back at Okinawa's receding coast before turning to gaze at the shoreline looming — not that I expected a great deal from an island so easily and frequently linked by ferries to the much-developed mainland.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 7, 2012
Exploring the garden of absolute infinities
Tenryu-Ji: Life and Spirit of a Kyoto Garden, by Norris Brock Johnson. Stone Bridge Press, 2012, 368 pp., $39.95 (hardcover) If the Western garden is bulging with organic matter, the Japanese one is animate with deities, allegory, symbolism and mythology, hinting at a greater depth, a place of divine...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Sep 30, 2012
Time seems to slow as Joei-ji Garden comes alive
"The whole countryside was full of snakes sunning themselves along the roads and swimming in the ditches and newly flooded rice-fields. ... Out in Sesshu's old garden behind the temple, the pond was starred with tiny twinkling water-lilies." Such was, in part, how Glenn W. Shaw described the rural outskirts...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 26, 2012
Another strange tale from east of the river
River Road: a Novel of Six Stories, by Hillel Wright. Printed Matter Press, 2012, 146 pp., $15.00 (hardcover) Writer Hillel Wright's seedbed of ideas, fertilized in the work of American giants like Ken Kesey, Tom Wolfe and William Burroughs, also owes something to the English sci-fi writer Michael Moorcock....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 12, 2012
For the sake of survival: concealing the cross
In Search of Japan's Hidden Christians: A Story of Suppression, Secrecy and Survival, by John Dougill. Tuttle Publishing, 2012, 272 pp., $22.95 (hardcover) When you travel with a mission, a theme in mind, encounters unfold, stories are forthcoming, history uncoils. John Dougill begins his own journey...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Jul 29, 2012
A heavenly retreat amid the bustle of Kyoto
On my first visit to the ancient pond garden of Kajuji, it took me a devil of a time just to locate it. Alighting at Ono, a subway stop on Kyoto's Tozai line, there was nothing to suggest the area might be of interest to visitors, that it could have any serious historical or cultural credentials.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 22, 2012
Written out of history: a female Edo master's story
The Printmaker's Daughter, by Katherine Govier. Harper Perennial, 2011, 512 pp., $14.99 (paperback) In this story of Katsushika Oei, the little- known daughter of the late Edo Period printmaker Hokusai, the author examines not only the constraints of politics and censorship under which artists worked,...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jul 8, 2012
Naoshima: art colony risen beautifully from ruination
Packing his trademark black Walther PPK 7.65 mm automatic, a small pistol with a mighty punch, agent 007 set foot on the island of Naoshima just one day after escaping the clutches of a powerful sociopath and his henchman.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jun 17, 2012
Easy does it on Taketomi
Consulting a map of Okinawa, you might be forgiven for thinking that the Yaeyama Islands group comprises fragments of Japan and China that have become loosened and detached. It's an impression confirmed at every turn once you set foot on these remote littorals.
U.S. aircraft carrier returns to Japan carrying navy’s ‘most capable fighter’
U.S. 7th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Fred Kacher speaks to reporters shortly after the arrival of aircraft carrier USS George Washington at Yokosuka naval base in Kanagawa Prefecture on Friday.
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Japan approves ¥21.9 trillion stimulus plan
The policy chiefs of the Democratic Party for the People, Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito — Makoto Hamaguchi (left), Itsunori Onodera (center) and Mitsunari Okamoto — shake hands after reaching an agreement on an economic stimulus package on Wednesday.
Woman dies after train collides with car in Tochigi
A Moka Railway train car
Japan will spend ¥325 million in government funds on Princess Yuriko's funeral
Princess Yuriko waves during the New Year's public greeting at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo in January 2019.
133-year-old Kyushu railway station remains to be partially preserved
The remains of the original Moji Station in Kitakyushu
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.

Podcast

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

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
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By Kathryn Wortley

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