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November 22, 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
Apr 25, 2015
The temporal shift of Ainokura village
The tour conductor waved her flag furiously as she directed the bus driver into the last remaining slot in the parking lot that serves the village of Shirakawa-go.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Apr 4, 2015
Okinawa: In the crosshairs of war
"We always seem to be at the tail end of history, dragged along roads already ruined by others."
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 28, 2015
Soraku-en: Kobe's well-grounded garden
On Jan. 17, 1995, as the city of Kobe suffered one of the country's worst earthquakes in living memory, the rocks, artificial hills and root systems of Soraku-en, a Meiji period (1868-1912) circuit garden, held firm.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Mar 28, 2015
Morbid beauty and charged sexuality of Yasunari Kawabata's 'Thousand Cranes'
Yasunari Kawabata's tense 1952 novel contains all the writer's hallmarks: beautiful language, obsessive sexuality and contempt for the era.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 21, 2015
The wanderer, writer and suspected spy who embraced Japan
T.S. Eliot may have written that "April is the cruellest month," but for Roger Pulvers, this spring is an extraordinarily felicitous one. In March, an English translation of his novel "Starsand" was published and in April, translations will be released of both an anthology of tanka poetry by Takuboku...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 14, 2015
A tragic story of red tape and fatal ineptitude
At 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2011, a 9-magnitude megathrust earthquake triggered a tsunami that slammed into the aging Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant along the country's northeastern coastline, less than 250 km north of the capital. In the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl, the plant's power systems...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 28, 2015
The origin myth that beat the drums of war
Since the 18th-century — the age of English historian Edward Gibbon — Western theories of history have held that the past consists of causes, effects and events; there are no determining laws or theorems, and no divine purpose. This is the opposite of the view held by the classic Chinese historians,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Feb 21, 2015
The Roads to Sata: A 2000-Mile Walk Through Japan
There are only a handful of travel accounts about modern Japan of truly literary quality. There is Donald Richie's magisterial "The Inland Sea," Angus Waycott's "Sado: Japan's Island in Exile," Will Ferguson's "Hokkaido Highway Blues" and a clutch of other titles, before the genre runs into the sand....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 7, 2015
Taking a critical look at the prison of history
Those who write about history do so at their peril. The difficulties are manifest: how to contribute anything meaningful, to be divergent but remain credible and to research the past without losing sight of the present.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Jan 10, 2015
Between a rock and an art place in Kurashiki's merchant quarters
Timing, as they say, is everything. With a bad habit of turning up to places and appointments too early, I often find myself wandering through train stations and pocket parks, and past the shuttered doorways of shops.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 27, 2014
Mishima: sliced from the shackles of time
Henry Scott Stokes, Yukio Mishima's first biographer, once told me that the thing he most remembered about the writer was his exquisite manners — one of those telling details that lend a touch of authenticity to the work of those who knew Mishima personally. Because biographies are such intensely personal...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 27, 2014
Isolation helps preserve Ishigaki's unique charm
In his 1926 story, "The Man Who Loved Islands," D.H. Lawrence wrote, "Isolate yourself on a little island in the sea of space, and the moment begins to heave and expand in great circles, the solid earth is gone, and your slippery, naked dark soul finds itself out in the timeless world."
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 29, 2014
Mirei Shigemori: at home with stone
Between the years 1924 and 1975, Mirei Shigemori (1896-1975) designed more than 180 gardens in Japan, an extraordinary creative output by any standard.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Nov 16, 2014
A slice less ordinary: the 'cheese guy' of Okinawa
Briton sells cheese-eating culture to Okinawa and a taste of the Ryukyus to the rest of Japan as a retirement hobby morphs into a business.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 1, 2014
Cultivating shrunken worlds in Bonsai-mura
Omiya is one of greater Tokyo's rare pockets of residential comfort that can accurately be defined as middle class — a trait it shares with places such as Chiba's Ichikawa Mama or southwestern Tokyo's Denenchofu district.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Oct 18, 2014
The Great Wave
The phrase oyatoi gaikokujin refers to foreigners hired by the Meiji Era government and various educational institutions to impart their skills to Japanese eager to advance in the modern world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Oct 4, 2014
A Drifting Life
Readers tired with the glut of violence, wonderment and sentimentality that defines manga fantasies centering on characters with extraordinary powers and cute, eroticized females will find the unsparing social realism of Yoshihiro Tatsumi's autobiographical "A Drifting Life" a breath of fresh air.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 20, 2014
Glimpses of Lafcadio Hearn's Matsue
The Matsue-bound train I boarded at Okayama Station was pointedly named Yakumo, a reference to its destination's best-known former resident: Greek-Irish writer Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904), whose adopted Japanese name was Yakumo Koizumi.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Sep 6, 2014
Kanazawa City: the architecture of tea
One of the first things you see as you exit Kanazawa Station is a giant brass sculpture of a teapot sunken drunkenly into a mound of grass or, depending on your interpretation, tilting to fill a cup of the refreshing green brew the city is noted for. That a municipal piece of art should be dedicated...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Aug 30, 2014
Kiun-Kaku: a garden of elegant period taste
Despite the seasonal limitations for visiting, the Atami Baien, a plum garden, is a better-known sight that the Kiun-Kaku garden, which is an all-seasons landscape also found in Atami, Shizuoka Prefecture. Perhaps it is the thirst for scale that has prioritized the plum trees in their large hillside...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

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