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November 22, 2024
 

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Mark Schreiber

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Mark Schreiber
Mark Schreiber worked as a salaryman in travel, consumer electronics, computer software, advertising and market research before turning to translation and writing full time. A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he has lived in Tokyo since 1966.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 4, 2011
No safe haven for modern-day assassins
MAXIMUM TARGET, by Martin Gower. NoirEast Publishing, 2011, 360 pp., $26 (hardcover) THE DETACHMENT, by Barry Eisler. Thomas & Mercer, 2011, 324 pp., $14.95 (paperback) Some time ago, it became clear that thriller fiction set in Asia that featured Caucasian superheroes like James Bond was becoming increasingly...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 4, 2011
Occupy Wall Street resonates within Japan
While Japan's vernacular media has regularly reported on the Occupy Wall Street movement that has swept the United States over the past several months, coverage regarding the movement and its aims has been somewhat bland.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 20, 2011
Is Aum's guru finally headed for the gallows?
Tomorrow, Nov. 21, the Supreme Court is expected to hand down its ruling on the appeal filed by Seiichi Endo, a former member of the Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) cult. Endo, now 51, was sentenced to death in 2002 (upheld in 2007) for his role in the nerve gas attacks in Matsumoto City in June 1994 and...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 6, 2011
Penny-pinching on pensions threatens to raid retirees' nest eggs
Much of the global media's attention this week was turned toward the possibility of Greece's default. Its direct effect on Japan is difficult to foresee. On the one hand, the approximately ¥1 trillion in national bonds Japan holds from the fiscally ailing countries that are referred to collectively...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 30, 2011
Less acclaim, more fun for Japan's Ig Nobel Prize winners
Since Hideki Yukawa in 1949, a total of 16 Japanese nationals have been named recipients of Nobel Prizes. In 2010, when the most recent Japanese winners were announced to receive prizes for chemistry, NHK interrupted its scheduled programming with a nyuusu sokuho (breaking news) announcement.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Oct 10, 2011
Harnessing intuition to boost kanji comprehension
Many years ago, the manager at a hotel where I was staying in Taiwan informed me that his boss was ailing due to diabetes.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 2, 2011
Bikes keep the wheels of progress rolling
With the onslaught of super typhoon No. 15 on Sept. 21-22, for the second time in a little over six months Tokyo's public transport network was snarled by a natural disaster. Several hundreds of thousands of hapless commuters found themselves stranded for hours as kitaku nanmin ("refugees" unable to...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 25, 2011
Japan's noisy neighbors keep-a knocking
Sanshoku, the word for "encroachment" in Japanese, is written with characters meaning "silkworm" and "to eat." Imagine a mulberry leaf, being slowly consumed from the outer edges, nibble by nibble, by writhing white worms. Then overlay this leaf on a map of the Japanese archipelago, and look at the spots...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 11, 2011
Print ad featuring MacArthur sends muddled message
On Sept. 2, a controversial newspaper advertisement placed by Takarajima-sha, a mid-tier publisher, went viral on Japanese blogs and Web news sites.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 11, 2011
The Russians are coming!
SATORI, by Don Winslow. Grand Central Publishing, 2011, 548 pp., $7.99 (paper) 9 GOLD BULLETS, by Christopher G. Moore. Heaven Lake Press, 2011, 365 pp., $14.95 (paper) Readers of mystery and thriller fiction can be extremely loyal and publishers, knowing this, sometimes arrange to bring fictional characters...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 28, 2011
Rising yen, falling prices, cheap beer
Beginning last Wednesday, Aug. 24, the Ito Yokado supermarket chain announced a five-day sale at 120 of its branches in the greater Tokyo area. Among the reduced-price items were U.S. beef, Australian oranges and South African pineapples.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 14, 2011
A heady witches' brew of midsummer nightmares
Aside from the Summer High School Baseball Tournament at Koshien Stadium and NHK documentaries reminiscing about World War II, mid-August tends to be a quiet time and most of Japan's weekly magazines skip an issue.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 8, 2011
Goro-awase system spins off numbers you won't forget
One boast you'll never hear from me is that I have a good head for numbers. I'm all right up to two figures beyond a decimal point — I know that 3.14 approximates to the 円周率 (enshūritsu, Pi, i.e., the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter) and likewise 2.54 cm is approximately one...
CULTURE / Books
Aug 7, 2011
Chilling Japanese tales just the thing for broiling August
KAIKI: Uncanny Tales from Japan, Volume 2: Country Delights. Kurodahan Press, 2010, 286 pp., $16 (paper) Kaiki, according to my Japanese-English dictionary, means "grotesque; bizarre; mysterious; strange." And since August is the traditional time in Japan for telling hair-raising tales, this anthology...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 31, 2011
Rail rivalry outcome hinges on speed vs. safety
Following the July 23 collision of two high-speed trains in Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province — blamed on faulty signaling equipment — that killed at least 39 passengers and injured over 200, Japan's media, to their credit, suppressed any obvious overtones of shadenfreude. But in the weeks before the...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 10, 2011
Media were quick off the mark with March 11 disaster publications
Within a couple of weeks of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, major magazine publishers and newspapers were already putting out extra editions covering the disaster. The first were mostly A4-size on glossy paper, which made them easy to display in the magazine racks at convenience stores and bookshops....
CULTURE / Books
Jul 3, 2011
Great Asian thrillers to get you through the summer
LARRY BOND'S RED DRAGON RISING: Edge of War, by Larry Bond and Jim DeFelice. Forge, 2010, 380 pp., $25 (hardcover) Future war fiction is mostly fantasy, and fortunately such stories seldom come true. But some do. One example was a book titled "Banzai!" Published in 1908 by Parabellum (nom de plume of...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 26, 2011
Eastern Japan edgy as power demand soars
Back in the early 1970s, electronic signposts in Tokyo and other major cities used to display levels of carbon dioxide and other air pollutants along with the temperature.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 20, 2011
Let one character lead to enlightenment and civilization
Many of Japan's admired historic figures were adulated for being "warrior scholars," since they were equally adept at leading armies and composing poems. This ideal is referred to as 文武両道 (bunbu ryodō). Bun refers to writing and by extension the literary arts. Bu relates to martial or military...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 12, 2011
Eccentric wanderer discovers his destiny in Meiji Japan
"Japan," asserts the fictitious character Lafcadio Hearn on page 97, "has chaos at its core. The closer one approaches that core, the deeper one fathoms the world of illusion and warped contradiction. Such a country is begging for citizens such as Yakumo Koizumi, that is, me."
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.
Tokyo Metro’s overseas efforts begin in earnest with London deal
Tokyo Metro will soon have a role in the running of London's Elizabeth Line, a major train route serving the U.K.’s capital city and environs.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ex-yokozuna Kitanofuji dies at 82
Yokozuna Kitanofuji enters the ring during the May 1970 grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.
Man charged with murder allegedly made victim date other men for money
A car carrying suspect Ryotaro Masuda, who was indicted for allegedly beating his 25-year-old girlfriend to death, leaves the Shibuya Police Station in Tokyo on Thursday.
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.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
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.

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.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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