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November 22, 2024
 

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Roger Pulvers

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Roger Pulvers
Roger Pulvers is an author, playwright, theater director and translator who divides his time between Tokyo and Sydney. He has published more than 40 books. His latest book in English is "The Dream of Lafcadio Hearn."
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Oct 1, 2006
Age-old 'naked friendships' lay bare new bathhouse concerns
I do it about three times a week, but I tell you I would double that frequency if I could. It is surely one of life's great pleasures, and it takes on average (for me) 45 to 50 minutes. Some people smoke afterward, but I just like to cool down and think about things -- you know, life, the human body,...
LIFE / Language
Sep 26, 2006
Be warned: we're talking rather rude Japanese
In a society like Japan's, where civility in public requires a high degree of decorous formality, crude language rarely rears its ugly head.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 24, 2006
Japan's hordes of hoarders still look to their navel nest eggs
I have spent nearly 40 years writing about Japan, virtually all of the time trying to show how Japanese people are really no different from other nationalities. But, by God, there is one aspect of Japanese life that makes this country unique. I defy any reader to name a society that has a custom like...
LIFE / Language
Sep 19, 2006
Rougher language behind face-value meanings
First of a two part series
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 17, 2006
Self-censorship conjures ominous echoes of the past
These days a simple but potent Japanese word is appearing in the media with inordinate frequency. It is hannichi, which means "anti-Japanese." An incident last month brought to mind an earlier era, when the word hannichi was also in common currency. Some words skip decades, returning to haunt the national...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 10, 2006
War's heroes and villains: Two sides of the same coin
For two days, on Aug. 18 and 19, 1966, Australian soldiers fought a battle at the village of Long Tan in South Vietnam. Though vastly outnumbered, they held their ground. Subsequently, they were given medals for bravery by the then-government of South Vietnam; and in May 1968, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Sep 3, 2006
Toeing the line may take a name-change for the LDP
It's September, and Japan is in the grips of selection fever. This month Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi steps down, and the ever-ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will choose a new president. To all intents and purposes, due to the party's parliamentary dominance, selection of an LDP leader is...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 27, 2006
An underclass returns -- and with it, what?
All indications are that Japan is reverting to prewar norms. I am not referring solely to the new nationalism, bolstered by Japan's increasingly aggressive military stances, but rather to the notion of social equality -- or inequality -- that is being created for its citizens today.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 20, 2006
A nation of animal lovers -- as pets or when they're on a plate
The Japanese consider themselves a compassionate people when it comes to an animal's fate. Memorial stones have been erected in whaling villages since the early Edo Period (1603-1867), as they are today at slaughterhouses. Buddhist priests are hired to read the sutras before altars set with incense and...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 13, 2006
Shouldn't talking, not killing, be 'the name of the game'?
'Military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. . . . The target is a purely military one."
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Aug 6, 2006
Many happy returns to my Tokyo village past and present
As readers of this column last week may recall, I wrote there about a period in the early 1980s when my wife and I lived in the western Tokyo suburb of Soshigaya in Setagaya Ward. Three of our four children were born in the local hospital, and we have only the fondest memories of the old neighborhood....
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 30, 2006
Time-capsule Tokyo along a street where I lived
In the early 1980s, my wife and I lived in a tiny flat in Soshigaya on the Odakyu Line in Tokyo's Setagaya Ward. The eldest three of our four children were born then, and I have only the fondest memories of pushing a pram up and down the kilometer-long shotengai (shopping street) between the station...
LIFE / Language
Jul 25, 2006
When muzukashii means more than 'difficult'
I wish I had a share of Google stock for every time I have heard a Japanese person tell me that their language is "aimai na gengo (an ambiguous language)." How did this bizarre notion originate, and why do many Japanese entertain it? And what's more, can a language itself be ambiguous, apart from the...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 23, 2006
Dark chronicler of a dubious Jewish uniqueness
Who are the Jews? What do Jewish writers have in common with each other? What, strictly speaking, is a "Jewish" writer . . . and, for that matter, what is meant by "strictly speaking"?
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 16, 2006
Fractured families bode ill for Japan's gray army
The late actor Kiyoshi Atsumi, who played Tora-san in all of the movies with that title, was a compassionate man of the old Japanese school.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 9, 2006
Home from home from home
Three days ago marked an anniversary of my own personal day of independence. Thirty years ago, on July 6, 1976, I became an Australian citizen and legally forfeited my U.S. citizenship.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 2, 2006
Hedge your bets: Conform, but don't act like you belong
'The barriers of racial feeling [between Japanese and foreigners], of emotional differentiation, or language, of manners and beliefs, are likely to remain insurmountable for centuries."
LIFE / Language
Jun 27, 2006
Colorful proverbs capture a peculiar sensibility
Every language has a vast number of proverbs, mottos and saws, and native speakers often quote them to express a feeling or to prove a point. The fact is that you can "prove" almost anything with a colorful turn of phrase as practically every proverb has an equal and opposite proverb.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 25, 2006
What's in it for them to return us to 'prewar values'?
The leaders of many countries evoke their nation's history as if it were an idyll of virtue and civility. They gaze into the mirror of the past and see no dark blemish, only purity, goodness and light.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 18, 2006
To whom it may concern:
Something exceedingly tragic is occurring in Japan today, something it falls to me to reveal now on these pages. It is, simply, that the Japanese people are becoming invisible before our very eyes. At the present rate, by my rough estimate, not one single identifiable Japanese individual will be living...
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.

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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