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Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Feb 28, 2017

A feeling of dread descends on Baltics again

The people of Estonia and the other Baltic states fear being consigned to Russia's sphere of influence yet again.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 18, 2017

'Homecomings: The Belated Return of Japan's Lost Soldiers': Portraits of lives transformed by war

It's staggering to think that, at the end of the Pacific War, almost 7 million Japanese servicemen and civilians were awaiting repatriation in various parts of Asia.
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Jan 21, 2017

Japanese folklore meets anime in Kyoto

The colors were jarring. Beneath the vermillion torii gates of Kyoto's Shimogamo Shrine and surrounded by the olive broadleaves of Tadasu Forest was a pool of furry, bright yellow ponchos, decorated with the brown facial features, rounded ears and bulbous oblong tails of the tanuki, or Japanese raccoon...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 2, 2017

Japanese is affecting the English lexicon in new ways

From 'emoji' to 'KonMari,' the English langauge is getting a pleasant dose of Japanese culture.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 31, 2016

If you're so intelligent, why aren't you rich?

The latest research suggests IQ is only a minor factor in a person's success, or lack thereof.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 10, 2016

Defining J-horror: The terror of deep time

The horror genre is not typically thought of as a "slow" genre. In fact, horror films today often feel like stimulus-response tests where shocking events happen suddenly and without warning. However, Japanese horror directors take up another tradition, one where events unfold gradually. A case point...
Japan Times
WORLD
Oct 13, 2016

Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize for literature

Celebrated U.S. songwriter Bob Dylan was named winner of the Nobel Prize in literature on Thursday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 24, 2016

Is this the first great Tokyo novel by a non-Japanese writer?

Non-Japanese have written great books about Japan. Almost all of these masterpieces are nonfiction: essays, memoirs, monographs, histories, travel books. One might place, for example, Alan Booth's "The Roads to Sata," Donald Richie's "Ozu," Edward Seidensticker's "Genji Days," and Nicolas Bouvier's "The...
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Jun 18, 2016

Drawing on the past of Osamu Tezuka

In 1977, American author and translator Frederik L. Schodt and three friends formed a manga-translation group in Tokyo, with the then-quixotic dream of introducing Japanese comics to a global readership. Schodt had arrived in Japan in 1965, courtesy of a father in the United States Foreign Service. He...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 18, 2016

Why are Japanese women still bewitched by the Brontes?

Some years ago a sassy Osaka lady asked me to introduce her to the pleasures of Western literature. I duly handed her a variety of classic books, including "The Turn of the Screw," "Heart of Darkness," "Lolita" and "A Study in Scarlet." They were all methodically if unenthusiastically read, but when...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Apr 6, 2016

'No One's Perfect' writer Ototake couldn't live up to the 'Supercrip' media ideal

Hirotada Otatake's 'inappropriate relationships' are indefensible. But even more disappointing was the way the media presented Ototake and the story.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 26, 2016

Black Illumination: the disqualified life of Osamu Dazai

The author Osamu Dazai committed suicide — several times. The first was on a cold December night in 1929, just before his school exams. But the overdose of sleeping pills he took was not enough; he survived, and graduated. The second was in October, 1930, on the barren sands of a beach in Kamakura...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 30, 2016

Black illumination: the unhuman world of Junji Ito

We've all had sleepless nights. You toss and turn, get up and go back to bed, trying to ward off the claustrophobia of wakefulness. But what about the reverse? What if the problem is not that you can't go to sleep, but that you can't wake up? Gradually, the time you spend dreaming outstrips the time...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 12, 2015

Geling Yan draws from life in a tale 
of women in war

At the opening of Chinese-American author Geling Yan's best-selling novel "Little Aunt Crane," a 16-year-old girl by the name of Tatsuru, or "Crane," escapes a mass suicide that Japanese elders in a Manchurian village order to preserve their honor. The young girl's problems, however, have only just begun....
EDITORIALS
Dec 9, 2015

Misguided indictment by Seoul

South Korea's indictment of a professor with nonconformist views on the 'comfort women' issue is a wrongheaded and dangerous encroachment on academic freedom.
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Dec 6, 2015

Beware Japan's old problems posing in new packaging

When government announcements describe 'new' problems and propose solutions, they should be taken with a side-order of salt.
CULTURE
Nov 21, 2015

Yukio Mishima's enduring, unexpected influence

Forty-five years ago this week — at just after 10 a.m. on the bright, cold morning of Nov. 25, 1970 — a telephone rang at the Tokyo home of popular enka singer Hideo Murata. On the line was author Yukio Mishima, a man who in the short space of his 45 years had lived life more fully than perhaps seemed...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Oct 24, 2015

Grave company at Zoshigaya Cemetery

When persimmon leaves and the tips of maples take on color, and chilly air rattles windows, composer Yoshinao Nakada's haunting song "Chiisai Aki Mitsuketa" ("A Bit of Autumn Found") floats through my mind. Having just learned that the song's lyricist, talented poet Hachiro Sato (1903-74), rests in Zoshigaya...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 24, 2015

Natsume Soseki goes back to hell in 'The Miner'

Natsume Soseki's 1908 novel "The Miner" has often been regarded as an oddity. It stands aloof both in subject matter and style from the two great "trilogies" Soseki penned between 1908 and 1914.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Sep 1, 2015

Norwegian television taps into fear of Russia

Norway's new TV series called 'Occupied' taps into Norwegians' wariness of Russia and their uneasiness about being the EU's gas station.
LIFE / Language / COMMUNICATION CUES
Jul 13, 2015

'One Piece' sets Guinness record for manga

The popular manga series 'One Piece' was officially recognized by Guinness World Records on Monday as the comic book series with the most copies published by a single author.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jul 11, 2015

Modernity and magical realism in rural Japan

Tokyo may still be thriving, but in Japan's rural hinterlands, the country has already plunged into a state of advanced senescence. At the start of Kazuki Sakuraba's "Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas," the book's narrator surveys her hometown and struggles to reconcile the stories of its prosperous...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 9, 2015

The 'dwarf' architect of Japan's literary boom

With a chuckle, translator and literary critic Motoyuki Shibata recalls the way author Steven Millhauser once described him.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 2, 2015

Dramatist brings citizens of all ages together

Public theaters across the country are holding significantly more community productions and workshops aimed at local residents who are looking to get involved in performance art.
COMMENTARY / World
Mar 12, 2015

Russia's social order today

In today's Russia, traditional forms of employment with stable wages and a more or less transparent system of social security have given way to shadow-market-style labor relations with badly documented part-time jobs and nontransparent methods of remuneration.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 15, 2014

Holiday gifts they'll cherish from cover to cover

As the holiday season rolls around, it's time to dash about in a mad panic in search of gifts that say "I've given this one some thought, honest." Or you can just let us do the thinking for you, with gift suggestions from our regular book reviewers — tailor-made for the Japanophile reader.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 8, 2014

Finding Murakami in his own weird worlds

Consider this hypothetical conundrum: Haruki Murakami is (finally) awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, but what does the author have to say for himself on Japanese television?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 1, 2014

Malice

"The incident took place on April 16, 1996, a Tuesday." This meditative, clever novel from the author of 2011's "The Devotion of Suspect X" begins with a journal entry by Osamu Nonoguchi, a children's author who happens upon the body of his friend and fellow writer, Kunihiko Hidaka, facedown in his office....
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Aug 22, 2014

Haruki Murakami's Cool Japan

I was in New York last week to host a launch event for the English translation of Haruki Murakami's latest novel, "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage." My good friend and Murakami translator Ted Goossen, professor at York University in Toronto, joined me, as did pianist Eunbi Kim, whose...
JAPAN / Science & Health
Aug 6, 2014

Reform panel chief says STAP researcher's suicide could have been prevented

Yoshiki Sasai's suicide could have been avoided if the Riken institute had implemented reforms and accepted his resignation months ago, the former head of an independent panel says.

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.