Transport authorities launched a full-fledged investigation Sunday into the derailment of a bullet train on the Akita Shinkansen Line in Daisen, Akita Prefecture, on Saturday afternoon.
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
SHUNGA: Erotic Art in Japan, by Rosina Buckland, British Museum Press, 2010, 175 pp., ￡19.99 (hardcover) SECRET IMAGES: Picasso and the Japanese Erotic Print, Hayakawa Monta et al., Museu Picasso, Thames & Hudson, 2010, 168 pp., ￡25.00 (hardcover) The word shunga (“spring picture”), used ...
IWANA, by Kurahara Shinjiro, translated by William I. Elliott & Nishihara Katsumasa. Dowaya, 2010, 131 pp., ¥2,100 (hardcover) There is a persistent hum of activity among small-press publications in Japan, much of it concerned with poetry and a good deal of it translation. The ...
TRESPASSES: Selected Writings, by Masao Miyoshi. Duke University Press, 2010, 344 pp., $26.95 (paper) “Trespasses” may be a puzzling term (if you grew up with the Lord’s Prayer), but in a foreword to this selection of writings by Masao Miyoshi (1928-2009), Frederic Jameson speaks ...
EVERYTHING IS BROKEN: The Untold Story of Disaster Under Burma’s Military Regime, by Emma Larkin. Granta, 2010, 265 pp., £12.99 (paper) Tropical storms are given names by meteorological offices around the world. In English we generally prefer to be anthropomorphic, using male and female ...
WHO IS MR SATOSHI?, by Jonathan Lee. William Heinemann, 2010, 295 pp., £12.99 (hardcover) Rob Fossick, a 41-year-old photographer, is drinking a glass of butterscotch schnapps when he witnesses the death of his mother in a retirement home, and is then left to sort ...
FOREST OF EYES: Selected Poems of Tada Chimako. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Jeffrey Angles. University of California Press, 2010, 164 pp., $19.95 (paper) These are the lines from which the title of this poetry collection comes: The town is nothing but ...
ROAD OF BONES: The Siege of Kohima 1944, by Fergal Keane. HarperPress, 576 pp., £25 (hardcover) Like the ancient Greeks who were outnumbered by Persian hordes at the battle of Thermopylae, a motley gathering of British and Indian troops was almost overpowered at Kohima, ...
ROAD OF BONES: The Siege of Kohima 1944, by Fergal Keane. HarperPress, 2010, 548 pp., £25 (hardcover) The prologue to this stupendous book opens in Yamagata, where a Japanese general from World War II is struggling to atone for the deaths of soldiers who ...
A DIFFERENT SKY, by Meira Chand. Harvill Secker, 2010, 488 pp., £12.99 (paper) Of Indian and Swiss parentage, Meira Chand grew up in England and began to publish novels while living in Japan. This is her eighth full-length work of fiction, and of those, ...
FOR US SURRENDER IS OUT OF THE QUESTION: A Story from Burma’s Never-Ending War, by Mac McClelland. Soft Skull Press, 2010, 388 pages, $15.95 (paper) This is an impassioned book, the story of an insurgency in Burma drawn from interviews with those who experienced ...
