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 ...
NEW CHRONICLES OF YANAGIBASHI AND DIARY OF A JOURNEY TO THE WEST, by Ryuhoku Narushima. Translated and with a critical introduction and afterword by Matthew Fraleigh. Cornell University East Asia Program, 2010, 392 pp., $49 (paper) The most interesting thing about Ryuhoku Narushima (1837-1884), ...
THE 1918 SHIKOKU PILGRIMAGE OF TAKAMURE ITSUE: An English Translation of Musume Junreiki, by Itsue Takamure. Translated by Susan Tennant. Bowen Publishing, 268 pp., $16.95 (paper) Itsue Takamure, born in 1894, grew up to become a remarkable woman: a pioneering feminist scholar — one ...
THE FORGOTTEN JAPANESE: Encounters with Rural Life and Folklore, by Miyamoto Tsuneichi. Translated by Jeffrey S. Irish. In making available this account of Japanese who are forgotten, by an author who, in English, is unknown, translator Jeffrey Irish has done us a tremendous service. ...
THE MANGA BIOGRAPHY OF KENJI MIYAZAWA, Author of Night of the Milky Way Railway, by Ko Yano. Translated by Michael Brase. Japan & Stuff Press, 2010, 141 pp., $13 (paper). The surprising thing about Ko Yano’s biography of Kenji Miyazawa is not that he’s ...
BLACK JACK, Volume 11, by Osamu Tezuka. Vertical, 2010, 306 pp., $16.95 (paper). It is probably not excessive to say that every Japanese male between the ages of 15 and 40 knows Black Jack, the outlaw surgeon who features in the series of comics ...
THE CHANGELING, by Kenzaburo Oe. Translated by Deborah Boliver Boehm. Grove, 468 pp., $24 (cloth) When Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in literature, chose to become a writer rather than a teacher or literary scholar, his mentor at Tokyo University told ...
JAPANESE SCHOOLGIRL CONFIDENTIAL: How Teenage Girls Made a Nation Cool, by Brian Ashcraft with Shoko Ueda. Kodansha International, 192 pp., $16.95 (paper) Don’t be put off by the overly busy — and, yes, overly kawaii — cover of “Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential.” It may not ...
BLACK BLIZZARD, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Translated by Akemi Wegmuller. Edited, designed and lettered by Adrian Tomine. Drawn & Quarterly, 131 pp., $19.95 (paper) Yoshihiro Tatsumi was, when young, a fan of Mickey Spillane, the poor man’s — the very poor man’s — Raymond Chandler, ...
THE FORGOTTEN JAPANESE: Encounters With Rural Life and Folklore, by Miyamoto Tsuneichi. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2010, 315 pp., $29.95 (hardcover) Great men will, often thanks to their depredations, force themselves on our attention. The fishermen, farmers, hunters, wanderers, carpenters and others about whom ...
TOKYO MEGACITY, by Donald Richie. Photography by Ben Simmons. Tuttle, 2010, 176 pp., ¥3,300 (hardcover) It is likely that as many people will appreciate Donald Richie’s “Tokyo Megacity” as a tasteful addition to their living room decor as will open it, and that most ...
