AP A car bomb exploded outside a mosque Sunday, killing at least 37 people and wounding another 141 in a mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhood in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi — the third mass-casualty attack on the minority sect in the country this ...
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 ...
Richard Lloyd Parry spoke about his new book, “People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman,” with Jeff Kingston. The following draws on this interview and his book. Lucie Blackman, 21, arrived in Japan in early May 2000 and vanished two months later. ...
THE DRAGON’S TAIL: Americans Face the Atomic Age, by Robert A. Jacobs. University of Massachusetts Press, 2010, 151 pp., $24.95 (paper) FILLING THE HOLE IN THE NUCLEAR FUTURE: Art and Popular Culture Respond to the Bomb. Edited by Robert A. Jacobs. Lexington Books, 2010, ...
CONTEMPORARY JAPAN. Journal of the German Institute for Japanese Studies Tokyo. Mind the Gap: Stratification and Social Inequalities in Japan. Editor Florian Coulmas. Volume 22. Number 1/2. De Gruyter, 2010, 221 pp., (hardcover) The launch of this journal is cause for celebration by anyone ...
ASIA’S FLYING GEESE: How Regionalization Shapes Japan, by Walter Hatch. Cornell University Press, 2010, 304 pp., $24.95 (hardcover) As we slog into the third decade of the Lost Decade, the enigma of Japan is why, given dire developments, change and reform happen so slowly, ...
MAP OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD, by Tash Aw. Spiegel and Grau, 336 pp. $15 (paper) This mesmerizing novel is set in Indonesia just before the coup and massacres of 1965 where the pain, love and hopes of an intriguing cast of characters are evoked ...
IMPERIAL JAPAN AT ITS ZENITH: The Wartime Celebration of the Empire’s 2,600th Anniversary, by Kenneth J. Ruoff. Cornell University Press, 2010, 272 pp., $39.95 (hardcover) In 1940, amid war in China and growing tensions with the United States, Japan celebrated the 26th centennial of ...
Ubud, an enchanting town in tropical Bali’s undulating hills, has arrived with panache on the global literary scene. Judging from this year’s splendid 2010 Writers & Readers Festival, it would be worth blocking out Oct. 5-9, 2011 for some top-class literary tourism. The 2011 ...
MAO’S GREAT FAMINE: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62, by Frank Dikotter. Bloomsbury, 2010, 420 pp., £25. (paper) There are many books on the Great Leap Forward (GLF) that detail the horrific suffering inflicted on the Chinese people, and the instigating role ...
WHERE IS THE JUSTICE? Media Attacks, Prosecutorial Abuse, and My 13 Years in Japanese Court, by Hiromasa Ezoe. Kodansha International, 2010, 339 pp., ¥2,600. (Hardcover) The Recruit scandal dominated the media in the late 1980s and has become a notorious symbol of money politics ...
THE NEW PARADOX FOR JAPANESE WOMEN: Greater Choice, Greater Inequality, by Toshiaki Tachibanaki. Translated by Mary Foster, I-House Press, 2010, 290 pp., ¥2,858. As we enter the third decade of the “lost decade,” there is much to despair about the state of Japan. There ...
