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 ...
Bookstore shelves all over Tokyo are stacked with shiawase hautsū bon (幸せハウツー本, how-to-be-happy books), which, surprisingly perhaps, outnumber the dire-prediction books that spin tales about what’s ailing the global economy and how Japan will chinbotsu (沈没, sink) in five years or less. Apparently, shiawase ...
History often repeats itself in the most interesting ways. In 1945, principal members of the Japanese government signed an agreement for total surrender of the country’s armed forces to the United States atop the famed USS Missouri battleship, also known as the “Mighty Mo.” ...
Having an iconic Hollywood filmmaker for a dad isn’t always a cool thing. The dad in question: Michael Mann, the guy who brought us such notable gangster tales as “Public Enemies,” produced the gritty, testosterone-infused “Heat” and has more than a dozen blockbusters to ...
Decency is often much harder to swing than heroism or conventional success. And to keep plugging away at it without recognition or reward is not just awe-inspiring but truly humbling. “Oranges and Sunshine” highlights such an act of decency. Directed by Jim Loach, it ...
The Help” could be a lot more thorny than it is, but as a tale of bigotry and racial prejudice set in Jackson, Mississippi, in the early 1960s, its contours are surprisingly smooth. It doesn’t have the high rage factor of, say, 1988′s “Mississippi ...
“Globalization” has come to have several different connotations, and among them, I would like to suggest that it include a new trendy tendency for art-house European filmmakers to make Hollywood movies, and vice-versa. The mashup of styles and techniques has been noticeable a lot ...
In 1990, Ian (my brother’s friend from Sheffield, England) came over to the house and showed us a fax that had been sent by his family. There was only one sentence, and it said: “You can come home now, she’s gone.” And that was ...
Did somebody use the word “bland” in describing the Japanese male temperament? Wrong. Misinformed. Arienāi! (ありえなーい, not possible!) Okay, maybe my countrymen are bland in some areas best not mentioned in polite conversation. But let me set the record straight: the Japanese male is ...
Where will you be on March 11? A year after the day that altered life in Japan as we knew it, Fuji Television Network is launching a project in collaboration with Scott Free Productions — the British film production company run by “Alien”/”Blade Runner” ...
If Arthur Conan Doyle were around today, would he have a blog? I’m willing to bet yes, and that it would boast record-breaking numbers of visits, especially from the gay community. The world of Sherlock Holmes feeds on repressed sexuality and elegant homosexual aesthetics ...
