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 ...
Life and Nihonjin: Dispatches From Japan, by Alex Kahney. Portland Books, 2011, Japan, 290 pp., $16.00 (paperback) Japan’s habit of technological innovation alongside tradition has surfaced in recent literary fads such as the “Densha no Otoko” (Train Man) phenomenon. What started as an urgent ...
Japan’s fusion of the traditional and modern fascinated musician Yara Eddine as a young child when she learned about the country at a school in Canada. Fifteen years later, Eddine witnessed this integration firsthand. Arriving at Narita International Airport alongside the contemporary craziness of ...
The first short story Thersa Matsuura ever wrote in Japan, “Sand Walls, Paper Doors,” introduces the fantastical nonhuman characters of Japanese folklore, from the pillow-swapping trickster to the ghostly children who frolic through human dreams. Inspiration for the story materialized from the traditional ramshackle ...
Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction (Anthology of Japan Teen Stories), edited by Holly Thompson. Stone Bridge Press, 2012, 384 pp. , $14.95. Holly Thompson, a Kanagawa-based novelist, worked alongside other volunteers in the months after the March 11, 2011, tragedy, shoveling tsunami sludge, clearing away ...
Curled up in his German grandfather’s library, the young Charles De Wolf looked up from the pages of Goethe to dream of the cobblestoned streets of Europe. At the age of 15, he left his home in California to live a few years with ...
Julie Fukuda, 75, is a giver — not financially, but physically — who has tirelessly volunteered for various organizations in her community for nearly 50 years in Japan. She also shares her talents. Although she also holds a teacher’s certification in ikebana, Fukuda now ...
HYBRID IDENTITIES AND ADOLESCENT GIRLS: Being ‘Half’ in Japan, by Laurel D. Kamada. Mulilingual Matters, 2010, 268 pp., $49.95 (paper) As the American mother of two Japanese-American “hybrids” (yet another moniker for hafu/double/Japanese-plus-another ethnicity), I had high expectations before reading this book: finally a ...
The late classical composer Teizo Matsumura, American film director Martin Scorsese, and playwright/director Keiko Miyata may seem an unlikely trio, but they share a reverence for “Silence,” the 1966 novel by Shusaku Endo. Matsumura (1929-2007) spent more than 13 years composing an opera based ...
RECREATING JAPANESE MEN, edited by Sabine Fruhstuck and Anne Walthall. University of California Press, 2011. 309 pp., $26.95 (paper) Debate on the how, when and why of mankind’s creation brims over mere academic study. Sabine Fruhstuck and Anne Walthall, professors of Modern Japanese Culture ...
Matt Dening, 44, grew up on sunshine in a small beach town south of Sydney. Like most Australian youths, Dening played “all the regular sports — swimming, cricket, rugby — but not really well.” “I never had one sport I was completely interested in, ...
