The death toll from a blizzard that hit Hokkaido and the Tohoku region over the weekend has risen to nine, local police said Monday. The latest fatality as of Monday was Kuniko Jingi, 76, who was found collapsed under the snow on a road ...
Sleeping in. Breakfast in bed. Sunny brunches. Strolls in the park. Laid-back afternoon tea. Cocktails at sunset. Decadent late nights. Saturday — the word brings to mind a flurry of images associated with the first day of the weekend and the chances are, they ...
For the past year, Tokyo sixth-grader Manami has had dinner at home an average of four times a week. The rest of the time she has had to make do with a juku-ben, a boxed dinner prepared by her mother and consumed between classes ...
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, ...
Cuba overpowers China, winning 12-0 and advancing to the second round of the World Baseball Classic.
If you chanced to visit Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s website in mid-April, you probably saw a note regarding the utility’s tsunami e no taisaku (津波への対策, tsunami policy). Clearly it had been written in more innocent times. Relax, it said in effect. The policy was ...
Slowly the nation wakes from its nightmare. Tokyo Disneyland reopens. A semblance of normality returns, at least to areas outside the stricken zone. It’s April. Catastrophe does not stop the cherry trees from blooming; nor can it dampen a certain charged atmosphere that permeates ...
INTO THE LIGHT: An Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan. Edited by Melissa L. Wender. University of Hawai’i Press, 2011, 226 pp. $22 (paper) The eight stories in this anthology span nearly 60 years, from 1939, when Korea was a resentful and mutinous ...
In spring 1997, the American news magazine Time published a special issue titled “The New Japan.” The subtitle was “A rising generation of risk-takers and rule-breakers is stirring the country from its slumber.” Prominent among the mavericks was a promising young politician named Naoto ...
Something so immense has befallen Japan that it almost defies contemplation, let alone expression. It is a watershed event, shattering lives and the ground they are lived on; challenging also one of the unspoken (and unproven) assumptions underlying civilized life — that konton (混沌, ...
Spring dawns on a shattered Japan. “Not since World War II” is a recurring phrase, and no wonder. Mass destruction accompanied by radiation — what other analogy is big enough? It isn’t perfect, but it does shed some light. Japan then — militarist, statist, ...
There’s a new notion floating around. Perhaps you’ve heard of it: Danshari. Its three kanji characters signify, respectively, refusal, disposal and separation. Prosaically it means cleaning or tidying up, but there are psychological and religious dimensions, deriving in part from yoga, which suggest the ...
Here we go again. “Young people,” frets Sapio magazine, “are rapidly becoming stupid.” They can’t read, can’t calculate, can’t communicate. They have no manners, no ambition, no interest in anything; no consideration for other people, no knowledge of world affairs. New technology enabling instant ...
Pop culture. Japan’s today is thriving, vibrant, spreading, turning people the world over into manga/anime freaks and costume players. It’s a new role for this once introverted, quietly workaholic nation. As recently as the 1980s, “culture” in Japan meant, if not corporate culture, then ...
“Kimi to kekkon shitai (君と結婚したい, I want to marry you). Hontō ni (本当に, really).” The girl grins. “Look at me. I’ve got braces on my teeth.” Peter is disconcerted — not at the braces but at her refusal to ma ni ukeru (真に受ける, take ...
