Slow Life Japan is a sort of movement, or rather an antimovement, that sprouted here and there in the 1990s, little islands of quietude amid the ultra-fast life that had come to seem as unquestionable as modernity itself. Production, consumption, growth, activity, exhaustion — ...

The fat, ungainly kensatsukan (検察官, prosecutor) rises and, without speaking, niramu (にらむ, glares at) the hikokunin (被告人, defendant). For a fleeting instant the chinmoku (沈黙, silence) in the hōtei (法廷, courtroom) is so deep that when Reiko Keyes, one of the six saibanin (裁判員, ...

A series of articles in the Aug. 1 edition of The Big Issue Japan, a biweekly magazine sold by homeless people, is addressed “to adults who have never known war.” Few major powers, past or present, can equal Japan in that regard. Sixty-five years ...

You just what, Peter? You just what?” This is a seiten no hekireki (青天の霹靂, bolt out of the blue). After all the persuading, all the planning, here he is with an ododo shita hohoemi (おどおどした微笑, sheepish smile) telling me he doesn’t want to Amerika ...

Why isn’t this Utopia? Why, given material and technological advantages beyond the wildest dreams of our most visionary ancestors, are we floundering in a sea of despair? Well, let’s call it “depression.” The weekly magazine Shukan Toyo Keizai (July 24) devotes no fewer than ...

So I’m to be a kyōju (教授, professor) again. Imagine that. Am I doing the right thing? Where’s my jisonshin (自尊心, pride)? Shouldn’t I have keibetsu shita 軽蔑した, spat in their faces) when they asked me back, or told them I was busy? I ...

“Loopy,” “hapless,” “embarrassing” — such is the world’s, and Japan’s, verdict on the short unhappy prime ministership of Yukio Hatoyama. In retrospect, this 21st-century Japanese Don Quixote seems to have been doomed to failure from the start. What he attempted was honorable, but impossible. ...

“My next shōnin (証人, witness),” intones the corpulent kensatsukan (検察官, prosecutor), “is Mr. Toshi Saito. Mazu (まず, first of all), please tell the court, Mr. Saito, what your kankei (関係, relationship) was with the hikokunin (被告人, defendant), Yasuo Yamazaki.” “He was my friend.” Reiko ...

Childhood. We all know it, we’ve all been through it, we’ve all lost it. Memory retains traces of it. We recall facts, incidents, fragments — but not what it felt like to be a child. Childish feelings are nameable to the adult, but not ...

“Daddy, when I grow up I wanna be a kyabajō (キャバ嬢, nightclub hostess)!” “A what?” I must be hearing things. Is this my brilliant 10-year-old daughter talking? Last week she wanted to be a genshibutsurigakusha (原子物理学者, nuclear physicist); the week before that, a Shakespearean ...

“Kiritsu! (起立! All rise!)” cries the court clerk. The judges — three saibankan (裁判官, professional judges) and six saibanin (裁判員, lay judges), Reiko Keyes among them — take their places. Reiko is surprised at how full the courtroom is. It’s manseki (満席, a full ...

There are about 80,000 torii-gated Shinto shrines in Japan, many of them unassuming little roadside structures at which, from time to time, you might see a passerby pause, briefly join his or her hands in prayer and move on, enriched and refreshed in ways ...