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The head of an official inquiry into the deadly collapse of a Bangladesh factory complex said the building’s owner was the “main culprit” for the disaster because he violated construction codes. The cave-in of the eight-story Rana Plaza outside the capital last month killed ...
Throughout most of Japan, June is the rainy season. While all that rainfall is great for rice paddies so that we can have delicious new harvest rice in the fall, it makes it a rather dull month for seasonal produce: The summer’s bounty of ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Claude Regy says the team at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) threw him the “best birthday party ever” when he arrived in Japan just days after the actual May 1 occasion. The 90-year-old French director is hoping for an even better birthday gift, ...
As far as debuts go, Shohei Otani's delivered. The celebrated rookie pitched fairly well on Thursday night, and though he finished outside the decision, he left the mound with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters well within striking distance of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows.
“For 20 years I labored in the mission. The one thing I know is that our religion does not take root in this country.” The speaker is a tragic figure. In 1632 the Portuguese Jesuit Christovao Ferreira, after 6 hours of torture in the ...
“It is 12:30 p.m. in Nagasaki, on March 17, 1865. Father Bernard Petitjean, a priest of the French Societe des Missions Etrangeres, hears a noise at the back door of his little chapel. On opening he is surprised to find a group of 15 ...
Some scholars say Japan’s Christian history began long before the so-called “Christian century” (1549-c.1640). Their claim takes us all the way back to 7th- and 8th-century Nara, where Nestorian Christians from Persia are said to have built churches, operated a leper hospital and even ...
Second of two parts In this concluding segment (Part I appeared last week), Lynne E. Riggs, translator of Shishi Bunroku’s novel of postwar Tokyo, “Jiyu Gakko” (1951; English version, “School of Freedom,” 2006), discusses the process of translation. Let’s look at the book’s opening. ...
Shishi Bunroku (the pen name of Iwata Toyoo) is a writer who deserves to be better known. His novel “Jiyu Gakko (School of Freedom)” was a best seller when it first appeared in 1951, and gives as vivid a picture as we’re likely to ...
It’s a strange world we’re about to enter. If I were the organizing type I would set up a “Heian Society.” In flowing robes and court caps, we would compose pun-laden poems simultaneously lamenting and celebrating the transience of life and beauty. Wine would ...
The fascination of the Heian Period (794-1185) lies in the fact that in all world history there is nothing quite like it. It would be hard to imagine a culture more exclusive, more fastidiously refined, more smugly incurious about the unknown, more unwarlike, more ...
Michael Hoffman delves deep into the carnal history of these islands from the Age of the Gods to the lovelands and soaplands of today In the beginning, there was sex. This is true of Japan, though not of Judaeo-Christian and Islamic cultures, whose one ...
Insight, fate and human frailties intermingle in this love story for winter from the pen of MICHAEL HOFFMAN You’d probably recognize me if you saw me. I’m on TV a lot; a fortuneteller is a good draw, and talkshow hosts are always happy to ...
One of the great pleasures of life in a country not your own is savoring its literature in the original language. The first Japanese people I ever knew were characters in novels, who all (very kindly) spoke to me in my language, since I ...
This story is part of a package on Confucius. The introduction is here. “The Analects” and other Confucian texts were brought to Japan by the Korean envoy and scholar Wani in the fourth or fifth century A.D., some 800 years after Confucius’ death. Buddhist ...
Is what Confucius said true? Can music, poetry and decorum govern the world? Do rulers, by cultivating benevolence in themselves, plant benevolence in their subjects, and harmony in the polity? The chaos of our time hardly invites us to take such notions seriously. But ...