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 ...
It is often a struggle to cast an objective reviewer’s eye over Tokyo collections, because fans of the microcosm that is Japanese fashion fall into two distinctly different camps: lovers of over-the-top quirkiness and … regular consumers. For the former, start with “forest girl” ...
Tokyo’s MBFW festivities It’s mid-Mercedes Benz Fashion Week Tokyo (MBFW Tokyo) and there’s still an array of snazzy events to carry you through to the end while keeping you fashionable. So roll up your best, pressed sleeves and read on. The first event you ...
Going from red to blue If “Harajuku style” means gaggles of gothic-lolitas and 1970s-style punks to you, then it’s time to catch up. It’s now the era of ao-moji, literally “blue-letter.” Ao-moji is a riff on aka-moji or “red-letter” publications, Japanese fashion magazines such ...
Going Gaga for design In the last few weeks, Lady Gaga used her celebrity influence to bring the world’s attention back to Japan and its March 11 disaster recovery efforts with her promotion of the MTV Video Music Aid concert. There’s no doubt her ...
Florence and Kyoto unite to celebrate Gucci’s 90 years Revered luxury brand Gucci is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year with a special traveling exhibition in Japan that highlights its prowess in craftsmanship. Starting at the famed Kinkaku-ji Golden Temple in Kyoto, “Gucci: 90 ...
Four days after the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake on March 11, Japan Fashion Week, scheduled to take place March 18-25, was unceremoniously canceled with an announcement on its official website. It sent a small wave of panic through the industry as it became increasingly ...
Let’s hear it for the girls: Fashion, music and celebrities The Girls Award, a twice-yearly event not unlike the already massively popular Tokyo Girls Collection (TGC), proves that the trend of daylong fashion festivals is picking up speed. With its first event a year ...
A blast of fashion literature It’s been a tough couple of years for Yohji Yamamoto. Arguably Japan’s most prominent fashion designer, Yamamoto, who broke into the European fashion arena in the early 1980s, filed for bankruptcy in 2009 after years of aggressive expansion in ...
On Francoise Morechand’s living room table there sits a book once owned by a samurai in the Edo Period (1603-1867) that she says she has been studying. “I think I may have been a samurai once in a past life. But you know, I ...
Comme des Garcons’ Marunouchi: no longer alone Comme des Garcons is renowned for keeping the fashion public on its toes by opening up many temporary “guerrilla” stores around the world, but it’s only once in a neon-blue moon that we get a new permanent ...
