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 ...
THE CURIOUS TALE OF MANDOGI’S GHOST, by Kim Sok-pom. Columbia University Press, 2010, 114 pp., $24.50 (paper) Like the Indian novelist R.K. Narayan, who repeatedly set his characters down in the kitchens, back alleys and yards of his very own magical creation — the ...
<< CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 Josiah Conder, the best-known foreign architect of the Mieji Era, arrived in Japan in 1877 at the invitation of the Ministry of Technology. While teaching at the influential College of Technology, Conder managed to complete a number of architectural ...
DECIPHERING THE RISING SUN, by Roger Dingman. Naval Institute Press, 2010, 250 pp.,$29.95 (hardcover) Creating a language-learning program may not sound like the kind of material to set the readers’ pulse racing, but author Roger Dingman has a unique and compelling story to tell. ...
IMPRESSIONS OF JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE, by Ralph Adams Cram. Tuttle Publishing, 152 pp., $31.75 (paper) Kicking his heels while waiting for a design commission to materialize, English architect Ralph Adams Cram might easily have frittered away his time getting pickled at the bar of the ...
THE UNDAUNTED WOMEN OF NANKING: The Wartime Diaries of Minnie Vautrin and Tsen Shui-fang, edited by Hua-ling Hu and Lian-hong Zhang. Southern Illinois University Press, 2010, 227 pp., $29.95 (hardcover) The history of missionary work in Asia and the Pacific region has not always ...
MATERIALS AND MEANING IN CONTEMPORARY JAPANESE ARCHITECTURE: Tradition and Today, by Dana Buntrock. Routledge, 2010, 275 pp., $165 (hardcover), $62.95 (paperback) If Europeans are overawed by the architecture of the past, convinced that nothing as accomplished can ever be built again, this is where ...
The world’s first gardens may well have been made of coral, natural clusters of underwater beauty that could be glimpsed through the transparent water. Perfectly tone-coordinated, balanced and formed, they were refined by nature to a degree that may have suggested the divine. Those ...
Inquiring as to the whereabouts of English-language bookstores in Fukuoka, the person at the Rainbow Plaza information center’s desk straightaway handed me a printout of English listings, maps and directions. This, I began to realize, is a well organized city. Despite the riches they ...
VISIONS OF JAPANESE MODERNITY: Articulations of Cinema, Nation and Spectatorship, 1895-1925, by Aaron Gerow. University of California Press, 2010, 344 pp., $24.95 (paper) Japanese cinema was different from the very start. In the days of the silent movie, recitators called benshi, took it upon ...
Traditionally, gardens patronage in Japan came from two sources: the nobility and the coffers of well-endowed temples. The wealthy and privileged commissioned landscaped gardens for their estates; head abbots employed the services of ishi-tate-so (rock-setting priests) to create gardens that would complement religious architecture ...
