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A sit-in by visa violators and their families entered its second day Tuesday in front of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau with protesters seeking government good will. The action at the bureau in Minato Ward is being organized by the Asian People’s Friendship Society, ...
Kazuhiro Shiraishi, 66, is a guest-house manager in the Izu-kogen Highlands, a famous resort area on the Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka Prefecture. Looking out onto the Pacific Ocean, and just 90 minutes by train from Tokyo, Izu has a warm climate all year round ...
“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, ...
Takashi Miike's blood-soaked vengeance tale, one of two Japanese films being shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, draws the biggest boos so far, with critics savaging it as overacted and cliched.
Have you ever given your best effort while striving to achieve something but felt like what you were doing was futile? That’s the feeling I’m getting about Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics. With just over three months to go until the IOC ...
SKY TRAIN: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History, by Canyon Sam. Silkworm Books, 2009, 269 pp., $24.95 (paperback) The basic facts about Tibet are well documented. Once the Chinese were firmly in control, land seizures, interrogations, struggle sessions, torture and the pulverizing of ...
The signs of boredom on this first morning in Morioka are manifest. Arriving ill-equipped for the pouring rain, there is a limit to how much interest can be squeezed from the otherwise admirable station facilities. After two hours of window- shopping and an over-surfeit ...
In 1965, a Dutch anthropologist named Cornelius Ouwehand sailed with his Japanese wife, Shizuko, to the remote island of Hateruma to undertake research. The series of monochrome images they took of daily life, work and ritual there were eventually published under the simple title ...
TYPHOON OF STEEL: An Okinawan Schoolboy’s Quest for Martyrdom During the Battle of Okinawa, by Akira Yoshimura. Translated by Mark Ealey. Merwin Asia, 2009, 242 pp., $22.95 (paperback) In Japan, often the only way to deal with history is to forget it. This defective ...
AT HOME IN JAPAN: A Foreign Woman’s Journey of Discovery, by Rebecca Otowa. Tuttle, 160 pp., $21.95 (hardcover) Like a Yemenese bride-to-be who first sees the countenance of her fiance in a photo presented by relatives, Rebecca Otowa experienced a presentiment of her future ...
Just 20 km east of Matsue, the impressive collection of paintings and ceramics at the Adachi Museum of Art in Yasugi City, Shimane Prefecture, is at risk of being upstaged by its six superlative landscaped gardens. The museum and its surrounding horticultural wonders await ...
THE SUMMER OF THE UBUME, by Natsuhiko Kyogoku. Vertical, 2009, 320 pp., $16.95 (paper) A blood-soaked woman, clutching a child, stands on a barren moor. This is the image of the ubume of the title. This creature, or figment, who may or may not ...
Recalling the glorious Heian Period in Japan’s history from 794 to 1185 at once conjures up images of a world of courtiers, 12-layered kimono, elegant poetry competitions beside winding streams — and secret trysts in scented chambers. At its heart, the immensely priviledged Heian ...
BOMB, BOOK & COMPASS: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China, by Simon Winchester. Penguin, 317 pp., ¥2,100 (hardcover) There are certain extraordinary people whose lives are by no means pre-ordained. Joseph Needham was one such person. One of the world’s leading biochemists, ...
FOREIGNERS WHO LOVED JAPAN, by Naito Makoto & Naito Ken. Kodansha International, 2009, 255 pp., ¥1,200 (paper) Arguably, Donald Richie’s “The Honorable Visitors,” a series of profiles of foreigners who lived or put in significant time here, is the standard against which most writings ...
JAPAN THROUGH WRITER’S EYES, edited by Elizabeth Ingrams. Eland, 2009, 336 pp., $29.95 (paper) Reviewed by Stephen Mansfield Recent years have seen a number of excellent anthologies of writings on Japan, including “Japan: True Stories of Life on the Road” and the superb “Southern ...
THE YEAR OF NO MONEY IN TOKYO by Wayne Lionel Aponte. Watkins & McKay, 165 pp., 2009, $19.95 (cloth) It is 1995, that defining year of the Kobe earthquake, the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, the year a man in Osaka confesses ...