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 ...
Visionaries, alleged pornographers, artists of enduring repute — Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele both died in 1918. With them ended the first flowering of the Vienna Secession, an artistic movement that declared war on the Establishment in the cause of liberty and modernity. “Der ...
The world’s most universally observed festival, New Year is also its most diverse, with timing, inspiration and celebration differing among countries, cultures and religions. For some, it is an occasion on which to give thanks for another year of survival; for others it’s a ...
Naming himself “Guinea Pig B,” Buckminster Fuller vowed that his whole life would be an experiment “to see what an unknown individual . . . might be able to do effectively on behalf of all mankind.” That decision was made in 1927, as he ...
“Am-dram” may attract devotion and derision in equal measure, but in Japan a strong tradition of amateur English-language theater has been serving the wider community for nearly 150 years. The earliest English-language performances were held in Yokohama — in the homes and on the ...
ASH, by Holly Thompson. Stone Bridge Press, 2001, 292 pp., $16.95 (paper) Don’t read “Ash” if you’re a jaded expatriate pining for a ticket home. Don’t give a copy to an idealistic friend considering the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program. Above all, don’t lend ...
Would you recognize a “Tangible Folk-Cultural Property” if you saw one? If you were walking through a “Traditional Construction Preservation Area,” would you know? If you went to Uchiko, hidden in the green folds of Ehime Prefecture, west Shikoku, you almost certainly would, as ...
Kristin Newton changes lives. Messages of appreciation fill her inbox. “This is a turning point in our lives,” reads one. “We are looking at things so differently now.” “See how [your teaching] truly does change lives!” enthuses another, its writer going on to say ...
BEING A BROAD IN JAPAN: Everything a Western Woman Needs to Survive and Thrive, by Caroline Pover. Alexandra Press, 2001, 518 pp., 2,858 yen (paper) “Being A Broad in Japan: Everything a Western Woman Needs to Survive and Thrive” is a chatty and compendious ...
In the world of haute couture, it is generally the design ideas that get recycled, not the clothes themselves. Barely has one decade ended before its trends resurface as retro chic: new clothes, same old look. Little wonder, therefore, that the art and fashion ...
Art history, like the military kind, is written by the victors. Thus Florentine Giorgio Vasari’s encyclopedic “Lives of the Artists,” published in 1550, is a propagandist’s account of his home city’s starring role in the artistic and intellectual phenomenon we now call the Renaissance. ...
