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 ...
“Les Miserables” has grossed a record ¥4.2 billion in Japan since it hit movie theaters in December, the most ever for a musical, according to distributor Toho-Towa Co. The record had been held by the 2005 film “The Phantom of the Opera” based on ...
The Berlin International Film Festival will support a movie festival to be held in earthquake- and tsunami-hit Sendai in March, Dieter Kosslick, director of the world-renowned Berlinale, said. The local festival, named “Berlinale in Sendai,” is being organized by a group of the city’s ...
Democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi revealed her love of J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” books as she waxed lyrical about her favorite reads at Myanmar’s first international literary festival on Saturday. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who spent years under house arrest under Myanmar’s ...
The latest first for fast-reforming Myanmar — its first international literary festival — is putting the spotlight on dozens of the country’s authors, a number of whom once spent time in prison for their writings. The Irrawaddy Literary Festival, which ended Sunday, came as ...
Japan’s Noriyuki Hamada captured the bronze medal Wednesday in the Bocuse d’Or, becoming only the second non-European to reach the podium in the 26-year history of the world’s most prestigious culinary competition. The gold medal went to Thibaut Ruggeri of France and the silver ...
Torrents of water gush down the towering rocky mountain on the stage of Tokyo’s Imperial Theater as samurai warriors cross swords with their foes under heavy rain in a scene depicting the famous revenge of the Ako Roshi (47 Ronin). In other scenes, 66 ...
Japan’s top literature awards spanned the extremes of age this year by awarding 75-year-old Natsuko Kuroda the Akutagawa Prize for “ab Sango,” and 23-year-old Ryo Asai the Naoki Prize for “Nanimono,” along with Ryutaro Abe’s “Tohaku.” Kuroda is the oldest person to win the ...
More than a million Muslims gathered on the banks of a river in Bangladesh over the weekend to pray and listen to religious scholars at the start of the world’s second-largest annual Islamic congregation. The streets of Dhaka were largely deserted as devotees flocked ...
Rare footage from 1963 of singer Kyu Sakamoto, known worldwide for his smash hit “Sukiyaki,” has been discovered in the vault of broadcaster TBS in Yokohama. Shot during Sakamoto’s August 1963 trip to the United States and narrated by the singer, the footage shows ...
Do you want a lesson in U.S. history? Look no further than the front-runners for the Academy Award for best film, to be announced Thursday. Nearly half of the movies nominated for best picture Oscar are about key events in America’s past, from the ...
Twenty years after his death, Rudolf Nureyev’s legacy still lights up the world of ballet as brilliantly as the flamboyant performances that once illuminated the greatest stages. “As long as they are putting on my ballets, I will live on,” Brigitte Lefevre, dance director ...
Under the menacing eye of guards, the movie-goers sit in silence as their 1950s bus rumbles through London. Suddenly a prison looms out of the dark. Welcome to Secret Cinema, where the film is not just on the screen — viewers can wander up ...
