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P/CLOUDY
The consumption tax increase next April will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people's financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the impact of the hike, experts say.
Every parent is all too familiar with The Tantrum. The screaming, the flailing arms, the angry head butting — and the timing (normally in the most inconvenient public place possible).
International events undermine Japan's democracy. Shame on the International Olympic Committee for being a party to it.
Tucked away behind the main museums in Ueno, the Tokyo University Art Museum may not be on most people’s radar, but it is definitely one of the city’s top museums in terms of curatorial quality. Whenever I go there, I am always delighted by ...
Francisco Liriano showed up at PNC Park on Tuesday afternoon in a suit with his suitcase packed for a trip St. Louis. The message reverberated through the Pittsburgh Pirates clubhouse. After 21 years away from the playoffs, it was time for the best story ...
The title of this book is exquisite, while the cover illustration is of something else, different yet just as exquisite. This is appropriate because the aesthetic concept that the book considers is not just beautiful, but elusive and difficult to define. SNOW IN A ...
Until she was 30, Ellen Forney, an award-winning Seattle-based artist, took her slightly unusual personality for granted. Her obsession with exercise, her impulsive sexuality, her bouts of ecstasy: she considered these things, however uncomfortable, a major part of who she was. After all, aren’t ...
It is perhaps a little hard to remember now, but in 2010, there seemed to be a new global superpower. A superpower that acted in unorthodox ways, which was unaccountable and yet of the people, and that was above all nameless, faceless and, as ...
‘Red Or Dead” is a masterpiece. David Peace already has a considerable reputation but this massive, painstaking account of the career of Bill Shankly towers above his previous work. It’s usual when praising a sports novel for critics to claim that “it’s not really ...
Like many people, I like soft light and use lampshades of Japanese paper from the successful Akari series designed by the American sculptor Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), certainly the artist’s greatest influence on individual lives, especially at home. Some of his own upbringing is described ...
Overexcitable publishers like to bandy around words such as “explosive” and “shocking” when trying to flog their books, even though generally you could substitute them for ones such as “mildly interesting.” UNDERCOVER: The True Story of Britain’s Secret Police, by Paul Lewis and Rob ...
An estimated 14 million to 20 million Chinese died during this epic struggle of resistance against Japanese aggression in a war that produced a staggering 80 million to 100 million refugees. Despite the prolonged onslaught of Japan’s modern military machine for eight long years, ...
American Zen Koan No. 96: A student once asked Zen teacher Steve Allen, “If you were given a wish-fulfilling jewel, what would you wish for?” ONE BIRD, ONE STONE: 108 Contemporary Zen Stories, by Sean Murphy. Hampton Roads Publishing, 2013, 288 pp., $17.95 (paperback) ...
Professor Elizabeth Stone, the heroine of Grace McCleen’s incandescent second novel, is a classic campus contradiction: both quite brilliant and utterly clueless. Despite having a lauded book on Milton and a stack of learned articles to her name, her fellow human beings — indeed, ...
Rivers run through Olivia Laing’s writing — sometimes the real thing, either narrow and innocuous like a backwoods creek or mile-wide like the Mississippi; occasionally streams of memory that flow backwards, and sometimes gushers of tears; always a steady current of liquidly eloquent words. ...
Takashi Miike is one of the few Japanese filmmakers now working, Takeshi Kitano and Hayao Miyazaki being two others, who enjoy a measure of recognition outside Japan’s insular film world. Though hardly a household name in Kansas, Miike has long been a favorite with ...
It is hardly necessary to note that comics and manga are capable of conveying just about anything. Philosophy? See Ryan Dunlavey and Fred Van Lente’s Action Philosophers series. Travel? Try Guy Delisle’s accounts of his sojourns in tourist hot spots such as Pyongyang and ...