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 ...
As an expert dyer of Edo-komon-style kimonos whose repeated, especially intricate patterns are often so tiny as to be almost microscopic, Emika Iwashita is a mistress of subtlety and the tiniest detail. The independent Tokyo-based artist’s specialty is stencil-dyeing, which requires just the right ...
Visitors to a photo exhibition would not typically be asked to open their bags or walk through a metal detector before entering the exhibition site. Nor would they expect to catch the inquisitive gazes of various plainclothes police officers lurking in the crowd once ...
Rokkakudo, a small, six-sided wooden pavilion that overlooks the Pacific Ocean from a low rocky headland in northern Ibaraki Prefecture, is by no means Tenshin Okakura’s most important legacy. That honor would go to “The Book of Tea,” a now-classic dissertation on traditional Japanese ...
Have you heard the one about the Japanese runner who took 54 years to finish a marathon? To be precise, 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds was how long it took Shiso Kanakuri to finish the race ...
I once asked a professor of agriculture in the southwestern United States what sort of fence would keep a goat from escaping. “Well,” he replied, taking a long and pensive draw on his cigarette. “If it can keep out air and keep out water, ...
Imagine strolling through a forest and coming across a hut supported by four trees 8 meters off the ground. With its triangular roof, stained-glass door panels and timber decking, at first sight it’s like something in a fairyland. This is, however, the latest lofty ...
Even today in the performing arts in Japan, gaijin (lit. “aliens”), as foreigners are called, are still often presented like something to be gawped at in a Victorian freak show. It was a bit like that when a new play called “Sayonara (Goodbye)” premiered ...
After the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11 last year, the performance of the spectacularly tall Tokyo Sky Tree going up in the capital’s downtown Sumida Ward became a subject of heightened interest to experts, residents and the general public alike. Tobu Tower ...
Though he died by his own hand at the age of 35, novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s accomplishments were such that, even after so brief a writing career, Japan’s most prestigious literary accolade — the Akutagawa Prize — now bears his name. As well as being ...
At just over 25 meters from stem to stern, and 140 tons, the wooden long-line tuna-fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru (No. 5 Lucky Dragon) is hardly imposing. Yet despite its diminutive size for an ocean-going vessel, in March 1954 the Lucky Dragon’s encounter with ...
What do nuclear power plants and Shinto shrines have in common? For a start, they tend to be hidden from view — the former in remote coastal locations, the latter behind stands of trees or atop hills or mountains. They are also sources of ...
As a young documentary filmmaker, Ayako Imamura had been wrestling with feelings of emptiness. Deaf since birth, the 32-year-old Nagoya native has shot about 30 short films documenting the lives of deaf people in Japan since 2000. But at one point in her career, ...
