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Pope Francis’ fascination with the devil took on remarkable new twists Tuesday, with a well-known exorcist insisting Francis helped “liberate” a Mexican man possessed by four different demons despite the Vatican’s insistence that no such papal exorcism took place. The case concerns a 43-year-old ...
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, ...
Guitarist Dustin Wong hesitates for a split second. It’s a pause that would go unnoticed during most other sets, but Wong has spent the last 40 minutes seemingly in a trance while playing guitar and looping the notes via an array of pedals in ...
Tim Duncan saves the day as the Spurs hold off the Grizzlies in overtime
On a rainy midwinter day, Taro Yamamoto stood with a small group of people in front of Shimokitazawa Station in Tokyo’s Setagaya Ward and addressed passers-by in that artsy youth-culture hub. “I am an actor — Taro Yamamoto,” he announced. “And I would like ...
Gregory Clark, 75, is the Honorary President of Tama University and Trustee of Akita International University in Japan. A prolific writer, with a background in economics and international politics, his opinionated investigative pieces often spark intensive debates. His 1978 book “The Japanese Tribe: Origins ...
The pioneers of the rock ‘n’ roll era on both sides of the Atlantic have now largely faded from the show-business scene — which is hardly surprising, given that those still strutting their stuff are in their 70s and 80s, and even “The King” ...
On Nov. 19, the Pit hall of the New National Theatre, Tokyo, in Shibuya, was filled with hundreds of eager theater-goers. They had come to see a performance of “Onna Goroshi Abura no Jigoku” (“The Women-Killer and the Hell of Oil”), a play written ...
Alain Mikli, 56, is not just the most famous eyewear designer in the world — he invented the job description. Mikli was the first person to achieve worldwide success as a designer of nothing else but eyeglasses. He established his own brand in Paris ...
In the last few decades, clinical depression in Japan has emerged from its longstanding obscurity shrouded in shame and guilt to becoming far more openly recognized as a national disease. A 2010 report by the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry put the number of ...
Fumie Takino, 79, is the founder of the Japan Pom Pom cheerleaders, a group of 28 women, with an average age of 67, whose decades-defying energy would give any cheerleader a run for her money. Established in 1996, the group have now been performing ...
Monday, Sept. 19, was Respect for the Aged Day in Japan. But on that sweltering national holiday, it wasn’t the heat that that drew tens of thousands of people to Meiji Park in central Tokyo, but their concerns for all the nation’s citizens, and ...
Midori and Takashi Nakao, 55 and 61, are the owners of Ichifuji, a shop selling Japanese crockery in Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market. Established in 1951, the store is located in one of the oldest buildings in the jōgai shijō or outer market. More than ...
Eriko Hiratsuka, 26, received her master’s degree from Waseda University’s Graduate School of Law in 2010. That’s no small achievement for anyone, but for Eriko, who has severe hearing loss in both ears, reaching her goals has always required extra effort. Although she can ...
On Friday, July 22, as the stifling heat and humidity of summer relented for just a fleeting few days, hundreds of people filled a hall at Enkakuji Temple in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, to listen to a lecture by philosophy scholar Alfons Deeken. German-born Deeken, ...
Chuya Onda, 68, is the president of Ondagumi, one of Japan’s biggest hikiya companies. Hikiya specialize in deconstructing, rebuilding and moving buildings. They are also experts at lifting up houses in order to make them earthquake-proof with special high-tech materials. Since the Great East ...