In conversation, Tadanori Yokoo jumps nimbly between the past and the present. One moment he’s watching the sky glow red as bombs rain down on Kobe during World War II. The next he’s riding in a taxi with Yukio Mishima. And then he’s back ...

Yukio Saito, 75, is the Chair of the Japanese Association for Suicide Prevention and CEO of the Japanese Federation of Inochi-no-denwa (Lifeline), Japan’s first and largest telephone counseling service. For the past five decades, Saito has been educating the public and lobbying relentlessly to ...

Minoru Maruyama, 68, is the owner of the Maruyama Monja restaurant. Located in Tsukishima’s Monja Street in Tokyo, his tiny joint is one of the 70 or so mom-and-pop shops in the area that all serve monja-yaki, a, pan-fried loose-batter shitamachi (downtown) snack food ...

Considering the current state of Japan’s economy, it’s remarkable to recall that 60 years ago there were hundreds of companies both old and new jockeying restlessly to fill the vacuum left after almost all the nation’s cities were heavily bombed in World War II ...

Jane Best is the president of Refugees International Japan, an independent, nonprofit organization based in Tokyo. Since its foundation 32 years ago, RIJ’s dedicated volunteers and staff have been raising funds in Japan and working on projects to help support refugees around the world. ...

Hiroshi Mizohata, 50, is the Commissioner of the Japan Tourism Agency. A native of Kyoto and a graduate of the University of Tokyo, Mizohata entered the ranks of the prestigious kanryō, the career bureaucrats who control Japan’s top-tier government offices. He worked in various ...

Emiko Kothari is president of the Maharaja Company Ltd, a chain of Indian restaurants across Japan. In 1968, Emiko and her husband, Shivji, opened their first Indian restaurant in Tokyo, and the couple’s winning recipe of mixing authentic Indian cuisine and Japanese hospitality contributed ...

JUDIT KAWAGUCHI Saleem d’Aronville is a British fashion designer based in Tokyo. In 2003, he launched Orihica, a brand he developed for Aoki Holdings Inc., one of Japan’s top fashion retailers. As its creative director, Saleem built Orihica into a major label with 65 ...

Dr. Masahiro Mori, 84, is a specialist in robotics and Emeritus President of the Robotics Society of Japan. Mori is the founder of Robocon, the robotics contest he started in 1981 when he was a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. Since then, ...

Tadao Sato laughed an embarrassed laugh as he recalled that three years ago, in London, he had been referred to as a “legend.” Though adding to his discomfort, I had to admit that in my university days I had thought of him in the ...