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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
The concentration of money and power in Tokyo is to a degree unthinkable in the United States. — Edward Seidensticker A recent issue of the somewhat disreputable Shukan Jitsuwa looked into a “rumor” that said the capital may be moved to the Kansai region ...
Immediately after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, Japanese television started covering the disaster full-time. As things returned to some sort of version of normal, the spaces where commercials were supposed to run were first filled with public service announcements provided by the ...
There are 11 men vying today for the office of Tokyo governor. Four are taken seriously by the media, the eccentric inventor Dr. Yoshiro Nakamatsu is humored as a perennial also-ran, and the remaining six are dismissed as margin-dwellers who are in the game ...
On March 26, NHK covered an antinuclear power demonstration in Germany that attracted thousands of protesters. The report pointed out that the demonstration was sparked by the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear reactor. The next day, there was a march by Japanese ...
During the March 19 broadcast of TBS’ “Newscaster,” comedian Beat Takeshi complained about the work clothes (sagyogi) that Japan’s politicians changed into after the earthquake-tsunami of March 11, saying that instead of trying to give the impression that they were working they should go ...
More than a week after the massive earthquake and tsunami of March 11, Japan’s commercial broadcasters are still weighing the crisis as it develops. The weekend following the catastrophe, all planned programming was canned for round-the-clock coverage of the tragedy, and whatever you want ...
A funny thing happened on the way to jail for the 19-year-old boy who was arrested Mar. 3 for allegedly cheating on a Kyoto University entrance exam: The media suddenly became all reflective of its coverage and sympathetic of his situation. Some may see ...
Case 1: Kabuki stars are different. Last month, the 38-year-old kabuki actor Kataoka Ainosuke held a press conference and admitted that he is the father of a boy who is now a fifth-year elementary school student. Ainosuke is not married to the boy’s 43-year-old ...
In the late 1990s, I did piece work for a public relations company, translating achievement reports into English for its non-Japanese clients. The reports outlined how and where the company had secured mentions of its clients’ products in various media, and included equivalent advertising ...
Twenty-five years ago, Japan was a very competitive manufacturing country, and much of its economic policy since then has been in response to trade friction with the United States, which demanded greater access to Japanese markets for American agricultural products in order to offset ...
Last week, the Fuji TV newsmagazine “Mr. Sunday” looked at Korean pop’s success in Japan from two angles. Taking a street-level perspective, the show’s host, Seiji Miyane, hung out in Tokyo’s Okubo district, which has become “the new Harajuku” because young Japanese women flock ...
When NHK’s in-depth news program, “Closeup Gendai,” addresses a pressing social issue, it usually offers possible solutions articulated by experts. Two weeks ago, however, the show covered a problem that seems to have no solution. The subject of the opening segment was a middle-aged ...