September 04, 2025

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Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.

JAPAN / History / Longform

Aug 22, 2025

From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past

By Alex K.T. Martin

One man’s experience traces the capital's arc from wartime devastation to modern megacity in a story of resilience and reinvention.

Noe Ito (third from right) was editor-in-chief of feminist magazine Seito and her partner Sakae Osugi (second from right) was a prominent anarchist of the Taisho Era. Both were murdered by military police in 1923.

JAPAN / History / The Living Past

Aug 16, 2025

Taisho Democracy: A turbulent, tenuous era of conflicting ideals

By Michael Hoffman

The resilience of Japanese politics, culture and society were tested during the 14 years of the Taisho Era (1912-26).

Members of the nonprofit group Japan Youth Memorial Association search for the remains of dead soldiers in a cave in Okinawa Prefecture in February.

JAPAN / History / Longform

Aug 15, 2025

The long search for Japan’s lost soldiers

By Tomoko Otake

An decades-long effort to recover the remains of those who died during World War II, most of them abroad, may be entering its final phase.

Setsuko Kawai, who lost her mother and two younger brothers in the March 1945 bombing, has fought for recognition of the victims.

JAPAN / History / FOCUS

Aug 14, 2025

Civilian air raid survivors fight for recognition 80 years after war's end

By Gabriele Ninivaggi

After drafting a bill to provide concrete relief to survivors this spring, a bipartisan group of lawmakers failed to submit it to parliament days before the session’s closure.

Katsutoshi Takegami, 77, in his storehouse attic where he discovered his father's Unit 1644 documents

JAPAN / History

Aug 13, 2025

Hidden rosters and the legacy of Japan’s germ warfare

By Tomoko Otake

In a dusty box, a Nagano man finds proof his father served in Nanjing, China, with Unit 1644, part of Japan’s covert biological weapons network during World War II.

Hideo Shimizu, 95, says he cannot forget seeing the prisoners' bloody wills scribbled on the walls of prison cells at Unit 731 in 1945.

JAPAN / History

Aug 13, 2025

The indelible memory of being a part of Unit 731

By Tomoko Otake

For 95-year-old Hideo Shimizu, the 4½ months he spent with the biological and chemical warfare unit of the now-defunct Imperial Japanese Army were just like yesterday.

Kimi Ozawa, who lost her husband in the 1985 crash of a Japan Airlines jumbo jet, prays in front of his memorial marker on Tuesday in the village of Ueno, Gunma Prefecture.

JAPAN / History / FOCUS

Aug 12, 2025

Controversial theories continue to swirl around 1985 JAL jet crash

By Kazuaki Nagata

Some bereaved family members and critics who subscribe to the idea of possible SDF involvement say the initial probe left too many loose ends untied.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.

From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Foreign wrestlers have a long history in sumo

Foreign wrestlers have a long history in sumo

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