There's a right way and a wrong way to do everything — and you're probably doing it wrong. All the activities of life — big and small, monumental and trivial, from waking to sleeping, bathing to eating, dressing to undressing, working to playing — raise ...

The anonymous 14th-century chronicle "Masukagami" ("The Clear Mirror," translated by George Perkins), dramatically details the trials and errors of Emperor Go-Daigo, the 96th emperor of Japan.

What's in a name? What's in an era? What is an "era"? What's a "new era"? Are we entering one? To take the last question first: Not really, said 57 percent of respondents to a survey the Asahi Shimbun conducted in March versus 37 percent ...

Is democracy dying? Certainly authoritarianism is rising. A generation ago, it was the opposite — authoritarianism seemed moribund, democracy on the cusp of new life. Sekai magazine (April) sums up the gloomier mood now gaining ground. "We cannot," it says, "take democracy for granted." This ...

"We may even be tempted to conclude that no man in the history of Japan had a greater influence on the formation of Japanese taste," wrote Japanolologist Donald Keene. But still, he continues, "Yoshimasa may have been the worst shogun ever to rule Japan."

Shukan Gendai magazine last month sounded a warning: "Students, if you're arrested in China it's a very serious matter." China is popular with Japanese tourists. Some 2.68 million visited in 2017. It's near — four hours by plane — and yet far: a different world. ...

"The human race, version 2" — a thought to inspire hope or fear, maybe a little (or a lot) of both. "We today," says Komazawa University economist Tomohiro Inoue, whose thought it is, "will soon be 'the former human race.'" The propulsion forward comes from ...

Almost nothing is known of Toyotomi Hideyoshi's early years with warlord Oda Nobunaga, but by 1570 we see him commanding a detachment, 3,000 strong, in battle against a Nobunaga rival. The peasant boy has come a long way.

The ubiquitous word "productivity" last summer acquired a new meaning — or at least a new twist. Members of the LGBT community, wrote Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Mio Sugita, "do not reproduce. In other words, they are unproductive. I wonder if it is appropriate ...

Maybe we're immortal. It's not a new idea. Christianity's appeal over 2,000 years rests largely on its promise of eternal life. In Japanese Buddhism, the soul passes from life to life — a dreadful prospect, it was held, which only the enlightened escaped. Buddhist karma ...