"Nazism." "Fascism." "1984." "Kamikaze." Strong words, suggestive language. It's going mainstream. An Asahi Shimbun editorial on July 29 drew comparisons between the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Nazis. Sapio magazine in its July-August edition began a discussion of "neo-fascism" — part two ...

Eighth-century Japan was an infant civilization. Its prehistory had been long. Awakened at last, Japan drank eagerly from the source: China, then at its creative peak.

"O sleep, o gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse" — Shakespeare, as usual, says it best. We don't sleep well. We are restless, fidgety. We toss and turn. Dropping off at last, we dream uneasy dreams and wake up as tired as when we lay down. The ...

Ginko Ogino deserves to be better known — especially now. She was Japan’s first licensed female doctor. What she went through to earn that distinction is the theme of the 1993 novel "Hanauzumi" ("Beyond the Blossoming Fields") by Junichi Watanabe (1933-2014), who was himself a ...

There's nothing quite like Japan's Heian Period (794-1185). Almost four centuries of peace and a governing aristocracy of culture set it apart.

"Is solitude an illness?" The Asahi Shimbun raised the question in an op-ed feature last month. Or is it an intensified form of health — a view that informs the monthly magazine Bungei Shunju's treatment of the subject. A child playing alone evokes pity — misplaced, perhaps. ...

Nature bursts its bounds. People seethe and erupt. Japan is among the safest countries in the world, but its headlines are terrifying. Can we send our children to school? Ride a train to work? Socialize on the Net? Set up house near a river, a ...

Ancient Japan appears to us as a land of warriors, priests, aristocrats, artists, poets, lovers, peasants — but one group is missing. Where are the traders, and the makers of tradable goods?

"Kill one man, and you're a murderer. Kill millions, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god." The French biologist and philosopher Jean Rostand (1894-1977) was led to that bleak view of greatness by sinister events in Europe in the ...

Whenever you read about people doing things you yourself would never dream of doing, you naturally wonder: Is it a warped individual nature that is to blame? Is it the nature of the time, the place, the circumstances? Warped or not, an individual need never ...