By now, even the most casual observer of goings on in Asia will have noted the aggressive geopolitical maneuvering of China, a country news outlets have taken to calling "resurgent." Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push For Global Power, by ...

Though half a world apart in geography, history, language and just about anything else you could name, Cuba and Japan are not entirely without similarities. Both are island countries, albeit in different stages of development, and both are in the throes of full-on tourist drives, ...

On the fourth anniversary of Uenoshita's demolition, we revisit how its last residents left it.

The only living Japanese on a postage stamp, 104-year-old Toko Shinoda reflects on a lifetime devoted to art.

Beginning with 2008's "Yokai Attack!," translators Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt have been on a quest to bring an aspect of Japanese culture that has lurked in the shadows to the world at large. Japandemonium Illustrated: The Yokai Encyclopedias of Toriyama Sekien, Edited by Hiroko ...

The origin of Japan's ruling class extends into the mists of ancient history, far before the country was unified after a period of civil wars and well into the first millennium A.D. Warriors, called bushi, began as the armies of aristocratic factions centered around the ...

The Chinese board game of go has fallen in and out of fashion over the past 2,500 years. In China during the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), go was seen as a pastime for gamblers and layabouts, but by the 1600s it had come to ...

Picture your workday, and then your week. Imagine the discomfort of the morning train or the slow crawl of traffic. Think about your place of work. There's no getting around it: Most of us spend huge swaths of time in offices and workshops, on factory ...

In "Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind," famed Studio Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki depicts a world overrun by giant insects and a poisonous fungal forest, the fallout of an environmental cataclysm in the distant past. Humans live on in fractured kingdoms, using what ...

First serialized in 1970, "Lone Wolf and Cub" is among the most iconic manga of all time, spawning TV shows and film adaptations. Its story has been referenced in an eclectic range of modern works from the music of Wu-Tang Clan to the comics ...