culture

Have you ever thought about where your trash goes after it's tossed into a basket and whisked away by the garbage truck that shows up like clockwork every week? If not, comic Shuichi Takizawa says now is the time to think about it. Though he may ...

Whatever happened to Domo-kun, the furry brown monster with the jagged maw? When I first got to Japan I used to see him everywhere. Now Chiitan, the masochistic Otter who reps the city of Susaki in Kochi Prefecture, stacks my social media feeds with ...

Tucked away down a leafy country lane 160 kilometers west of London, Fosse Farmhouse looks like any other picturesque Cotswolds bed and breakfast with its honey stone facade and tranquil garden. It also happens to have become "holy ground" for Japanese fans of the anime ...

"I still feel the loneliness of being hikikomori. Maybe I'm successful, maybe not. I can't tell. But I still feel the loneliness. The only difference now is that I can express my loneliness, my pain, and all those feelings in my writing. They don't ...

Two years ago, light novel publisher Kadokawa added Thailand to its list of foreign publishing investments, which already includes Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and the United States. Now there are signs that English-language readers are catching on.

You know when you go on YouTube — or Spotify, or Netflix — and you’re faced with so many options for entertainment that you don’t know where to start? It can feel like that with Japanese summer festivals, too. In addition to the abundance of ...

Though rampant piracy is damaging global sales of manga, some print publishers in Europe and North America are experiencing an optimistic revival.

Those looking for an immersive introduction to Japan's contemporary art, need to look no further than Roppongi Art Night. Rather than taking classes or visiting the myriad galleries across Tokyo, for one night art fans can explore this world of art by visiting Roppongi. Tokyo's ...

Anime, manga and Haruki Murakami may form an unlikely trinity, but outside of Japan they're responsible for filling Japanese Studies departments and sprawling convention halls with generations of the devoted.

Netflix's director of anime, Taito Okiura, tells me he feels like a local baseball player who got drafted into the U.S. Major Leagues. Except, he doesn't play the sport. A producer and entrepreneur with over a decade of experience in the industry, Okiura was offered ...

Although Alexis Sanborn was a self-professed Japanese-culture geek as a teenager, she never had much of an appetite for washoku (Japanese cuisine). As she grew up reading anime in a California suburb in the early 1990s, before the Japanese restaurant boom in U.S. urban cities, ...

Prognosticating something as unpredictable as the domestic music industry might appear to be a fool's errand. But what's the fun in playing it safe? Here are some predictions for 2018. YouTubers will wield more power: TV and movie theme songs remain the best way for ...