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May 16, 2025
 

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EDO PERIOD

Tatsumi Onose (right), who plays the part of Commodore Matthew Perry in Shimoda's Black Ship Festival, says the historical episode the event is based on should be remembered for its positives more than its negatives.
LIFE / Travel
May 8, 2025
Celebrating Japan’s defeat at Shimoda’s Black Ship Festival
Held this year from May 16 to 18, an event to the south of Tokyo turns a historical episode of national humiliation into a plain old good time.
National agency Heritage Malta worked with Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to ensure the painstaking restoration of samurai armor that spent over half a century forgotten in storage in Valletta, Malta.
JAPAN / History
May 1, 2025
Lost and found history receives glittering homecoming at Osaka Expo
Hidden away since World War II, samurai armor gifted to Malta from Japan in 1862 has been restored to its full glory and put on display at the Malta Pavilion.
UNESCO's executive board on Thursday added Buddhist scriptures kept at Tokyo's Zojoji Temple to its Memory of the World register.
JAPAN
Apr 18, 2025
Zojoji Buddhist scriptures added to UNESCO Memory of the World
The scriptures were collected by Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate in Japan's Edo era, and donated to the temple.
Shunbaisai Hokuei's tetraptych from the series "108 Heroes of the Theater Suikoden"
CULTURE / Books
Mar 22, 2025
Osaka’s kabuki fan culture fueled an elusive figure of the ukiyo-e scene
In his new book, John Fiorillo partly lifts the veil on Shunbaisai Hokuei, who dominated the ukiyo-e art world in the Kamigata region during the early 19th century. 
Himeji Castle in Hyogo Prefecture
JAPAN
Feb 16, 2025
Himeji Castle entrance fee to go up 2.5-fold for nonresidents
The city plans to use the resulting windfall for maintenance, online ticket sales, bag check services and guided tours for foreign visitors.
Ayumi Matsuki, a priestess at Yoshiwara Shrine, shows off some "o-mamori" charms. She says visitors to the shrine have increased since the NHK drama “Unbound” began airing this month.
JAPAN / History / Longform
Jan 26, 2025
Tracing Tsutaya Juzaburo, Edo’s media maverick
Discover the hometown of the Yoshiwara publisher who helped shape Japan’s artistic legacy and inspired NHK’s latest period drama.
NHK’s latest taiga period drama, “Unbound,” centers on Tsutaya Juzaburo (Ryusei Yokohama), a commoner who becomes a successful bookseller and publisher.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Jan 10, 2025
‘Unbound’ breaks NHK period drama tradition with a hero of the common folk
Public broadcaster NHK marks its 100th anniversary by flipping the script on its long-running period drama series.
A falconer during the Suwa Falconry Preservation Society's event in Tokyo on Friday. Falconry predates recorded history, originating, scholars believe, when nomadic herders observed birds of prey hunting and recognized their potential as partners.
MORE SPORTS
Jan 5, 2025
Tokyo falconers keep ancient traditions soaring
While a recent showcase was all about fun and education, like other sports involving animals, falconry is also serious business for competitors at the upper echelons of the sport.
"Ukiyoe Immersive Art Exhibition" includes an installation of Katsushika Hokusai’s “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.”
CULTURE / Art
Dec 25, 2024
Step into ukiyo-e: A digital journey through Japan’s traditional art form
"Ukiyoe Immersive Art Exhibition" uses 3D animation and projection mapping to reimagine Edo-era woodblock prints for modern audiences.
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
CULTURE / Film
Nov 21, 2024
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
Junichi Yasuda’s film about a time-traveling warrior is a loving tribute to the “jidaigeki” (period drama) genre and its practitioners.
Students from Agatsuma’s butoh workshop, also part of Sumi-Yume, will be joining her and professional butoh dancer Tomoshi Shioya for this weekend’s shows.
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 8, 2024
Butoh dances to the sounds of Hokusai’s hometown
Performances of the avant-garde dance form are part of a program dedicated to the revered artist and celebrating the local community in Sumida Ward.
An idealistic samurai (Taiga Nakano) leads a motley gang of felons on a suicide mission to defend a fortress during the 1868-69 Boshin War.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 31, 2024
‘11 Rebels’: Underdog antiheroes deliver a crowd pleaser
A knotty period in Japanese history gets a modern treatment in Kazuya Shiraishi’s spectacle-driven samurai period drama.
Eight warriors fight to end a curse placed on a samurai clan in “Hakkenden: Fiction and Reality.”
CULTURE / Film
Oct 31, 2024
‘Hakkenden’ has fun with Edo-era pulp fiction
The film presents both a bio of Takizawa Bakin, whose writing had a large impact on Japanese pop culture, and a snazzy live-action digest of his influential novel.
A city as rich in history as Kyoto has accumulated plenty of hair-raising tales perfect for your Halloween perusal.
LIFE / Travel
Oct 26, 2024
Japan’s ancient capital houses a millennium of ghosts
August is the traditional period in Japan when the worlds of the living and the dead overlap, but who’s to say spirits don’t make an exception for Halloween?
The Allied Occupation of Japan after World War II brought an end to the country’s brothels, which resulted in the Prostitution Prevention Law of 1956.
JAPAN / History / The Living Past
Oct 19, 2024
Edo Japan's morals pose a debate for the modern age
Can we judge what’s right or wrong across centuries? Edo’s morals of sacrifice and duty distinctly clash with our own modern ethics.
Hikone Castle in Shiga Prefecture may meet a criterion for inscription on the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage list.
JAPAN
Oct 10, 2024
Hikone Castle could merit world heritage listing, UNESCO panel says
The castle from the Edo Period could being assessed as bearing a unique testimony to a disappeared cultural tradition or civilization.
The conduct and business of love in Japan’s Edo Period (1603-1867) was rough, and nowhere was it rougher than in the pleasure quarters of the capital city.
JAPAN / History / The Living Past
Sep 29, 2024
Good or bad, both or neither: Edo Japan and the moral conscience
The era's warrior class and its martial virtues were redundant but lived on — overshadowed by the pursuit of pleasure.
Only two other class of persons were treated with anything like the merciless ferocity meted out to lovers: subversives and Christians.
JAPAN / History / The Living Past
Aug 17, 2024
Love was a most subversive affair in Edo Japan
As the shogunate required order in society, love was seen as a threat to rational thinking — something that you might die for.
Japan is divided into many different regions, sometimes distinguishing areas of the country by old borders or climate.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 16, 2024
When it comes to Japan, do you know your 'Kanto' from your 'Kanto-koshin'?
Japanese people tend to travel to their hometowns around this time of year, and asking where they went is an easy conversation starter.
Japan unveils new overtourism countermeasures
The majority of tourists in Japan tend to stay in Tokyo, Osaka or Kyoto, resulting in overcrowding in popular tourist spots and a strain on transportation systems.
South Korea couple beat same-sex barriers to parenthood
South Korean lesbian couple Kim Kyu-jin (left) and her wife, Kim Sae-yeon, pose with a "pregnant woman" badge during an interview in Seoul last month.
Toyoko Kids: The lonely street children of Tokyo
Many young people who feel neglected at home flock to the Toyoko area to find a community where they can fit in.
Opportunities await the bold in the Year of the Wood Dragon
2024 marks the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac, with the year predicted to be a good time for fresh starts.
Don’t worry about global population collapse
Most projections show the world will hit peak humanity in the 21st century as people choose to have smaller families and women gain power over their own reproduction.
Sumo title contenders already emerging in early stages of Tokyo meet
Onosato (left) battles Abi on Day 3 of the Summer Basho in Tokyo on Tuesday.
Harmfully hot days for pregnant women in Japan nearly doubled over past five years
New research by a U.S. climate scientists’ group reveals that extreme heat has increased the risks of preterm births and other pregnancy complications in Japan, nearly doubling the number of days that are harmfully hot for pregnant women over the past five years.
Japanese automakers looking at a ¥1 trillion hit from Trump tariffs 
Cars on display at Nissan's headquarters in Yokohama on Tuesday. The automaker posted a massive annual net loss and confirmed that it plans to cut thousands of jobs worldwide.
Tokyo Stock Exchange wants stocks to be affordable for the average investor
The Tokyo Stock Exchange building in Nihonbashi. The exchange wants companies to lower the entry cost of investing in their shares.
Consumption tax set to dominate Upper House election debate
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba enters his office in Tokyo on Tuesday.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Japan's growing ranks of centenarians are redefining what it means to live in a super-aging society.
What comes after 100?
By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Tsukuba massif granite, one of the world’s few heritage stones
Tsukuba massif granite, one of the world’s few heritage stones

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