When the tigers become rats
Jake Adelstein
With Yakuza: A 400-Year History of the Japanese Underworld, Andrew Rankin provides the clearest and best-sourced narrative history of the yakuza in English.
Tag: Japan
The way of the sword
Simon Rowe
The three volumes of Eiji Yoshikawa’s Musashi: The Novel contain a rollicking yarn with a cast of colourful characters that swirls about its nucleus, Musashi, with curious and often calamitous results.
Was Tojo Hideki the main villain?
Sayaka Chatani
Is Tojo Hideki a “Great Man” who single-handedly determined the course of history, or is he merely a character in a bigger story, a reflection of many crashing political and social forces?
When politics finds you
Luna Ruomin Huang
Even if you declare yourself politically apathetic, politics still has a way of seeking you out and banging on your door.
Bringing Iwao home
Kirsten Han
Hakamata Iwao is believed to have been the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner. For more than half a century, his sister Hideko has never given up on him.
Memories of disaster
Shu-Mei Huang
As discussions of a so-called nuclear power renaissance resurface, Return to Fukushima pushes us to (re)consider not only the ways we live but also the exploitative systems through which energy is produced and consumed.
Monogatari
David Wills
Beyond healing himself, Haruki Murakami, through his stories, has grown more interested in helping others heal.
Recovering flames
Jake Dennis
A poem from Jake Dennis
The Journey to Disaster
Peter Tasker
Twenty-five years after the death of the great Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune, a re-appraisal of a film that has been unjustly neglected.
Body image
David Hopkins
Turning photography into art in Japan
Mother’s boy
Mark Robinson
Jun’ichiro Tanizaki’s stories in English, for the first time
Burning memory
David Hopkins
A documentary remembers the firebombing of Tokyo
‘Variations of death’, ‘Notes on the back of a hurricane’
Trish Shishikura
Poetry from Trish Shishikura
The Ogura hundred
Michael Freeman
A new translation of Japan’s seminal poetry collection
Tokyo diners
Mark Robinson
Three dining tales from Tokyo
The occupation
Peter A. Coclanis
Japan’s occupation of Southeast Asia
The art of imitation
Lawrence Li
On Japanese pop legend Ōtaki Eiichi
Truth seekers
Christopher G. Moore
A mission to understand the Heart Sutra
Yesterday’s tomorrow
Peter Guest
Japan’s otaku culture was crafted from times of hardship
Made in Japan
Thomas A. Bass
Nearly a decade after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan is struggling with the clean up
Isolated
Peter Guest
In Tokyo, it’s never clear whether you are in a lockdown or not
Shameful histories
Clarissa Oon
Jing-Jing Lee’s novel about Singaporean comfort women
Upstairs, downstairs
Mark Robinson
Books, age and beauty in west Tokyo
Nissan’s Emperor
Peter Tasker
Before Carlos Ghosn there was Ichiro Shioji
Death and life
Mark Robinson
Death and life in a Tokyo neighbourhood
Lost in Gokanosho
Wayne McCallum
Gokanosho is not just a place; it’s also a state of mind
Unbowed
Gareth Richards
Rare glimpses into Japan’s invasion and occupation of Singapore
Gaijin
Peter Tasker
Ian Buruma comes of age in Japan’s warm, wet days of low-tech chaos
Daydream believers
Mark Robinson
How young and ambitious Vietnamese find themselves working in Tokyo’s convenience stores.