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If you are away from Japan, planning a holiday or even just reminiscing about previous trips, these music podcasts (and a Tokyo-based net radio station) will get you in the mood. This selection…
By Kim Kahan
Kimono literally means “something to wear.” However, as simple and true as this is, the traditional Japanese garment comes with centuries of culture and history layered on top. It’s something simultaneously governed…
By Zoria Petkoska
Something of a public art piece, the Tokyo toilets are definitely an eye-catching piece of modern infrastructure. Initiated by the Nippon Foundation, the Tokyo Toilet Project invited 17 talented architects and designers to renovate…
By Lyn Tsuchiya
Junichi Shimodaira was one of the first to take up an interest in Chicano culture in Japan in the 1980s. Just a decade before, during the Chicano revolution, Mexican Americans had taken…
By Paula Chiarino
The philosopher Kiyoshi Miki said, “the best books are those that constantly ask us questions.” We’ve put together the following list for just that reason. Fiction and nonfiction alike can help us…
By Shane Healy
One day I was standing outside my local ward office staring forlornly into the distance, the way people are wont to do when they undergo stress-inducing encounters with Japanese bureaucracy, when an…
By David McElhinney
We’re bringing back our monthly music roundups showcasing the best new songs and albums from Japan. Our review of albums in April includes the likes of Eiko Ishibashi, who wrote the accomplished…
Hidden within a subterranean parking lot in the Tokyo Metro’s Ginza station is a pop-up space called Sony Park Mini. A gallery of paintings, an experimental music studio and an ambient light…
By Mike Fu
The humans of Tokyo make this metropolis pulse with energy. In Voice of Tokyo 4, from our March-April 2022 issue, we check in with four of the many Tokyo voices that make…
From traditional fabric designs to family seals, Japan is full of symbols to dissect. Many of these symbols can be seen regularly, but there are a few others that may go unnoticed.…
By Taylor Drew
We’re bringing back our monthly music roundups showcasing the best new songs and albums from Japan. We listened to many, selecting a range of styles from techno through to psychedelic rock. As…
Medium-sized news: The Super Crooks anime is getting a live-action adaptation. And if you have no idea what Super Crooks is, then you now know why I said “medium-sized news.” Premiering on…
By Cezary Jan Strusiewicz
Yuki Matsuzaki has an old-timey but to-the-point thing to say about the oft-repeated idea that Japan is one of the most homogenous nations on the planet: “Hogwash.” A Hollywood actor of over…
I will make my film! That’s why I have dared To enter this world of cinema To show men, not to work for them! Tazuko Sakane wrote these words in 1936 when…
When the trailers for the anime movie Bubble were first released, they made heads spin, and not just because of the whirling, supersonic camera work. A parkour-focused story set in a partially…
Berlin techno is found in the dark cavernous halls of the legendary nightclub, Berghain, played by DJs such as Marcel Dettmann and Ben Klock. It has a punchy, heavy-hitting industrial sound, characterized…
It’s no secret that every startup hub wants to be the Silicon Valley of whatever country they’re based in. And Fukuoka, Kyushu’s largest city with 1.5 million residents, is one of Japan’s…
Many are trying to reinvent the kimono, weave in some modernity, or even transmute it into other objects. What Michail Gkinis from the eponymous Michail Gkinis Aoyama atelier does with the kimono…
