Reviews

By Kaori Shoji  I am at the reception counter of Muji Hotel – the much touted and long awaited hotel produced by Muji, Japan’s popular minimalist clothing and household products…

Yakuza. Samurai. Monsters. NoFace. Lost face. Here's a guide to take you through the most memorable movies (including the bad, the good and the ugly) that adorned the Heisei era…

In the children’s picture book Teach me Enma-sama, written and illustrated by Hiromi Tanaka, Enma who is the King of Hell in Buddhist mythology teaches children how to behave in…

Hayakawa imagines a near future in which the government launches the titular program: people over 75 are offered a quick and painless euthanising. In 美しい国, the story revolves around an…

he book reveals in a deeply observant way how ultimately, Japan and Japanese women refused to be messed around with, particularly by a foreigner. And in the end, Houchen's wife…

Hollywood executives hear the word 'Asians' and immediately conjure an image of sweating maidens in rice paddies, or yakuza with swords in Shinjuku, or maidens and yakuza hooking up in…

In 1978, 33 years after the Japanese surrender, Joel Robuchon was appointed master chef at the Hotel Nikko de Paris (now the Novotel Paris Centre Tour Eiffel) Coincidentally, Robuchon himself…

On another level, "The Trial" shows up the very Kafka-esqueness of Japan's judicial system - the long, grueling process of scrutiny between arrest and indictment, and how, once indictment kicks…

Japan Subculture Research Center was founded in 2007 to expose the hidden side of Japan – its underground economy, its transient and strange trends, its robust sex trade, wacky politics,…

Cicadas live underground until their final stage of adulthood. When they surface, they attach themselves to a tree bark, shed their skin and fly away, leaving behind their exoskeleton still…