German-born writer Hermann Hesse wrote a short story masterpiece called “Jugendgedenken” (Boyhood memories). It is about the main character “I,” who is intensely passionate about making specim...

I saw a group of people gathered for a high school reunion getting on a sightseeing bus. They appeared to be of the age when it wouldn’t be strange if they had grandchildren. One of them yelled in a...

When she was walking in a refugee camp in Africa, Sadako Ogata was spoken to in Japanese. “Musume no namae wa ‘Sadako Ogata’ desu” (My daughter’s name is “Sadako Ogata”). Ogata was then...

The 74th session of the United Nations General Assembly opened this September with a sharp warning: the world is falling behind on the Sustainable Development Goals. Four years ago, governments unit...

On Oct. 3, it was reported that Onward Holdings Co., a major listed Japanese apparel company on par with World Co., would close 600 of its approximately 3,000 stores. Sixty percent of Onward Holding...

If reincarnation is possible, would another Makoto Wada be born? If you could be reincarnated, what would you want to be? A literary magazine asked this question to illustrator Makoto Wada, who rep...

In rugby scrums, only the three players in the front row directly clash with the opponent’s front row. They not only need to be heavy, but also need powerful muscles to repel the enemy. Training twi...

A wooden apartment building used to stand behind Koshien Stadium. At that time, an apartment where the rooms came with a toilet and kitchen was called “cultural housing,” but Hanshin fans apparent...

Speaking as a movie fan, “Tengoku to Jigoku” (High and Low) is a bounty of masterful filmmaking. Speaking as a movie critic trying to sum up all its virtues, it’s enough to drive you crazy. Wo...

Political scientists and economists are often invited by the government to provide opinions about policy agendas. At the end of such a meeting, policymakers may typically say: “We got it. Certainly,...

The kabuki world places importance on ancestry, as each actor belongs to an acting family, similar to being on a team. Prestigious families that have produced many excellent stars for generations incl...

In the middle of the Meiji era (1868-1912), he became the president of a shipbuilding company at the age of 30 and completed the difficult project of constructing a giant dockyard. Earning huge profit...

The uproar at a screening of “Tokyo Olympiad,” a documentary film by Kon Ichikawa, is quite well known. After watching the movie, Ichiro Kono, then minister in charge of the Tokyo Olympics, bitter...

Should social media companies decide what people can say publicly online? If so, who should decide what can (and can’t) be said by whom? This question has been simmering in my mind for a while. Pop...

The seventh Tokyo International Conference on African Development, or TICAD7, will be held in Yokohama on Aug. 28-30 with Japanese and African leaders participating to discuss infrastructure promotion...

Nobel Prize-winner in physics Masatoshi Koshiba has an anecdote. When he taught physics at a junior high school during his university days, he tested his students with this problem: “Write down what...

U.S. President Donald Trump, speaking at a press conference following the end of the Group of 20 summit meeting in Osaka in late June, complained about the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. He remarked, “...

Kodan, or narrative storytelling, is one of three major Japanese storytelling traditions, along with rakugo comedy and rokyoku chanting. In a nutshell, it involves audiences listening to a story narra...

Even when he wasn’t on TV, he seems to have been an interesting person. Rakugo storyteller Shunputei Baikyo was popular in the middle of the Showa era (1926-1989) for appearing in the Ogiri segment...

The 2020 Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games are just one year away. A variety of “one-year-to-go ceremonies” are scheduled on July 24 for the Olympics and on Aug. 25 for the Paralympics. As the c...

In the traditional Japanese almanac, the 10th or 11th day after the summer solstice is called “Hangesho.” It’s one of the 72 seasonal divisions that were used as a yardstick for farming-related...

Summer break is the blessing of academic life, when we educators get to focus on our own scholarly or creative pursuits, which we put on the back burner during the semester. We also get to squeeze in ...

A look back at history shows that the global economic systems of the past all underwent across-the-board transformations every 30 years or so. In the 1930s and 1940s, the world experienced the spre...

Grand sumo tournaments have been held six times a year since 1958, when the Nagoya basho was upgraded from a “quasi tournament.” Nagoya’s ability to steadily draw spectators was believed to be b...

Noh is an artform of that has a twinlike relationship with kyogen. Although there are many exceptions, noh can be considered tragic drama and kyogen comedy. They are basically performed alternately on...

“Hakuraku” was originally the name of a legendary horse appraiser in ancient China, but now the word has become a term to refer to a person who has the ability to see the superb talents inside oth...

Novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa was born in Tokyo in the mid-Meiji era (1868-1912). His mother soon fell ill and he became an adopted child of the Akutagawa family, who were his relatives. But he often ...

Almost six decades passed between the birth of the Emperor of the Reiwa era and his ascent to the throne this year. In retrospect, the past half century can be said to be remembered as a period of tra...

Some might mock it as “only a monster movie for children,” but there are probably a variety of reasons why it has many fans. Recently, I watched the latest Hollywood film version of Godzilla calle...

In late April, representatives from more than 100 countries, including 37 leaders of foreign governments, were in Beijing to attend the second “One Belt One Road” Forum for International Cooperati...

Japan began a new chapter in its history on May 1 when it ushered in the Reiwa era. This transformative moment must have made almost every Japanese ask: “What will our society and economy look like ...

For no reason, time passes slowly in childhood. Poet Junko Takahashi compared that feeling to a raindrop. “Doesn’t our time/like a pleasant raindrop born in the sky/start like this,” she wrote i...

Legendary film director Akira Kurosawa was strict about acting. During one of his big productions, the lead actor pulled out during filming due to a difference in opinion. With actress Machiko Kyo, h...

Explaining the traditional Japanese performing art of kabuki is very challenging. Even if you look it up in a dictionary, you won’t learn exactly what it is, as kabuki is described simply as a type ...

In the early Heisei era (1989-2019), manga culture researcher Keiichi Makino wrote, “I think we can say that manga featuring subjects that were considered problematic culturally have robustly matur...

As I was flipping through a collection of jokes by Takashi Hayasaka, who is often quoted in this column, a piece titled “sprint” caught my eye. Apparently it’s about how hard Japanese people wo...