Contemporary Culture

There's a phenomenon in the field of robotics and artificial intelligence known as the "uncanny valley" hypothesis, which asserts that when computers and objects look or act very much like…

You see, the Japanese are sometimes called the world's great antiquarians. And they can trace their own tradition of Buddhist sculpture back to Bamiyan. So they --like many people-- find…

Mayan prophecy moves on Mayan time. Even an 8 year old boy knows this. And an 8 year old boy also knows that not even the end of the world*…

Chapter 12: "We Ran It In A Different Way" is a must for anyone interested in the shadow history of Japan. It details how in post-war Japan, the CIA, using…

The final thing you have to consider, is the way Japanese debt is structured. On the face of it, the country has a debt 195% of their GBP. Meaning the…

"The name is Bond. Japan Bond." Shinzo Abe returns as the economic death-dealing agent .007 in a new action thriller that has all the economists shaking. Will he be able…

Any hard-boiled journalist or cop will tell you that coffee and cigarettes go well together. So I guess it was a stroke of marketing genius for Philip Morris to team…

It's the story of Sorato, a high school student who's deceased father was a sculptor of Buddhist images (仏師/busshi）and seems to have passed his unusual talent on to poor Sorato-kun.…

I wanted to share with the students the things in life I wish I'd learned when I was younger. 継続は力 (Keizoku wa Chikara). Persistence is power. Sometimes, the only difference…

This week Japanese police has finally put an end to a 17 years criminal investigation into a series of Aum Shinrikyo cult incidents. On Monday, September 24th,  Tokyo prosecutors indicted the last…