• Tue. Mar 19th, 2024

Japan Subculture Research Center

A guide to the Japanese underworld, Japanese pop-culture, yakuza and everything dark under the sun.

Kaori Shoji

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  • What This Means (a short-story about love and marriage in Japan during the pandemic)

What This Means (a short-story about love and marriage in Japan during the pandemic)

And then she would pretend to pout which was another cue for me to massage the back of her feet, and then we'd head off to the bedroom or just…

“The Only Woman in the Room”/ How The Amazing Beate Wrote Equal Rights For Women Into Japan’s Constitution

Is Japan's peacetime constitution going to be trashed by the ruling party and returned back to the Imperial Constitution, which did not give suffrage or equal rights to women? This…

Why the Japanese Media Would Rather Not Talk About Brett Kavanaugh

There are millions of women on the archipelago of Japan who have been assaulted, groped, raped, harassed and discriminated against. There are probably thousands if not more, of Kavanaugh equivalents…

We’re Stuck With ‘The Last Samurai’ While Everyone Else Gets Crazy Rich

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…

Update! Larceny Is Part of Family Love in Cannes Winner “Shoplifters”–Showing With English subtitles on June 21 (木)

The titular family in "Shoplifters" give a new slant to the term "living in squalor." Their house looks more like a bizarre crime scene than an actual dwelling for normal…

Banzai To Japanese Print Media! Kaori Shoji’s Picks For Excellence In Japan’s Written Word World 2017

As far as bad years go, 2017 pretty much did us in and it's not even over yet. Still, the news isn't all bad, at least in the Japanese publication…

The Amazing Japanese Wife Part 3: A Man Needs His Carcinogen

Seiko and I still share the same bedroom but sleep in single beds placed two feet apart, because she claimed my snoring bothered the hell out of her. I understand…

Celebrate Japanese Cinema Day: 映画の日! Ninja! Yakuza! Cyborgs! Reviews!

But I think that the reason the general public identified with the roles I played, was that they were struck by my stance as a man who unrelentingly stands up…

The Girl’s Guide to Decluttering and Hunting (in that order)

Consider these 2 pictures. Before: Single, living alone in a 29 square meter apartment in Tokyo. The place is so filthy it’s a struggle every morning to shower, get dressed…

What We Wear About When We Think About Clothes: Musings on Japanese Fashion

Back in the late 20th century, the word on the street about Japanese fashion was that it had the lowest f*ckability points in the world. "I wouldn't want to bed…