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Japan Subculture Research Center

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

Month: June 2021

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  • The Vaccination Game: The Self-Defense Forces Vaccination Center was run smoothly but no-appointment days are over

The Vaccination Game: The Self-Defense Forces Vaccination Center was run smoothly but no-appointment days are over

The large-scale Self-Defense Forces vaccination center near Otemachi, Tokyo, doesn’t open for another 70 minutes, and there is already a line of people looping around the large, brown, 16 story…

The People of Tokyo Hate The Tokyo 2020 Olympics. Why do they protest?

Yesterday, June 23rd, marked one month before the opening of the “cursed” Tokyo 2020 Olympics and hundreds of residents marked the occasion by holding a protest in front of the…

"Where Is The Romance?"–a hard-boiled meditation on mating rituals in Tokyo (for V-day)

In a departure from our usual somber posting, I’ve written an original prose-poem, which is for a friend’s upcoming “Where is the Romance” theme party in Tokyo–a pre-valentines’s day event.…

Pandemic highlights Japan’s historical lack of leadership and management

By Chihiro Kai “My evaluation of the Japanese COVID measures is that they are purely optimism based with no evidence, no grounds, as well as with very much a normative…

Japan’s Monster Mermaid Amabie is Here To Save You From COVID19! (Maybe)

Though the typical Japanese yokai is often grotesque and loves to play pranks on humans, the Amabie is a beach chick that emerges from the sea to foretell epidemics. If…

Japan Solves Coronavirus Crisis With Magical Math

By Chihiro Kai. Edited by Jake Adelstein Suddenly, Japan which was facing a severe fourth wave of coronavirus infections, serious illnesses and death seems to be out of the woods!…

THE BADGER AND THE STARS (a poem)

This girl will be named Shoko, spirit in flight, and years later when I moved from place to place, hobby to hobby, man to man, she'd lament naming me so…