“A Man” Takes Imposter Syndrome To New Dimensions
Life seems to be going incredibly well for them until Daisuke is killed in an accident. At the one-year memorial, his estranged older brother turns up from Gunma prefecture, clear…
Washoku
Once they get married, Japanese women will do pretty much everything they want, because age - looming on the horizon like Godzilla lurching closer with each passing year - justifies…
Intimate Strangers: Mothers Without Sons—new suspense film explores the depths of human connection
Intimate Stranger is about a woman with a missing son, who connects with a 17-year old boy during a mask-clad, pandemic stricken winter in Tokyo. The woman works in a…
A Farewell To Japan’s King of Toxic Masculinity: Shintaro Ishihara
Ishihara hated outspoken women and liberal men; he had no kind feelings for the US and refused to be enthralled or intimidated by western culture. Ishihara reserved his most acidic…
Driving In Winter With Haruki Murakami… and Why We Still Need Him
Murakami's story is part of a compilation titled Men Without Women, a fate which, in the Murakami scheme of things is akin to death by torture. Men cannot exist without…
My Brushes With the Yakuza – Reflections of Life in Akasaka, Tokyo
My first encounter with the ‘yakuza’ or the crooks and gangsters of Japan’s underworld, happened when I was 14 years old, on my way home from cram school. It was…
In the shadows of Hiroshima: Director Kurosaki takes on the story of Japan’s own WWII top-secret nuclear arms plan
And now a Japanese movie is saying we could have been the perpetrators of the world's first nuclear bomb attack? That's an incredibly heavy load to process, and still more…
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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…
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Woman Under The Sand (short story)
Kimie felt as if her insides had dried out and her blood vessels were clogged with sand. Did the woman in the novel die in the end? Kimie couldn’t remember…
Japan’s Death Wish Resurges Like A Plague
Suicides in Japan are like wildfires in California: tragic, inevitable and seemingly unsolvable. According to the National Police Agency, 1805 people killed themselves in September and suicides amongst women were…