• Sat. Apr 26th, 2025

Japan Subculture Research Center

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

Fashion model exodus from Tokyo!

Over the past few weeks, foreign models working in Japan have been gracing a different runway– the one that leads directly out of the country. According to a recent article…

Why Japan's Mainstream Media Can't Be Trusted To Report Objectively On TEPCO (東京電力)

When the earthquake struck Japan on March 11th and knocked out TEPCO’s Fukushima nuclear reactor, setting off a chain reaction of disasters–TEPCO’s chairman Tsunehisa Katsumata was nowhere to be found.…

#2:46 Aftershocks: Stories From The Japan Earthquake Published. Give a little, learn a lot, help some people.

2:46: Aftershocks: Stories from the Japan Earthquake aka #Quakebook, which is a compilation of art, stories, and essays to raise money for Japan earthquake survivors, went on sale today. All…

The big question answered: Who gave TEPCO permission to use plutonium at the Reactor #3, when was permission granted, and why?

UPDATE: Thanks to contributions from readers, and some hours of research, I found the answer to the question originally posed here (see original article below). The current governor of Fukushima…

Of earthquakes, tsunami and the ephemeral

by Orlando Camargo Those of us living far away from our parents dread the thought. A call in the middle of the night asking you to book a flight –…

The Return of The King: Yamaguchi-gumi boss leaves prison today

Today April 9th, around 6am, the head of Japan’s largest organized crime group, the Yamaguchi-gumi (山口組), Shinobu Tsukasa-kumicho (司忍組長), will leave Fuchu Prison after serving his time for violations of…

Yakuza: Of the End to be released June 9 with special commemorative sticker

For those of you who don’t follow the Ryu ga Gotoku: Of the End Twitter feed through their nifty application we previously reviewed, it was announced today that the game’s…

IMAGINE JOURNALIST: JAPAN! Coming soon For Virtual Boy 2! Nintendo DS version already available*

Report wacky news about Japan on TV based on spurious information Develop your investigative skills but never get to use them because you're overworked and have no budget for research

Review: People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman

Jake has done an honest and intriguing review of journalist Richard Lloyd Parry’s People Who Eat Darkness: The Fate of Lucie Blackman over at Literary Review. Partial transcript below. When…

The jury is in: Japan’s new jury system is a farce.

This news story slipped under my large nose in the last few days of earth-shaking quake related news. On March 30th (2011) the Tokyo High Court overturned the not-guilty verdict…