Do we think of the psyche when we see a piece of furniture? Generally not, but perhaps we should. Looking beyond obvious skill and technical finesse, Furniture with Soul: Master... Read More

Taking office at the age of fifty, Sadayoshi Kaneda becomes the youngest prime minister in Japanese history. The old guard isn’t exactly thrilled about this turn of events,... Read More

Ever since the tsunami, things have been getting stranger and stranger for reporter Shogo Kosaka. From the moment he meets teenage psychic Shinji Inamura in the storm and begins... Read More

In the early 1600s, in the beginning of the Edo period in Japan, nearly all suitable land had been opened to cultivation; soils were beginning to exhaust and forests were... Read More

Few Baby Boomers who grew up lunching in public school cafeterias escaped ladles of an over-salted, brown glop known as chop suey. That meal passed as an introduction to... Read More

Mandarin Matches. The roster of exceptional pairings, from Fred and Ginger to peanut butter and chocolate, shouldn’t make such a fuss over the relationship between wine and... Read More

Sasaki Kojiro was a famed swordsman, the pinnacle of an ancient line of traditional samurai warriors who sought mastery of all fighting techniques. He stood on the shores of a... Read More

Japanese is an extraordinarily challenging language for foreigners to speak, let alone read, yet William Scott Wilson has demonstrated an amazing gift for translating classical... Read More

Tokyo’s extremely sophisticated food scene encompasses a similar breadth of inexpensive to mid-range dining options highlighted by the izakaya, or Japanese “pub.” Like its... Read More

Tour guide of the night Kenji realizes that all is not well with his latest job when a piece of burnt human skin ends up stuck to his front door—and that’s just the... Read More

For the Ryans, poetry, like meditation, like life, is all about breathing. In this strange hybrid of poetry, meditation, and self-help, the husband-and-wife authorial team pairs... Read More