Blog
How Tokyo Learned to Live with COVID-19: Vigilance, Habit and the Texture of Daily Life
The comedian Ken Shimura died of COVID-19 at the end of March 2020. Haruka, a student in her twenties living in Tokyo, had no personal connection to him. But she knew his face from watching TV with her grandmother, and ...
Many People Knew, But No One Said Anything: The Silence Around the Kitagawa Case
In 2023, Japanese media began reporting extensively on sexual abuse allegations against Johnny Kitagawa, founder of the artist (idol) management company Johnny & Associates, Inc. Yet the striking part was the previous silence, which had held for so long despite ...
‘Look at Me!’: Yonezu Tomoko and the Politics of Being Seen
On a summer morning in 1971, Yonezu Tomoko left her apartment in Ebisu wearing a hand-painted white T-shirt. Across the chest and back, in large characters, she had written ‘Look at Me!’ (Watashi wo mite!). She paired it with black ...
Volunteering in Local Japanese Classes: A Double-Edged Sword?
Can you picture a place where retirees, office workers, housewives, and students sit down together with labour migrants, the foreign spouses of Japanese people, and other long-term residents? Local Japanese classes are exactly that. Across Japan, these classes are organised ...
Behind the Perfect Wall: Murakami Haruki’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls
A clock tower without hands. A wall so perfect that neither wind nor cannon can breach it. A town where everything is eternal, and where, to enter, you must surrender your shadow. The walled-in town in Murakami Haruki’s The City ...
Shōshi kōreika, demographic decline, and gender inequality in Japan
In early 2020, more than 34,000 people across Japan were asked a simple question: What is the most pressing issue in Japan today? The answer that came back most often was a familiar phrase: shōshi kōreika (少子高齢化)— low birth rate, ...
