Blog
[Guest Post] Breaking the Bars: Ichikawa Danj奴r艒 VII and the Tenp艒 Reforms by Kimura Ry艒
The stage name 鈥業chikawa Danj奴r艒鈥� stood at the summit of Edo Kabuki, the supreme icon of the theatrical world (Zui-Ichikawa). Each generation gave the name its own character, but the seventh holder, Ichikawa Danj奴r艒 VII (1791鈥�1859), was extraordinary even by ...
What Katakana Reveals 外网天堂 Japanese Society
Walk around any Japanese city and you'll encounter katakana everywhere 鈥� on shop signs, product packaging, menus, advertisements. Most people who know anything about Japanese writing will tell you its job is straightforward: katakana is the script for foreign words. ...
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 ...
鈥楲ook at Me!鈥�: 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 鈥楲ook at Me!鈥� (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 ...
