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Certain so-called “rare-earth” metals are vital to modern manufacturing and technology. Applications range from lasers and magnets to ceramic capacitors, oxidative agents, high-tempera…
A week ago, I saw Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs,” or “Inu-ga-shima.” I saw it as someone who, upon hearing that name, is forcibly reminded of Oni-ga-shima, the isle of demons where…
The Ace Hotel chain is opening its first Japanese outpost in Kyoto this winter, in a former telephone exchange building overhauled by Kengo Kuma. Japanese architect Kuma will convert the ShinPuh…
In some ways, Hisako Akitani’s videogame store was just another small family business that closed when its owners got older and tired of fighting the internet. Yet when Ms. Akitani stood behind …
Japan’s 2015 census showed that southern Kantō (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, and Saitama Prefectures) accounted for 28.4% of the overall population. This concentration in the Tokyo metropolitan area is ex…
The number of crime syndicate members in Japan fell to a record-low 34,500 in 2017, down for the 13th straight year, on the back of stronger police crackdowns, national police data showed Thursd…
International marriages peaked in 2006, but have declined considerably since then. Especially prominent is the massive drop in unions between Japanese husbands and Filipina wives.
In the town of Shiogama in Miyagi Prefecture, there’s a residential neighborhood overlooking Matsushima Bay, the epicenter of Japan’s catastrophic March 2011 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. On a q…
In 1955, only ten years after the end of World War II, bananas were scarce in Japan, yet people longed for them. This gave a young man named Kimura Wataru an idea: bring bananas to the Japanese peopl…
Japan’s emergence as a global center for cryptocurrencies didn’t start with open-minded lawmakers or prescient investments by the country’s financial giants. Instead, it began with an American f…
