Japanese TV show featuring blackface actor sparks anger
The New Year's Eve show featured celebrity comic Hamada appearing in a Beverly Hills Cop skit with his face blacked up. Using makeup to lampoon black people - a practice known as black…
The archive
Recent articles — page 441
Browse recent articles in the Akihabara archive.
What it means to be a mixed-race model in Japan
For 18-year-old model Rina Fukushi, Tokyo is home. But growing up as a mixed-race child in Japan wasn't always easy. With a Japanese-American father and a Filipina mother, Fu…
This designer Japanese cat condo costs almost the annual rent of a condo for humans in Tokyo
Prices for cat condos are on the rise in Japan. A artisan-crafted feline perch called Modern Cat Tree NEKO retails for ¥1,080,000 (approximately $9,570) including tax. The Japanese are know…
Japan's Endless Search for Modernity
One hundred and fifty years after the Meiji Restoration, several generations of growth and development have not erased the feeling that Japan remains in the midst of a transformation pitting traditio…
Bitcoin could be adding 0.3% to Japanese GDP
The rise in the value of bitcoin could be adding 0.3% to Japanese GDP growth, according to Nomura analysts Yoshiyuki Suimon and Kazuki Miyamoto. In a recent note to clients, they argued that the…
The $2,500 answer to Amazon's Echo could make Japan's sex crisis even worse
Japan has a sex problem. The country's birthrate is shrinking year after year, to the point where deaths are outpacing births. Simply put, Japan's population is decreasing.
Logan Paul scandal over Youtube video in Aokigahara forest
After hiking only a couple hundred yards into Aokigahara—where over 247 people attempted to take their own lives in 2010 alone, according to police statistics cited in The Japan Times—Paul encountere…
Delicious but deadly mochi: The Japanese rice cakes that kill
Two people have died in Japan and several are in a critical condition after choking on traditional rice cakes as part of the new year celebrations. They may seem harmless, but each year the hard…
Inside the Eccentric, Relentless Deal-Making of Masayoshi Son
Masayoshi Son has been an unstoppable force in the technology world over the last year. As he lined up a roster of big backers—Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and Apple’s Tim Cook among them—for SoftBank…
Nabana No Sato 2018: Japan's wildest light display is back
It's one of Japan's greatest winter illumination festivals, famed for using millions of LED light bulbs to depict beautiful scenes of nature from Japan and around the world. Nabana No …