In an eye-blinkingly brief ceremony at the Imperial Palace, Naruhito, 59, officially succeeded Akihito, 85, an enormously popular monarch who brought the royal family much closer to the people as he emphasized a message of peace in a country haunted by the legacy of war.
Takashi Murakami's work on Billie Eilish's new video for "You Should See Me in a Crown" is the latest example of Western music's ongoing love affair with Japanese anime. It’s also exciting to see the art form embraced by Lil Uzi Vert, Soulja Boy and so many other artists in the world of hip-hop.
A recent uptick in anime-charged prose has seen mentions of mainstream fan favorites such as “Dragonball Z” and “Naruto,” and more obscure series like “Berserk” and “Lupin the Third.” These examples barely scratch the surface when it comes to the abundance of spoken anime references in hip-hop and R&B. What gets fans of both anime and hip-hop hyped up is when the two fields collide visually.
The 2018 Report on the Japanese Anime Industry recorded an increase in the market value of anime's overseas market by 29.6 percent from 2016 to 2017. Anime might be Japan's most valuable soft-power weapon—even more than sushi.
What if you could live longer just by doing more of what you love to do most?
It's an attractive theory that finds its evidence in Ogimi, a community on the island of Okinawa that's nicknamed the Village of Longevity because its residents have the highest life expectancy in the world. They also largely share a devotion to a Japanese philosophy known as ikigai, a concept that is, at times, used synonymously with purpose, passion, meaning, mission, vocation and drive.
To help define your own ikigai, ask yourself: "Why do I get up in the morning?" "What motivates me?" "What do I love doing most?" Or, "What would I regret not having done with my life when it's over?"
Nagoya-based husband-and-wife vlogging duo Rachel and Jun Yoshizuki run the YouTube channel Rachel and Jun. Their on-the-ground accounts of daily life in Japan have been viewed more than 200 million times.
They belong to a community of “J-vloggers”: YouTubers who attract millions of views by sharing their insights into Japanese culture, including anything from a tour of a Japanese high school, to what it’s like to stay in a tiny room in a capsule hotel, and what it’s like to be multiracial in Japan.
“All of us [J-vloggers] get comments from our audience that they went to Japan because of us, or they started studying Japanese because of our videos, or they visited this city because we made a video about it,” Rachel says.
Japan landed two unmanned rovers on a 1-kilometer-wide asteroid named Ryugu in late September, 2018. It was the first time robot rovers have successfully landed on an asteroid surface.
"I felt awed by what we had achieved in Japan. This is just a real charm of deep space exploration," Takashi Kubota, a spokesman for the space agency, told CNN. The two rovers together are called MINERVA-II1 and came from the spacecraft Hayabusa2.
The rovers hop and float across the asteroid—thanks to its low gravity—to capture information including photos and the asteroid's temperature. Since landing, the rovers have sent back photos and data. This asteroid is believed to be a particularly early one, with a wealth of water and organic material that will shed light on the "Building blocks of Earth."
In 2016, two years after the English translation of “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing” became a best-seller, Marie Kondo moved to Los Angeles to establish her home organization consultancy in America. Amidst her culture shock, the Japanese native soon realized her new country also provided something that her homeland did not: unprecedented levels of clutter on which to practice her art.
Tokyo has topped a list of the world’s most innovative cities, leapfrogging London and New York after embracing the “globe-shaking trends of robotics and 3-D manufacturing.”
Tokyo has risen rapidly since entering the top 10 of the Innovation Cities Index three years ago behind Paris, and was one of three Asian cities to feature this year.
“What really surprised us this year was the resurgence of Tokyo, moving up to eclipse rival cities like Boston,” said Christopher Hire, director of commercial data provider 2thinknow, which published the annual ranking on Friday.
“They showed clear direction by embracing smart technology change to lead innovation and leadership in what we have identified as the twin long-term globe-shaking trends of robotics and 3-D manufacturing.”
The European Union and Japan signed a monumental trade deal in, July 2018, eliminating nearly all tariffs between the entities in one of the world’s largest free-trade deals. The pact, signed in Tokyo, covers a third of the global economy.
The agreement is in stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s trade war and alignment with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Although the leaders didn’t mention him by name, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and EU leaders Donald Tusk and Jean-Claude Juncker distanced themselves from Trump’s tactics in a press conference following the deal.
“Politically, it’s a light in the increasing darkness of international politics,” European Council President Tusk said of the deal. “We are sending a clear message that you can count on us. We are predictable – both Japan and [the] EU – predictable and responsible and will come to the defense of a world order based on rules, freedom and transparency and common sense.”
With the end of the year drawing closer, the pressure is on to figure out how to greet the Year of the Boar. If the dwindling number of viewers staying in to watch NHK’s annual music showcase “Kohaku Uta Gassen” is any indication, more and more people in the Kanto region are choosing to head out for less traditional celebrations.
A good soundtrack can be key to a proper New Year’s celebration and there are more than enough options in and around Tokyo to satisfy a variety of musical tastes. Countdown Japan is a music festival that will take place at the sprawling Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba Prefecture, kicking things off on Dec. 28 and continuing until the early hours of the new year. Around 180 acts will play over the course of four days.
UNESCO has decided to add 12 sites to the World Heritage list that are linked to the history of the country’s persecuted Christians.
The sites include the Oura Cathedral in Nagasaki, the oldest surviving church in the country which is already designated as a national treasure; and the remains of Hara Castle, a site of the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion that led to establishment of a national policy of seclusion and the beginning of the hidden Christians’ unique system to transmit their faith and beliefs by themselves.
The newly added sites “bear unique testimony to a cultural tradition nurtured by hidden Christians in the Nagasaki region who secretly transmitted their faith during the period of prohibition from the 17th to the 19th century,” the committee said on its website.
This is an op-ed—meaning it is the author's personal view—from The New York Times.
For nearly the last two decades, Japan has been held up as a cautionary tale, an object lesson on how not to run an advanced economy. After all, the island nation is the rising superpower that stumbled. And Western economists were scathing in their criticisms of Japanese policy.
In January 1990, Japan's stock market crashed. Property values fell 87%. The Bank of Japan lowered the interest rate from 6 percent to 0.5 percent by 1995, but it didn't revive the economy
These days, I often find myself thinking that we ought to apologize.
Shinzo Abe is on course to become Japan's longest-serving prime minister—and achieve his goal of revising the country's pacifist constitution—after he was comfortably re-elected president of the ruling Liberal Democratic party [LDP] on Thursday, September 20.
Abe's victory—taking 553 votes out of a total of 807—means he is assured of continuing as prime minister and is expected to use his mandate to push ahead with controversial plans to strengthen the legal status of Japan's military, known as the self-defence forces.
Speaking on the eve of the vote among LDP MPs and party members, Abe said he was determined to "Build a new country together", adding: "I promise to take the lead in handing over a proud and hopeful Japan to younger generations."
Japan's lower house on May 31 approved controversial labour reforms that the government has defended as necessary to boost the economy. But, critics warn could result in more death by overwork. The legislation would scrap hourly overtime pay for some employees, while setting overtime caps for others at an annual limit of 360 hours for normal cases, and up to 720 hours for "temporary" and "special" cases.
The government says the measures will boost efficiency and equality, and they form a key plank of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "Abenomics" policy to kickstart the country's sluggish economy. The reform's key feature is letting Japan's corporate sector hire select highly paid professionals, such as currency traders and consultants, on contracts which include no overtime pay. The category only applies to those who earn at least 10.75 million yen ($100,000USD) annually, with employers required to seek the consent of professionals involved.
On Sunday 8th April, Ohtani had a perfect game through six innings and ended with seven strikeouts. Oh, and this was after hitting home runs in three straight games as the Angels designated hitter.
Ohtani has frequently been called the Babe Ruth of Japan, in reference to the most well known player in the majors to serve as a pitcher and hitter. But even the comparisons to the Babe may be underselling just how good Ohtani has been at both roles already, as noted by the Washington Post.
One thing is for sure, watching Ohtani continue to blaze this unique trail for the Angels will be one of this year's most fascinating stories in not just baseball, but all of sports.
We are now experiencing the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), a period of rapid change driven by progress in science and technology. The main drivers of 4IR are AI, big data and the Internet of Things (IoT). Japan will play a leading role in global innovation with a new World Economic Forum (WEF) center devoted to maximizing the potential of the 4IR, says Klaus Schwab, WEF founder and executive chairman.
“Japan is not sufficiently recognized for its innovative capabilities,” Schwab said in a recent interview with Forbes Japan. “The world is speaking about what’s happening in Silicon Valley and Shenzhen, but it is not aware that Japan has created a very successful startup community.”
Japan, in a move that few could have foreseen, has opened at least eight brand new coal-burning power plants in the last two years and has plans for at least 36 more in the next ten years.
[Critics] say that the government is being weak on renewables and that the return to coal guarantees a major rise in air pollution, standing in direct conflict with Japan’s pledges to cut its greenhouse gas emissions. As it stands now, the country is responsible for a whopping 4 percent of global emissions, and that’s before the impending construction of 36 coal plants over the next decade.
Japan is also looking for other ways to greenify coal, including looking into the fossil fuel as a possible source of energy for hydrogen-powered cars.
The number of children on nursery school waiting lists in Japan as of Oct. 1 last year grew 7,695 from a year before to 55,433, up for the third straight year, the welfare ministry has said.
In March 2017, the ministry expanded the scope of the waiting lists to include cases in which parents decided not to return to work and extended parental leave because they could not find nurseries with enough space to accept their children.
The waiting lists tend to be especially long in urban areas. Yokohama had 1,877 children on waiting lists, the largest figure among all municipalities, followed by the city of Saitama with 1,345 and the city of Osaka with 1,335.
The government aims to eliminate the need for waiting lists by increasing the number of spaces at nurseries and other facilities by a total of 320,000 by the end of March 2021.
More and more elementary school teachers in Japan are turning to English language schools with native speakers, as they seek to gain confidence in teaching the language before it is formally added to their curricula in the academic year starting April 2020.
Many teachers admit to lacking confidence in their English, in areas from vocabulary to grammar, expressiveness and pronunciation. Elementary school teachers say they are afraid of teaching their students “the wrong thing.”
In 2011 Japan made English compulsory for fifth- and sixth-graders as part of their extra-curricular “foreign language activities.” Last year the guidelines were further revised to start English education from the third grade as part of foreign language teaching, and make English a formal subject from fifth grade, starting in 2020, in an effort to enhance the nation’s global competitiveness.
At just 30 years old, Yuki Kawauchi is in a distance running category of his own.
As of January 1, Kawauchi—one guy—has run more sub-2:10 marathons since 2011 than the whole United States put together. Kawauchi’s best time for 2017—2:09:18—was two seconds faster than the fastest marathon of the year by any U.S. man, which would be Galen Rupp, who ran a career best of 2:09:20 in Chicago. Rupp, like most athletes at that level, ran two marathons in 2017. Kawauchi ran 12.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to repeal a Japanese law requiring broadcasters to show impartiality, a step critics fear will lead to sensational reporting and polarize views, just as a similar move has been blamed for doing in the United States.
Abe’s government has drafted changes to Japan’s broadcast law and plans to include them in reform proposals as early as May, laying the groundwork for future legislation, three government sources told Reuters.
The sources, who asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter, said the draft includes repealing the law’s article 4, which requires license holders to show contrasting political views and is considered Japan’s version of the U.S. Fairness Doctrine.
