National / History | THE LIVING PAST Aug 17, 2019
In the anarchy of Japan's industrial revolution
Japan's Meiji Era (1868-1921) industrial revolution set a scene of chaos for the nation's advocates of political and social change.
National / Media | BIG IN JAPAN Aug 3, 2019
Low voter turnout in Upper House election may reflect an indifference to democracy
In May 1993, general elections were held in Cambodia. Voter turnout was 89.56 percent. People who don't have democracy want it — very badly. Traumatized by 30 years of war, genocide, dictatorship, hunger — just about every evil into which a state can sink — ...
National / Media | BIG IN JAPAN Jul 27, 2019
Tracing the fluctuations in moral standards
"More than 16,500 women and men were sterilized against their will," reads a newsletter published in 1997 by the Network on Ethics and Intellectual Disability. Shocking. Less so now, as recent developments having made the fact familiar. Shocking all the same. How can civilization have ...
National / History | THE LIVING PAST Jul 20, 2019
Hideyo Noguchi: Under the microscope
Hideyo Noguchi (1876-1928) may be Japan's most famous scientist. His face adorns the ¥1,000 bill. His life story is legendary, folkloric.
National / Media | BIG IN JAPAN Jul 13, 2019
Working harder in a bid to save labor is proving exhausting
The utopia of utopias is "Utopia" by Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). Its best feature is leisure. There are no idle nobles; everyone works. A burden shared is a burden lightened. Utopians "do not wear themselves out with perpetual toil from morning to night, as ...
National / Media | BIG IN JAPAN Jun 29, 2019
As dementia cases rise, so a nation's character changes
"Your mother is senile, senile, senile!" The family was dining at a restaurant. Mom had gone to the rest room and Dad, in anguish, faced his two grown children. Sawako Agawa — TV personality, journalist and author — recalls the scene for Bungei Shunju magazine ...
National / Media | BIG IN JAPAN Jun 15, 2019
'Lawyerlessness' is a luxury Japan can no longer afford
In 1983, Time magazine looked at Japan and saw, to its astonishment, a "land without lawyers." "Most Japanese," said its report, "live — and die — without ever having seen a lawyer." Was this a country, or a mystic brotherhood? In the U.S. there ...
National / History | THE LIVING PAST Jun 15, 2019
Oshio Heihachiro: Confusing Confucianism
In 1837 famine raged: In Europe, socialist consciousness was dawning, but in Japan, shut tight for two centuries against the outside world, revolt against the established order was Confucian.
National / Media | BIG IN JAPAN Jun 1, 2019
Is disgust with the status quo now feeding nostalgia for the past?
Bulgarian scholar Ivan Krastev, in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun published in March, compared the restless discontent of the 1960s with that of today. Fifty years ago, he said, disgust with the status quo fed hope for the future. Today it feeds nostalgia ...
National / Media | BIG IN JAPAN May 18, 2019
Aging population spurs drive to tidy nation's cluttered homes
KonMari? Let's, by all means. If that's meaningless to you, you might want to ask yourself this question: Is my life clogged, cluttered? Marie Kondo is one of the world's most influential people. American weekly news magazine Time said so in 2015, conferring a rare distinction ...