Communities might have rallied behind each other in the face of the calamitous earthquakes in 1995 and 2011, but the new coronavirus pandemic has spurred a response that is more about self-preservation than helping others in need.
The Meiji Restoration changed Japanese society on a grand scale, but let's not forget another "revolution" that turned things upside down.
In normal times, we seek happiness. In times of crisis, we seek normality.
Humanity is eternally vulnerable to the "unknown" and there's not much that we know about the new coronavirus.
The Laws of Compassion that Tokugawa Tsunayoshi issued trickled down to the lowest rungs of Edo Period (1603-1868) Japan, which included the capital's many feral dogs.
Dad works in a bank. “For a man, work is everything” — that’s his motto. It was his father’s before him. Unquestioned and undoubted, it entered his bloodstream. Work was everything. He rose high, wielded great authority and drew a good salary. He was 42, ...
What’s happening in Japan is written all over our faces — our blank, expressionless, masked faces. Never before, it seems safe to say, have so many people gone about masked. Thus we confront the microbes that assault us. Are the microbes disconcerted? It seems not. “As self-protection, ...
The Edo Period (1603-1868) was a bizarre time that visitors to Japan could not help but comment on — the countless laws, the brutal punishments ... and the dogs.
The Japanese weren't always workaholics. Once upon a time, work had its place and knew its place. It didn't swallow life whole. Other pursuits were given their due. People worked without being consumed by work. Author Jiro Asada, writing in PHP magazine (April), refers us ...
Fake news times fake news is fake news squared — which is to say, it goes viral. It multiplies like a virus, which multiplies like fake news. Then the equation gets complicated. What's fake news times a viral epidemic? "Unfortunately," says Weekly Playboy magazine this month, ...
