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People | CLOSE-UP Feb 3, 2013

Hidetoshi Masunaga: making revolution through the Constitution

by Tomoko Otake

On Dec. 14, 2012, two days before the Lower House election in which the Democratic Party of Japan headed by Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was eclipsed as the conservative Liberal Democratic Party swept back to power in a landslide, a one-page advert with a ...

People | CLOSE-UP Jan 6, 2013

Frederik Schodt: pop culture ambassador to the world

by Edan Corkill

Quick quiz: Who was the first Japanese civilian to be issued a passport? If your mind is drifting in the direction of a businessman who might have availed himself of an early opportunity to travel abroad in the mid-1860s, when the government first permitted such ...