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Here’s What Japanese Art Looked Like in the Aftermath of the Atomic Bombs
Kamaitachi No. 31, 1968, © Eikoh Hosoe The cultural shift between pre and post-WWII world Japan was complicated and often divisive, but if you were photographer Eikoh Hosoe, that tension became fuel...
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An Insider Peep into Tokyo’s Secretive Red Light District: Then & Now
Watanabe Katsumi was the king of treading lightly. As a drifting photographer, his lens was a stealthy observer of Tokyo’s red light district, snapping hundreds of photos of its drag queens,...
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A Pit-Stop in Japan’s Time Capsule Post Towns
Tsumago © semitune We’ve got an achilles heel for places stuck in the past, and today on our armchair adventures, we’re stopping off in the sleepy streets of Japan’s cinematic post towns, known...
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Did Jesus Escape to Japan?
Greetings from Shingo, a rural village, 650km north of Tokyo that is believed by its inhabitants to be the last resting place of Jesus Christ. Make the pilgrimage to its quiet hills, and you’ll find...
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Don’t Mess With the Jiu-jitsu Suffragettes
It’s Edwardian Era Glasgow, circa 1914, and the stress mounting in St. Andrews’s Hall is unbearable. Flocks of Suffragettes and policemen are waiting for the woman of the hour, Emmeline Pankhurst, to...
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Vintage Japanese Advertising Could Sell Us Anything
The foamiest men’s shampoo to make bath-time oodles more fun? The latest must-have make-up for your back? Whatever they were selling, we would’ve been buying. If you were in post-WWII Japan, your...
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The Accidentally Couture Life of a Samurai
How do you dress for a dance with death? If you were a 14th century Samurai, the pressure was on to go into battle with a kabuto (helmet) that subscribed to a fiercely maximalist vision. These...
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Oh, Just an Utterly Insane Japanese Robot Restaurant
©SarahJa7 / Flickr There are themed restaurants, and then there’s Japan’s Robot Restaurant, which will steam roll your brain with glow sticks, techno, and robots.
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Japan’s Ancient Attitude to Sex was Way Freakier than you’d Imagine
“Even Though She Looks Old, She Is Really Young” by Utagawa Kuniyoshi1847 – 1848 At a glance, the picture looks perfectly innocent: a 19th century, posh portrait of woman sipping tea. Upon closer...
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Let’s Get Whisked Away by Kitschy Kaiju Japanese Monsters
Who doesn’t love a good B-movie monster? Step into the world of tokusatsu (特撮), or “special effect filming” in Japanese. The term is shorthand for a genre of live action films bursting with heavy...
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An Ode to the Man Who Dressed Ziggy Stardust
Kansai Yamamoto fits David Bowie in one of his designs Every once in a while, pop culture gives us a duo whose legacies feel almost magnetically intertwined. David Bowie and the Japanese designer...
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THE PARIS SYNDROME
A London friend emailed me an article this morning about tourists visiting the French capital, specifically Japanese, who fall prey to what is known as the ‘Paris syndrome’. Around a million Japanese...
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The Inexplicably Fascinating Japanese Art of Being Useless
“Not always useful, but not altogether useless” is the mantra behind Chindōgu, a Japanese art form that calls for stilettos with built-in umbrellas, noodle bibs for the face, and glue sticks filled...
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Found in an NYC Junk Shop: Forgotten Postcards between Two Haiku Masters
Found at the bottom of an old mailbox in a New York antiques store, what’s written on the back of these postcards perfectly captures the iconic arts scene in New York’s early 1960s– a city that was...
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Japan’s Favourite Museum Is Dedicated to the Cup Noodle
If (noodle) Heaven is a place on Earth, we’re pretty certain it’d be at the CupNoodles Museum in Yokohama, Japan. Since opening its doors in 2011, the museum has become a veritable mecca for lovers of...
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Japanese Mermaids: Ancient Pearl Hunters of the Sea
These women are the last of their kind. In their floral wetsuits, they fill their lungs with air and dive for long periods of time deep into the Pacific ocean, with nothing more than a mask and...
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