Japan News and Discussion
Kuchikomi › 03:00 AM JST - 21st November
Here is an excerpt, presented by Shukan Asahi (Nov 27), from the suicide note left by an 11-year-old boy: “All I can think of is…
Kuchikomi › 09:12 AM JST - 17th November
TOKYO — "Kakkoii!" (He's really cool), one blogger posted. "When he was arrested, I thought his disheveled black hair and the line along his neck to his…
Kuchikomi › 05:00 AM JST - 13th November
TOKYO — The recession of the 1990s spawned a hiring “ice age” that froze many able young people out of the regular full-time job market. One lingering…
Kuchikomi › 03:10 PM JST - 9th November
In the early 1990s, the term "Narita rikon" (Narita divorce) was added to the Japanese lexicon. It referred to couples on overseas honeymoons who, having…
Kuchikomi › 06:08 PM JST - 3rd November
For Japan, says Shukan Jitsuwa (Nov 12), 2006 was Year One of the fake med influx that by now has risen to a flood tide.…
Kuchikomi › 10:56 AM JST - 28th October
During the Japan Open golf tournament held in mid-October, 18-year-old pro golf prodigy Ryo Ishikawa botched his swing on a bunker shot for a double…
Kuchikomi › 06:23 AM JST - 23rd October
Pity the young Japanese male. For him, it’s shock piled upon shock. No wonder he’s reeling. The monthly magazine Nikkei Woman (November) lists what career-oriented…
Kuchikomi › 02:49 PM JST - 19th October
You're a self-described 35-year-old "lowbrow writer" facing shrinking outlets for your articles and no assurance things will get any better. So you look around to…
Kuchikomi › 03:29 PM JST - 14th October
Heard the one about the company employee who got chewed out by her boss? Next day she was absent. Around mid-morning, there came a call…
Kuchikomi › 03:04 AM JST - 8th October
Denim trousers were sold in Japan before WW2. But it was the rough-hewn Levi's look in Hollywood films exemplified by stars like James Dean that…
Kuchikomi › 03:45 AM JST - 2nd October
In a society aging as fast as Japan’s, a solid medical infrastructure is a minimum precondition for viability. Japan’s medical infrastructure is anything but solid,…
Kuchikomi › 04:26 AM JST - 27th September
What is it about this country, and its media, that makes people think they can justify turning drug offenders into public spectacles? That's the question…
Kuchikomi › 05:44 AM JST - 22nd September
Ask young women if their attitude toward men is “love ‘em and leave ‘em,” and almost all, says Spa! (Sept 22-29), will protest that they…
Kuchikomi › 06:00 AM JST - 16th September
Over the past several years, Japan's economists have devoted much discussion to the widening gap in living standards. Writing in biweekly magazine Sapio (Sept 30),…
Kuchikomi › 06:00 AM JST - 12th September
It’s a beautiful spot, spectacular jutting rocks overlooking a wide blue sea. It’s popular with tourists, as the sightseeing boat making its leisurely way among…
Kuchikomi › 05:00 AM JST - 7th September
Since last year, a string of incidents have occurred involving so-called "girl's bars," "ear-cleaning esthetic salons" and "thigh massages." In January 2008, a 23-year-old female…
Kuchikomi › 04:22 PM JST - 1st September
Somehow over the past 20 years the world’s second-largest economy slipped into poverty -- at least to the extent that rising unemployment, underemployment and underpaid…
Kuchikomi › 04:00 AM JST - 27th August
TOKYO — Illegal loan sharks who prey on increasingly desperate borrowers; rampant tax evasion; trolls in cyberspace who recruit group suicides or who serve as middlemen for…
Kuchikomi › 04:00 AM JST - 21st August
The Edo Period (1603-1868) was seen by posterity as a phase Japan had to outgrow, the sooner the better. It was “pre-modern,” “feudal,” “stagnant.” True,…
Kuchikomi › 07:00 AM JST - 15th August
The steamy weeks of mid-summer is also the time when cockroaches proliferate. So Weekly Playboy (Aug 24-31) entertains its male readers with a tongue-in-cheek story…