12/18/15 12/18/15

Pick a side

Or is that too much to ask?

10/28/15 10/28/15

The evolution of pan-Asianism, Pt. I: Japan

A four-part series where we examine ideas of Asia, past and present.

10/24/15 10/24/15

A matter of perspective

Why you might want to take the Kardashians seriously.

10/9/15 10/9/15

Trop picks: Ginkgo

Marking the passing of time with the ginkgo tree.

10/6/15 10/6/15

The other Manchurian incident

The worst catastrophe you've never heard of.

8/10/15 8/10/15

Sail on, black ships

You know that old chestnut about how Japan is so weirdly wonderful because of its several hundred years of self-imposed isolation? Not so true after all.

7/2/15 7/2/15

Manchu princess, Japanese spy: Yoshiko Kawashima

How different is a person allowed to be? Serious threats to established systems are either co-opted and neutralised or completely destroyed.

6/30/15 6/30/15

A map of Asia that doesn't include Utopia isn't worth glancing at*

Like hypochondriac dads in their quest for perfect health, there isn't a social experiment that we haven't tried in the quest for Utopia.

6/25/15 6/25/15

If you want to save the planet, don't buy so much stuff

Recycling doesn’t let us off the hook for our consumption choices.

6/17/15 6/17/15

Janice Nimura on the importance of being amphibious

Janice Nimura on her book, "Daughters of the Samurai," a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, and on living a three-dimensional life.

6/11/15 6/11/15

The dilemma of an American education

5/27/15 5/27/15

Minka: A single-family detached home

The Minka or the Japanese farmhouse was one of the earliest forms of the single-family detached home.

5/22/15 5/22/15

Trop picks: Monet's garden in Naoshima

Claude Monet's iconic paintings were inspired by the work of the great Japanese woodcut artist, Utagawa Hiroshige.

5/20/15 5/20/15

Sori Yanagi's pedestrian bridges are anything but

Sori Yanagi was obsessed with bridges, specifically the ugliferous blights that would greet his eyes every time he exited the Osaka train station.

5/12/15 5/12/15

A special relationship: The Coppolas and Tokyo

What explains the special relationship between Sofia Coppola and Tokyo? Papa Francis was a Japanophile and young Sofia would go along on his trips to Japan.

5/8/15 5/8/15

Stop. Breathe. And get over yourself.

The conceptual art of Mono-Ha was a Japanese attempt to sabotage the inexorable rise of a Western vision of modernity.

4/28/15 4/28/15

The modernization of Japanese fashion

The Japanese trio of Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo and Issey Miyake wrote the book on how to modernize non-Western traditions in the nineteen eighties.