Category Archives: Uncategorized

Here’s this week’s Media Mix about universal basic income. As pointed out in the column, Heizo Takenaka, who is counterintuitively promoting a basic income plan for Japan, is one of the country’s staunchest neoliberals, and, in a sense, his ¥70,000 … Continue reading →

As with most groups referred to as “indigenous,” Japan’s Ainu, who tend to be associated with the northern island of Hokkaido, are greatly misunderstood and mostly marginalized by their non-indigenous fellow citizens. The tricky part of this dynamic is that, … Continue reading →

Though I haven’t read Cho Nam-joo’s international bestseller, Kim Do-young’s film adaptation of Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 apparently differs in several significant ways. For one thing, much of the novel is presented as a case study of a patient, and … Continue reading →

Here’s this week’s Media Mix about the media’s role in helping Yoshihide Suga attain the premiership. As implied in the column, the press didn’t actively boost Suga but rather stood aside and just let the Liberal Democratic Party propaganda machine … Continue reading →

The true story of photographer Masashi Asada and his Mie Prefecture family, who were and presumably still are the main subject of his award-winning pictures, provides such a smooth dramatic arc for a movie that early on you begin to … Continue reading →