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The 10 Worst Films About Japan*: You Might Only Live Twice But Are These...
by Kaori Shoji 1) Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) Directed by Rob Marshall and starring Zhang Ziyi as a ravishing prewar geisha by the name of Sayuri (‘white lily’), this particular vehicle sinks to...
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21 Reasons Why Japanese Men Suck (A Book Review) by Ms. Kaori Shoji
Usually I try to avoid self-help relationship books like Hepatitis B but the title to this is sort of catchy: 21 Reasons Why Japanese Men Suck (なぜ日本にはいい男がいないのか 21の理由) So I picked it up, said yes to...
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What We Wear About When We Think About Clothes: Musings on Japanese Fashion
Back in the late 20th century, the word on the street about Japanese fashion was that it had the lowest f*ckability points in the world. “I wouldn’t want to bed a girl wearing Comme des Garcons.” A guy...
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Over-Educated, Under-Paid and Most Likely Single: Women in Japan’s Academia
If you happen to be a young Japanese woman considering a career in academia, read on, scream bloody murder and ask someone – anyone! – to chain you to a lamp post before choosing that path. As the...
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AKB48: A Microcosm Of Dark Corporate Japan. Sexual exploitation of child...
One of the first things you’ll notice about the Japanese – men AND women – is the apparent lack of awareness regarding issues like gender and racial discrimination, worker exploitation, social...
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How the Japanese Went Under, and Stayed There
Tatsuru Uchida cares about Japan. Much like a favorite aunt who drops in “just to know what you’re up to,” bearing an edible gift. Uchida will then proceed to tell us exactly what’s wrong with us and...
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Book Review: “The Bad-Mood Marriage” 不機嫌な主婦 なぜ女たちは「本能」を忘れたのか（朝日新書）
By Kaori Shoji As long as time immemorial, being a woman in Japan meant the rawest of deals. The long, long tradition of top-down patriarchy held that women were good for of either two things: sexual...
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Book Review: “Why the Japanese Are Beautiful”（日本人はなぜ美しいのか） by Kaori Shoji
Amazon book link: http://amzn.to/1yxEKjj Here’s a question: why is it that everyone else in the world gets to wax eloquent about the virtues of their home country, but the minute a Japanese does the...
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“The Only Woman in the Room”/ How The Amazing Beate Wrote Equal Rights For...
Unanswerable questions of the year: Is Japan really going to war? Is Japan’s peacetime constitution going to be trashed by the ruling party and returned back to the Imperial Constitution, which did not...
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The 70 Year Fallout: A Lament for Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Editor’s note: This year it will be 70 years since the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. What is not widely known is that Japan was working on building its own atomic bomb, and if they had been...
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The Girl’s Guide to Decluttering and Hunting (in that order)
Consider these 2 pictures. Before: Single, living alone in a 29 square meter apartment in Tokyo. The place is so filthy it’s a struggle every morning to shower, get dressed and get to the door. The...
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The Rise & Fall Of Japanese Xmas: Please Bring Back The Sex & Money & Carnal...
“Those were the days” is a phrase a woman must never utter once she hits 40 as it makes her seem unnecessarily outdated. But there are times when one is called upon to bend this golden rule, and state...
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“Does My Gaijin Husband Go Good With My Dress?” Mixed Marriage in France & Japan
One of the abiding myths that exist among the Japanese is that we are a single race nation. The school system teaches among other things, that no one, but absolutely no one, lives here except us...
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The 100 Hour Japanese Work-Week and One Woman Who Escaped
I was one of those people who wept over Hillary Clinton’s farewell “glass ceiling” speech, and not just because of how the election turned out. It seemed that however way you sliced it, women will have...
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The 10 Worst Films About Japan*: You Might Only Live Twice But Are These...
In honour of Japan’s Celebration of Cinema Day, December 1st, we’ve reposted some reviews and articles on classic films. Some good, some bad, some epic and some considered to be the worst films in...
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“The Crusher Boss” by Ichiyo Matsuzaki/Reviewed by Kaori Shoji
Times to lean in and times to run away For those of us living and working in Japan, it’s tempting to think that the soul-crushing boss is a phenomenon unique to the archipelago. Certainly, there’s a...
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The Amazing Japanese Wife: Part 1
Japan Subculture Research Center is proud to present a series of short stories, by our resident book reviewer and social commentator, Kaori Shoji, on the often tragically mismatched marriages of...
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The Amazing Japanese Wife: Part II “Fucked Up in Six Trees”
This is part two of series of short-stories by culture commentator, movie reviewer, and fiction writer–Kaori Shoji–on international love gone wrong in and out of Japan. **** By my personal estimate,...
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The Amazing Japanese Wife Part 3: A Man Needs His Carcinogen
This is the third in a series of short fiction by Ms. Kaori Shoji entitled “The Amazing Japanese Wife” about international marriages in Japan gone off the deep end. Any similarity to real events,...
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“Eriko’s Facebook Life”/The Amazing Japanese Wife: Part 4
This is the fourth in a series of short fiction by Ms. Kaori Shoji entitled “The Amazing Japanese Wife” about international marriages in Japan gone off the deep end. This is the first of the stories...
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