“It’s one hell of a weird scene,” one X user wrote. “Nothing but old men….this is why Japan is flailing.” Learn more about how Japanese social media users lambasted Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru for posting a pic of a room full of men...on International Women's Day.
Tachibana Takashi, the controversial head of Japan's Protect The People From the NHK Party, survived a blade attack. The attacker says he was upset over what he saw as Tachibana's role in a Hyogo Prefectural politician's suicide.
This week's Unseen Japan Insider newsletter features a write-up on Seki Hei (石平; Shí Píng) & how the anti-immigration immigrant's planned run for Japan's Diet crashed when it ran up against the very xenophobia he encourages. That & more commentary and news going out to all Insiders on Monday.
An incident involving Japanese travelers in China shows that tourist idiocy is universal. It came out this week that a Japanese man and woman were arrested - and subsequently deported - in January after he pulled down his trousers at the Great Wall while she recorded it.
https://unseen-japan.com/japanese-tourists-great-wall-arrested/
Emon-kake. Uba-guruma. Chombo. These and other words used to be common parlance. Use them now and people will just think you're old as dirt. Here are some popular Japanese words that have fallen by the wayside - and the words that have replaced them.
The village of Shirakawa has long been a worldwide tourist attraction. It’s gotten even busier as Japan prepares to welcome 40 million tourists in 2025. In response, the tiny village says it’ll greatly increase parking fees starting in October.
https://unseen-japan.com/shirakawa-parking-rates-overtourism/
While Kurosawa Akira loved and respected Shakespeare, his western literary influence didn't end there. From a young age, Kurosawa obsessed over the works of the Russian literary giants - Dostoevsky, Gogol, Tolstoy, and many others.
That love would save his life.
Advocates for marriage equality in Japan won another victory recently. The High Court of Nagoya sided with plaintiffs in ruling Japan’s refusal to recognize same-sex marriages as unconstitutional.
Japan wants its people to have more kids. The problem is that, if they did, women would end up doing most of the work. Women in Japan have long complained – and statistics have proven – that they do most of the chores in their homes on top of working full-time jobs.
The trend of stupid-ass YouTubers being offensive idiots in Japan continues unabated. Fortunately, in the latest case, local authorities put a stop to it swiftly, denying a group of nuisance streamers permission to board a ferry in Kagoshima.
https://unseen-japan.com/streamer-kagoshima-ferry-coast-guard/
Murdered 22yo livestreamer Sato Airi (Mogami Ai) was also apparently a single mother. Court records in suspect Takano Kenichi's lawsuit against her reveal she gave birth at 18 & in 2023 was in a shelter for single moms that also houses women fleeing violent partners.
Want to take your next Japan trip to the next level? TIME Magazine just announced its 100 great places to visit around the world - and four spots in Japan made the list. Check out their picks, as well as some of our past Japan travel recs, in our latest.
Legislators in Japan want to crack down on host clubs. Their latest proposal would forbid hosts from using romantic entanglements to entice customers into spending money. It would also prevent them from pressuring customers or trying to lure them into sex work.
The first verdict is in over the vicious murder of a 17-year-old girl in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, with a then-19-year-old attacker being sentenced to 23 years in prison. The victim’s family, however, said the sentence feels “light” for the crime.
https://unseen-japan.com/konishi-yuka-verdict-asahikawa-murder/
It’s a crime to be poor in Hokkaido, it seems. A 33-year-old man in the city of Asahikawa is under arrest. His grave sin? Asking for money.
https://unseen-japan.com/hokkaido-asahikawa-combini-panhandling-arrest/
22yo Sato Airi, a livestreamer who went by Mogami Ai, was brutally murdered on March 11th in Shinjuku City's Takadanobaba. So why are so many people on Japanese social media expressing sympathy for her murderer? (Spoiler alert: it's misogyny.)
A Meiji-era law requires Japanese couples to choose a single last name. As legislators in Japan debate repealing it, a new poll shows that a majority of women wish they had had the choice to keep their maiden names when getting married.
https://unseen-japan.com/poll-separate-spousal-surnames-women-support/
A man dared a hostess in Tokyo to a drinking game. She died several hours later. The story demonstrates how obscenely wealthy men use their power to take advantage of economically disadvantaged women for nothing but the sake of their own amusement.
Ito Shiori’s film about her sexual assault, Black Box Diaries, didn’t win the Academy Award for Best Documentary. The journalist and first-time director, however, say she’s not fazed and is focused on a larger goal: getting her Oscar-nominated film to screen in her own country.
https://unseen-japan.com/ito-shiori-black-box-diaries-japan-release/
Japanese light novel titles used to be a handful of words - or even a single word. Now, it's not uncommon to see titles topping almost 100 kanji and kana characters. When did people start writing such ridiculously long ranobe titles? And - more elusively - why?
