Masaaki Shirakawa— Currently, overnight interbank interest rates in many developed economies are zero or slightly negative, and long-term interest rates are also extremely low. Did policymakers and economists expect it to happen and persist, say, twenty years ago? Back then, only Japan experienced such a situation, and it was regarded
Susan Napier— Who’s the good guy? Who’s the bad guy? Why isn’t there more dialogue? It seems kind of slow. Why are their eyes so big? Shouldn’t the music be more Japanese-y? Hey, did I just see the hero die? These are the kind of questions I’ve gotten in the
Keiko Hirata— Sixty-nine years ago today, Hiroshima suffered the first nuclear attack in world history. Three days later, Nagasaki was similarly attacked, and within another week, what Japan calls “the Pacific War” had ended. Japan has changed enormously in the last seven decades, transforming itself from an impoverished and defeated
Jack O’Malley— The intersection of the western and eastern worlds has long fascinated scholars and students of artistic methods. The new book Remaking Tradition: Modern Art of Japan from the Tokyo National Museum, published in conjunction with an exciting exhibition currently on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art, explores many
August is…Learn Japanese Month! Why not celebrate this observance by learning a new language? Yale University Press Languages division offers books in a several languages, including Japanese. For more information, visit Yale University Press’s Languages homepage or browse the entire list of titles here. One comprehensive title, Living Japanese: Diversity
The recent opening of “Ike Taiga and Tokuyama Gyokuran: Japanese Masters of the Brush” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art has been generating a bit of media buzz, with the NY Times calling the show “exhilarating in its profusion, range and almost ferocious vitality.” The Philadelpia Inquirer hailed the first