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How Japan found itself on the brink of war in December 1941: By the mid–1930s, much of northern China was essentially under Japanese influence. Then, on July 7, 1937, a small-scale clash between local Chinese and Japanese troops at the Marco Polo Bridge in Wanping, a small village outside Beijing, escalated. The Japanese prime minister, […]

To Hokkaido, In Search of the Uni Grail: For the past decade, I have sought out sea urchin like a zombified bipedal sea otter. I have eaten giant red urchins—uni, in sushi-speak—alive and wiggling in slow motion from the dock in Santa Barbara, California, and I’ve slurped from split shells in the street markets of […]

While teaching English in Beijing, the author witnessed one of the most tumultuous protests in modern history. We were young, and maybe a little naive, and we were angry at injustice. Whenever a group of us foreign teachers got together to share a meal or some beers, Chuck, the most cantankerous of our lot, would […]

The writer visits a Zen temple in Japan, where he meets with a priest who has been exorcising the spirits of people who had drowned in the 2011 tsunami and taken possession of the living. A story about loss and Japan’s cult of ancestors: Over the course of last summer, Reverend Kaneda exorcised 25 spirits […]