
Inside Japan’s Hostess Clubs
Hostess clubs, establishments where men pay to talk and drink with beautiful and charming women, can be found in nightlife districts all over Japan.
Hostess clubs, establishments where men pay to talk and drink with beautiful and charming women, can be found in nightlife districts all over Japan.
China seems set to expand into Latin America. Can the US do anything about it?
What is Guam like beyond the beach resorts and military bases? What is it like to actually live there?
If China really does continue down Xi’s autarkic path, then its slump could be even more pronounced than anything Japan experienced.
Despite their many similarities, Australia and New Zealand differ wildly in their approaches towards China. But that will change as Wellington finds it increasingly hard to reconcile its differences with Beijing.
AUKUS largely helps Australia achieve its strategic goals and is a sign that the young Western nation is maturing.
Many corporations today are basically amoral, and will do business with any regime, no matter how repressive, for the right price. So why won’t they say it?
The sudden riots in this sleepy Pacific archipelago shows it’s not so easy for China to buy love.
How Beijing turned a non-issue into an international crisis.
Korean pop culture didn’t get this popular by itself – it’s the deliberate result of a plan by the South Korean government to boost its entertainment industry and its soft power.
A spate of mass killings in Southeast Asia baffled anthropologists for centuries. Can it shed light on mass shootings today?
My father warned me that the sea was beguiling, dangerous. The deeper you descend, the more the sea wants to pull you down and keep you.
Angela Merkel postured as a stateswoman on the world stage, but constantly shunted unpleasant work and unpleasant decisions to others, and shirked her responsibilities as a major European leader.
Though it often behaves like a vassal to China, Cambodia is growing increasingly uncomfortable with its overreliance on Beijing – and that may present the West with an opening.
Many young Chinese are eschewing the rat race in favor of “lying flat,” and the Party is worried.
France is an Asia-Pacific power, and will be instrumental in countering Chinese aggression in the region.
The old songs of iconic 1970s Japanese singers are enjoying an uncanny second life on YouTube.
Many Malays have taken to copying Arabs, not just in their views and practices, but in their friends and enemies too.
Once the rulers of the British people, the royals are now their pets. Here’s how this happened.
The UK’s politicians are torn on how to handle Beijing.
As a cold war between China and the US looms, the EU must decide where it stands.
Films disproportionately shape how the public views controversial figures. What responsibilities do they have?
China once had a rich tradition of independent journalism. What’s happened to it?
Gothic literature is strewn with the tortured genius of women at the mercy of the restrictions placed on them by society — and their own minds.
Japanese filmmakers once used city settings to address the loneliness and futility of modern life. Now, they are becoming symbols of hope.
Trying to identify the second most powerful person in Xi Jinping’s China is a difficult task.
Lost and found over the centuries, the Guide to Capturing a Plum Blossom, one of the earliest printed art books in the world, is itself a small miracle.
It is midnight in Harajuku and the streets are still bustling. The boy meets the girl to get some crepes.
How a long-lost fossil became a symbol of Chinese supremacy.
Sri Thanonchai, Thailand’s most popular trickster, is known for his amoral cunning.
A queer, interracial couple visits Middle America for the 4th of July.
Often idealized, temple prostitutes were little more than sex slaves. Rather than them, women should emulate the goddesses they served.
Who do we protest for when we’re protesting?
The aphorism-spouting Chinese detective played by a succession of white men in yellow-face continues to both delight and offend.
Even as New York struggles to contain the coronavirus, Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio continue to feud. New Yorkers aren’t shy about picking a side.
Starved of meaning in this time of idleness and isolation, we struggle to create it.
The writer and teacher Léonie Gilmour is overshadowed by her more famous relatives: her partner, the poet Yone Noguchi, her son, the sculptor Isamu Noguchi, and her daughter, the dancer Ailes Gilmour. Yet her life was no less remarkable.
Harajuku style now lives in the imaginations of foreigners more than in real-life Japan.
The king’s decision to appoint the man with apparently less parliamentary support prime minister was controversial. In the absence of an explanation, suspicions will fester.
Theft, counterfeiting, kidnapping, poisoning – all manner of skullduggery is involved when it comes to one of the world’s most expensive foods.
Parasite is itself parasitic: a foreign film that weaseled its way into the single most prestigious academy in the industry only to attack that very institution and everything it stands for.
“Are you alive?” he asks me. What is alive? I say. He can’t answer me.
The Chinese Communist Party’s shirking of responsibility at every level shows why it’s unfit to lead.
That I am but a ship rat, racing through the pipe dreams of an un-wild west.
Inside Asia’s most prestigious (and most overrated) university.
A vampire and a ghost stalk the streets of Manhattan.
The two quintessential translators of the Quran underwent conversions in opposite directions: Pickthall became a Muslim and Ali became an Englishman.
Iris Chang, the historian who brought the tragedy of the Nanking Massacre home to the West, lived a life that was as incandescent as it was brief, and pioneered the way for Chinese American writers.
Beautiful, transient, and completely impractical, ice palaces are monuments to the human sense of novelty and wonder.
Fashion statement, symbol of decadence, cultural relic, and party dress, this traditional Chinese garment has come to mean different things to different people.
A journey through San Fran’s sordid past.
Traditionally associated with outlaws and gangsters, tattoos in Japan have a long and colorful history.
Chinatowns are disappearing across America. How is this affecting Asian American life?
Kitsune are adept at shape-shifting from male to female, from animal to human, and back again.
An overworked and underappreciated wife and mother creates a novel solution to her problems.
To say Bradley’s living on borrowed time would be an understatement. It’s more like he’s living on stolen time. Like he made a deal with the devil years ago and he keeps shrugging it off.
Malaysia has a rare shot at democracy. Will it drop the ball?