They say love is eternal. What about heartbreak? This Valentine’s Day, we bring you some of Japanese theater’s most popular tales of scorned lovers seeking vengeance from beyond the grave — with a burning passion.
Guests:
Frank Feltens, Curator of Japanese Art at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art
Kit Brooks, Japan Foundation Assistant Curat ... Show More
Mar 4
Dark Matter, Bright Mind: How Vera Rubin Saw the Unseen
Something dark and invisible makes up as much as 90 to 95 percent of the universe—and it took a little girl staring out a bedroom window at the night sky to bring it to light. As a child, Vera Rubin built her own telescope. As an adult, she uncovered a problem no telescope could ... Show More
33m 43s
Aug 2023
'Of White Ashes' follows a Japanese-American love story after the WWII internment
Author Kent Matsumoto's parents both lived through traumatic experiences during WWII: his mother was forced into an internment camp for Japanese-Americans in the U.S., and his father survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. In a new novel, Of White Ashes, Matsumoto and his wife ... Show More
6m 37s
Feb 2021
Linda C. Ehrlich, "The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema" (Palgrave, 2019)
The Films of Kore-eda Hirokazu: An Elemental Cinema (Palgrave MacMillan, 2019) draws readers into the first 13 feature films and 5 of the documentaries of award-winning Japanese film director Kore-eda Hirokazu. With his recent top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for Shoplifters ... Show More
1h 6m
Nov 2021
Hiromu Nagahara, "Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan's Pop Era and Its Discontents" (Harvard UP, 2017)
Tokyo Boogie-Woogie: Japan's Pop Era and its Discontents (Harvard University Press, 2017) by Hiromu Nagahara is the first English-language history of the origins and impact of the Japanese pop music industry. The book connects the rise of mass entertainment, epitomized by ryūkōka ... Show More
1h 20m
Oct 2022
Des sacrifices humains au Japon ?
<p>Mes chers camarades, bien le bonjour !</p><p>Le Japon… aaahhh, le Japon ! La beauté de ses cerisiers, la majesté du mont Fuji, la délicatesse de sa gastronomie, les Haïkus, les jardins zen, les sacrifices humains… Oui oui, les sacrifices humains. On va parler aujourd'hui d'une ... Show More
12m 10s
May 2022
Bryan Washington: Memorial
This month, in the next in our season celebrating The Exuberance of Youth, Harriett Gilbert and readers around the world talk to award-winning American writer Bryan Washington about his moving novel Memorial.Benson, a Black day-care teacher and Mike, a Japanese-American chef, liv ... Show More
49m 22s
Jun 2019
Merry White on Japan's long-standing coffee culture
Cafes offer up this unique third space - not home, nor work - for people to be private in a public space. Merry White, professor of Anthropology at Boston University, studies just this: cafes and cafe culture, but in Japan. Her book, Coffee Life in Japan, “part ethnography, part ... Show More
42m 3s
