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Small, Overlooked History: Golden Bat Cigarettes and the Role of Cigarettes in World War II
When I visit museums, I'm fascinated by the small artifacts of everyday life. After viewing two suits of samurai armor at a small museum, I spotted a
The Beautiful Dancer of Edo – A Fairy Tale From Japan
Sakura-ko was a samurai’s daughter who had become a geisha to feed her mother after her father died. She lived on a narrow street. Sounds of geisha practicing…
Breakages and Outgrowing the Current Host
No doubt you’ve noticed JP has burst apart this week with terrible load times, images not loading, and not even being available to view. Apologies for that! This…
The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi by Junichiro Tanizaki
The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi offers an interesting and different way to approach a story. The story follows a researcher as he writes about the…
The Gamer Mentality and the Ultimate Power Trip Isekai: Overlord
Overlord adopts Kugane Maruyama’s light novel series. When YGGDRASIL’s servers, a deep-dive massively multiplayer online role playing game, are scheduled to be shut off, Momonga remains logged in…
My Note-Taking Method: A Way to Read, Remember, and Write Better
How you read matters as much as what you read. How I read varies. If I’m reading Spice and Wolf or other fiction, I just read. If I’m…
Japanese Rock’s Place in My Music Playlists and Maybe in Yours?
Back when I first started watching anime regularly–during my early college years (I’m getting old)–I would sometimes get hooked on opening and ending themes. Two later favorites were…
Anachronisms in Anime
Anachronisms appear throughout anime. They take many different forms, sometimes impacting the story and other times erring in details that don’t matter. Merriam-Webster defines anachronism as “a chronological…
The Café Terrace and Its Goddesses
The Café Terrace and Its Goddesses is a harem comedy that focuses on the theme of a found family. Spoilers ahead for both the anime and manga, by…
Should You Read Musui’s Story: The Autobiography of a Tokugawa Samurai?
I had hunted for a cheap English copy of Musui’s Story for several years. Finally, I stumbled across a copy buried in a used book store for $5.…
The Yamato Dynasty by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave
The Yamato Dynasty traces the Japanese imperial family from Emperor Meiji and the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate to Akihito. As you can imagine, most of the book…
The World of the Shining Prince by Ivan Morris
In order to understand works like The Tale of Genji, you have to understand the historical context. Ivan Morris’s book The World of the Shining Prince sketches enough…
The Maiden of the Screen, An Old Folktale That Parallels Modern Dating Culture
Lafcadio Hearn was an American journalist who, along with Basil Hall Chamberlain, collected and wrote down Japan’s folktales. While many Japanese, in the past, had also recorded various…
Redo of Healer: Edge and Reviled Revenge Revel
As I get older, I find myself growing sensitive to violence in stories. Saw never used to trouble me; it does now. Redo of Healer troubled me with…
What Do Livestreamers, Politicians, and Waifus have in Common?
To answer the title’s question in two words: parasocial relationships. Okay, you can return to your regularly scheduled livestream! Parasocial relationships (PSR) are a common part of media…
Beheneko: The Elf-Girl’s Cat is Secretly an S-Ranked Monster!
Beheneko: The Elf-Girl’s Cat is Secretly an S-Ranked Monster! beyond being a mouthful is also an ecchi, uh, handful. For the longest time I’ve avoided ecchi stories. They…
Texas Senate Bill 20, Obscenity, and Banning Anime and Manga
Texas’s state senate unanimously passed Senate Bill 20 which aims at AI-generated child pornography but can also end up banning many anime and manga titles in the…
New Book: Kappa The Deadly Finger Puller and Bonesetter
I’ve been behind with my book projects; I didn’t release anything last year. But publishing can take more time than you’d expect. I have several books awaiting release…
Japan’s Once Exotic Culture is Now Humdrum
More than a century ago, the West had little contact with Japan. The fabled Asia, distant and strange to Westerners, was a land of mystical stories, of elixirs…
Learning Without a Goal: The Joy of Learning
In the United States, learning is seen as a means to an end, not as an end of itself. You go to college to get a degree that…
An Outage and a Good Problem
You may have noticed JP was down for a good part of the weekend. I didn’t notice the problem until Sunday morning. So what happened? JP outgrew its…
5 Steps to Handle Your Anime Backlog
I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. –C. S. Lewis While C.S. Lewis was talking about books, the sentiment also applies…
Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance, 3D Animation’s Not That Great
Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance is a pure 3D computer-generated short series which takes the perspective of the “villains” of Gundam. The story follows Iria Solari, of the Zeon…
The Tenant of Silence
Generally, it is despicable for a warrior to use many words. -Daidoji Yuzan Bushido holds silence in high esteem. Quietude seeks to measure words, speaking only what is…
Factors Behind Population Decline and the Ancient World’s Solutions
Birthrates in the developed world, especially in South Korea and Japan, have fallen below the replacement rate. Japan’s total fertility rate dropped below replacement back in 1974 with…
Gushing Over Magical Girls and The Stretch of Art
I cannot recommend Gushing Over Magical Girls, but the story has its merits and has more going for it than it appears on the surface. The story plays…
Too Many Losing Heroines! Makeine
Too Many Losing Heroines!, also known as Makeine takes a different perspective on the usual romantic-comedy story. In a normal shonen romantic-comedy (Notice that young men, the main…
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Misses its Potential
Trigger is an animation studio known for its frenetic action scenes with the likes of Kill la Kill and Darling in the Franxx. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners doesn’t disappoint…when it…
Osamu Tezuka’s Ayako
Osamu Tezuka is considered the godfather of manga. He popularized the format with his storytelling, using film techniques as a part of his approach. His art style mixes…
2024: Another Spin Around Our Star
This next year, 2025, will mark my 14th year of blogging about anime, the anime community, Japanese history, and all the other meanders I make here. JP began…
Public Writing and Self Censorship
As JP has increased in views and approaches the 7 million total-views milestone, I’ve become even more aware of how what I write can influence people. Of course,…
Hara-Kiri: Japanese Ritual Suicide by Jack Seward
When I worked as a librarian, I had the chance to come across many interesting old books. Hara-Kiri: Japanese Ritual Suicide is one such book. Dating to 1968,…
The Unfettered Mind by Takuan Soho
The Unfettered Mind contains essays and letters written by the Zen monk Takuan Soho, who was a friend and a teacher of Miyamoto Musashi. As Takuan neared death,…
Anime and Body Boundaries
Anime has a problem with body boundaries, and the problem extends to both men and women. Fan-service centers on seeing breasts, abs, pecs, panties, and other parts, often…
Manga in Theory and Practice by Hirohiko Araki
Manga in Theory and Practice seeks to provide a framework for manga writers. Hirohiko Araki is the author of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Much of what he discusses applies…
The 82 Winning Moves of Sumo, the Kimarite List
When a sumo wrestler wins a match, how he wins is recorded with the victory. This move is called a kimarite. Think of kimarite as fatalities from Mortal…
You Are Where You Are Meant to Be, As You Are Right Now
To insist on arbitrary action because you’re not reconciled to your fate is something that men should be most wary of. If people let their minds go off…
Who are Anime Fans? A Summary of the International Anime Research Project’s Findings
The International Anime Research Project aims at studying anime, manga, and other fandoms. This team of scientists use techniques from psychology, anthropology, and sociology to understand the trai…
Golden Time: How Insecurity Splits Oneself
Golden Time is an anime adaptation of a light novel series. The anime released back in 2013. I will spoil the story in this discussion. Golden Time is…
Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf
Spice and Wolf along with Eureka Seven and Inuyasha helped me through some difficult times in my mid-20s, so they retain a place in my best anime lists.…
If It Was a Snake, It Would’ve Bit Me! Download My Retail Memoir PDF for Free.
Without wage-slaves, people would go hungry, go naked (not that health regulations stop them from doing that now), and go home (finally!). But retail workers remain under-appreciated, under-paid,…
Book Ban Banality
Tony Yao discusses another book ban on his website Drop-In to Manga. This time, Florida has banned Sasaki and Miyano by Sho Harusono because of its LGBTQAI material.…
Today is Victory Over Yourself of Yesterday
Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men. –Miyamoto Musashi…
Is Anime Woke?
Woke has become a buzzword throughout US media. People use the word to label all sorts of people and ideas: woke companies, woke video games, woke chicken nuggets.…
Zom 100: Work Sucks and is Bad For You
Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead continues the zombie genre’s tradition of critiquing capitalism and groupthink. Whereas George Romero’s zombie films centered on satirizing consumerism …
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU Explains the Crisis of Middle-Aged Men
My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, also known as My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, as I Expected and Oregairu seems to be far away from lending any fictional…
Trigger’s Triumph: The Hero’s Journey in Kill la Kill
Kill la Kill, released in 2013, follows the Hero’s Journey template, as Joseph Campbell outlined in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces with interesting tweaks to the…
The New Emerging Trend in Anime
For the past decade or so, moe has dominated. Moe designs seek to create a feeling of attachment with the audience, eliciting desires to protect a character. Moe…
Immortality Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be – A Free Light Novel
I wrote Immortality Isn’t What I Thought It Would Be for fun several years ago. It languished on my file server, destined to never see a reader along…
Death to Kanji! The Movement to Eliminate Kanji During the Meiji Restoration
Ask most English speakers about what makes Japanese so hard to learn and you will most likely hear kanji. The Japanese writing system consists of kana, or a…