I Discovered America Through Japanese Eyes

What Happened When a Kid From Chicago Became an L.A. Correspondent for Japan’s Largest Newspaper

“Scarlett, Scarlett!” I waved pleadingly. Across the red carpet she sauntered, her eyes invitingly meeting mine. There I stood—a 24-year-old Jewish kid from Chicago decked out for the 77th Annual Academy Awards with my overgrown eyebrows and a cheap rented tux—face-to-face with America’s luscious girl-next-door, Scarlett Johansson.

I had been waiting all year to ask her this question: “What do you have to say to your fans in Japan?”

She cocked her head with a half-smile and then answered teasingly, “Well, I miss them.”

“We miss you, too!” I yelled back as she …

by Ari Ratner | October 28, 2014

In Glendale, World War II Isn’t Over

A Southern California City’s Memorial to Korean ‘Comfort Women’ Raises Questions of Responsibility, Memory, and Human Suffering

by John Bodnar | May 28, 2014

A federal judge will soon decide whether to remove a memorial in Glendale, California to so-called Korean “comfort women” who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers in World …

Come for the Fish, Stay for the Story

Sushi Chefs Speak With Their Hands. Thank Goodness California Is Letting Them Keep Talking.

by Tomoko Kurokawa | April 18, 2014

As you enter a sushi restaurant, it may be the invigorating aroma of cypress—the hinoki countertop that is meticulously sanded down, daily, to a feathery finish—that greets you. It may …

Shinkawa’s Problem

by Ralph Sneeden | June 14, 2013

I wonder if he loved the ocean
even more that day the tsunami
swept his cottage from the soil
then miles out, a wave with arms
like a victor’s raking …

It Takes a Village, Alas

Japan, Land of Peasants, Embraces Conformity and Decline

by Masaru Tamamoto | November 15, 2012

It is not a land, not a culture, not a language prone to self-analysis or philosophy. The thought of reinvention has no resonance. Postwar Japan is a land of …

Will We Freak Out in the Big One?

Post-Quake California Won't Be as Orderly as Japan, But We'll Do Better Than You Might Think

by Rebecca Solnit | March 20, 2011

A couple wanders in the wreckage looking for elderly parents lost in the catastrophe. A husband asks around a shelter for his wife, who has been missing since the massive …

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