At this moment in time, I have spent well over a hundred hours exploring Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Ubisoft’s gorgeous virtual imagining of feudal Japan. Thousands of samurai have fallen beneath my ...

With no solid object of fixed colour against which to correlate, "blue" has historically had the capacity to range loosely over the colour spectrum. In the case of Japan, "ao" denoted a range of blue ...

A still from the Studio Ghibli movie ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ featuring the catbus, Satsuki and Totoro. (Photo: Studio Ghibli UK/ Instagram) Yūgen in Literature: The Heian-period poetry collection ...

New Yorker writers on long, immersive books that are worth the plunge, including “Moby-Dick,” “The Lord of the Rings,” “War and Peace,” and “The Third Reich in Power.” ...

The Japanese have been cultivating this since the 10th century. The poets of the Heian Period wrote about: Cherry trees that fell in 3 days; Dew evaporating at noon; Loves that burned quickly like ...

In her transcultural collection for Expo 2025, Polish designer Joanna Hawrot reimagines the kimono as a radical expression of autonomy, queerness, and embodied storytelling. Inspired by both Japanese ...

Muzan Kibutsuji, Demon Slayer's formidable antagonist, wasn't always a demon. Born in Japan's Heian Period, he battled a fatal illness. A doctor's experimental medicine, derived from the rare blue ...

A budding plum blossom, photographed on Feb. 15 in Futtsu, in Chiba Prefecture, during one of the 72 microseasons that mark the traditional Japanese calendar: this period, between Feb. 14 and 18 ...

2. Toni Morrison: Beloved (1987) & Song of Solomon (1977) Toni Morrison is highly (and rightly) regarded as one of the most significant writers of the 20th century. Through such narratives, especially ...

Indian literature during this period, such as the Puranas, continued to reflect on life stages but often through metaphor and spiritual allegory, ...