Japanese schoolgirls are known for moving quickly through zany and playful trends. But this latest one might need some explaining for Westerners. The swastika symbol — called a “manji” in Japanese (卍) — has meant good health and fortune in Buddhism for millennia. Now, it’s taken on new meanings — and become ubiquitous on Japanese…
Miriam wiped the sweat off her brow in layers of heavy silk kimono woven with delicate pastel and bright red flowers. I could barely recognize my twenty year old daughter out of her baggy sweater and modest, flowing skirt. Here she was, dressed for her Seijinshiki, the Japanese Coming of Age ceremony, clip-clopping in her…
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the former Japanese consulate in Lithuania on Sunday to commemorate a Japanese diplomat credited with saving an estimated 6,000 Jews from almost certain death in 1940. Chiune Suhigara was serving as Japanese consul in Kaunas, then capital of Lithuania, when he disobeyed his superiors and issued Japanese visas to…
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Japan has invited Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to a four-way meeting in Tokyo with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Jared Kushner in an effort to restart peace efforts. The invitation was extended on Monday by visiting Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono, the Hebrew-language news website Walla reported Tuesday afternoon, citing…
TOKYO (JTA) — Outside this city’s largest synagogue, a wailing siren drowns out the sounds of traffic. The cacophony alarms a boisterous group of students headed to the nearby United Nations University. Fearing an earthquake, they instinctively run into the middle of the small street in the busy, upscale neighborhood of Shibuya. But they relax…
Ivanka Trump is big in Japan. But she earned groans in Tokyo when she wore a way-above-the-knee skirt to a policy conference. The presidential daughter was showing plenty of thigh in her $1,700 pink Miu Miu outfit that she wore to the World Assembly for Women on Friday. Twitter screamed foul because Japanese culture is…
This article originally appeared in the Yiddish Forverts. Dr. Walter Zev Feldman, a leading researcher of Turkish and Jewish music and an exquisite dancer, visited Japan this year with his wife Dr. Judit Frigyesi – a writer, artist and professor of musicology at Bar Ilan University. The couple lectured as part of a symposium at…
KOBE, Japan (JTA) — Like many international smugglers, the one servicing the Jewish community of this port city 300 miles east of Tokyo has perfected his poker face to avoid customs inspections. He brings in kosher meat and, ahead of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, three of the four species — the plants that Jews…
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