Introduction For the last 20 years since I left Japan, I have almost exclusively used English to think and communicate. I was not educated on the importance and significance of my…
Introduction I have been on this rambling journey to explore what Japan has lost because of post-war GHQ occupational forces, and now we are on the final leg of this journey….
Introduction For the last 5 posts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5), I’ve been discussing 5 elements in the Shinto offering that were systematically targeted and…
Introduction In the last ramble of this GHQ series, I wrote about Japan’s life-giving spring water and how she faced danger during the postwar occupation by GHQ. In this post, we…
Introduction In the last post of this GHQ series, I explored how Japanese people were under the salt-starve spell for 26 years. Natural sea salt is, it turns out, an essential…
Introduction In the last post of this series, I wrote about the second item on the Shinto offerings and also an integral part of Japanese traditional peacemaking—the sake craft culture. In…
Introduction In the last post, I wrote how GHQ discovered the secrets to Japanese strength and prosperity. Fearing them, GHQ set out to destroy these elements that provided Japanese people with…
Introduction Growing up in Japan during the 80s and 90s, I always felt an unshakable sense of something missing—like the Tokyo life surrounding me wasn’t the full picture, as if a…
Introduction I was typing about Shinto’s history, reflecting how its noble origin has shaped Japanese culture since ancient times. Then a distant memory bubbled up: I was 5 or 6, standing…
Introduction I was born and raised as the third generation of my family in a Buddhist-religious institution in Japan, and during my childhood I wasn’t allowed to go into the old…
