The two artists, both professional musicians, couldn’t be more different.

One is a live-show powerhouse, playing more than 20 sell-out gigs per month. His fans travel from all over the world just to see him, and many have been following him since the early days. In between concerts, they blog about the shows. During the concerts, they tip so fervently that money literally piles up on the stage.

Japan’s economy just does not seem to be able to catch a break at the moment. GDP contracted at an annual pace of over 15.2 percent in the first three months of this year, while industrial output fell by over 34.5 percent following a contraction in exports which was nearer to the 40 percent mark...

The belabored departure of Hatoyama Kunio — captured well with a quote from a more contemporary poet at Shisaku — and now the third straight defeat of an LDP candidate in a prominent mayoral election suggest that what little remained of the LDP's 2005 mandate is in tatters...

Porsche's perfect Trojan Horse corner and attempted takeover of VW is, according to Bloomberg (and others), rapidly in danger of becoming a less-perfectly concocted "Trojan Rabbit"...

Jumping on the recovery bandwagon

By Flavio Souza

Since energy is going to be the dominant factor in making our investment decisions for the next decade, I thought it would be a good time to sit down with Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club. Carl is as sharp as a tack, with the fervor of an evangelist, always a dangerous combination...

The sushi market has crashed. Premium blue fin tuna for sale at Tokyo’s Tsukuji fish market, where I once lived next door, have seen prices drop 30 percent in the past year...

"Randy Waterhouse," the nom de blog of a contributor to the political science group blog Duck of Minerva, looks to Japan in a discussion of when and why states balance against other states...

A year ago this week, the Supreme Court of Japan issued a judgment that struck down a clause in the Nationality Act as being a violation of the Constitution. There are good reasons for everyone in Japan to celebrate that decision. While little noted outside of specialized legal journals at the time, the decision may have been the beginning of a more robust judicial protection of the right to equality in Japan.