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It’s New Year’s morning in a Japanese household. Children, dressed slightly more nicely than usual, are making the rounds: visiting grandparents, aunts, uncles, sometimes neighbors. At each visit, after the formal greeting and a few minutes…

A Japanese man in his early forties — let’s call him a salaryman at a major Tokyo company — has been working roughly 80 hours a week for the past several months. He sleeps four or…

It’s winter in rural Hokkaido. You’re driving through a sparse landscape, no town for several kilometers in any direction, when you pass a small vending machine on the side of the road. It’s bright, lit, and…

It’s January 1, 1:30 in the morning. The temperature in Tokyo is just above freezing. A line of people stretches for nearly half a kilometer through the dark, slowly moving toward the lit gate of a…

It’s early July in a Japanese train station. Hanging from the high ceilings: enormous paper streamers in pinks, blues, and golds, dangling like upside-down rivers of color. Around the corner, a small bamboo tree has been…

Mid-August in Japan. Tokyo’s central districts are quieter than usual — many offices are closed, restaurants have shorter menus, taxi drivers are scarce. The shinkansen to the countryside is sold out. Highway traffic moving away from…

It’s 3 a.m. in a small town in rural Japan. The streets are empty. The single train line stopped running at midnight. Almost everything is closed — except, on the corner near the station, the convenience…

A real estate listing in Tokyo describes a Japanese apartment as having a “6-jou” living room. There are no tatami mats actually shown in the photographs — the floor is laminate. Yet the size is given…

A 35-year-old man lives in his parents’ house in suburban Tokyo. He has not left his bedroom for more than half an hour at a time in three years. His meals are left outside his door…

It’s January in a Japanese living room. The temperature outside is just above freezing; the temperature inside, in unheated rooms, is barely better — Japanese houses are notoriously poorly insulated. In one room, however, four members…