Tokugawa Shogunate

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    Japan’s Mobs Of Macropod Motifs Missing Marsupials In Masterpieces

    Something strikes me about kangaroos in Japan, where companies like Seino and Nikko Kanko have made the marsupials highly visible. Kangaroos are possibly even higher profile than their native Australia, where Qantas uses the national symbol in its logo, but the macropod is a somewhat uncommon sight elsewhere in the corporate sector. I wouldn’t go so far as to say kangaroos are a ubiquitous presence in the Japanese retail or corporate sector, but it would be no exaggeration to claim they are a daily presence. Far more so, actually, than they are in Australia. That got me to thinking about the presence of kangaroos in the Japanese art world, which…

  • Stumbling Across A Shogun’s Stimulator

    Just a few weeks ago I was extremely surprised to learn there is a monument to WIilliam Adams located just a few minutes from my workplace as I thought after nearly 40 years of life in Japan I thought I knew pretty much all there was to know about the Briton who was made a samurai and inspired a shogun. The monument to Adams, the first English person to go to Japan in the late 1t6th century, is tucked away between a couple of buildings in Nihonbashi, the central Tokyo district from which all distances in Japan are mentioned. Adams is known to the Japanese as Miura Anjin and the…