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Category: Culture

The Legacy of Hakuin Ekaku

Posted on September 14, 2025 by Chris Kincaid

You likely haven’t heard of Hakuin Ekaku, but you’ve no doubt heard of his most famous question: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” This question is a koan. Koans are a method, tracing back to Chinese Buddhist tradition, to break the logical mind so you can be more open to nirvana. While koans…

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Is AI Translation the Future for Anime and Manga?

Posted on August 31, 2025 by Chris Kincaid

Manga is increasingly being translated by large-language models (LLMs), or artificial intelligence as most people call LLMs. The Ancient Magus’ Bride manga, for example, used Mantra Engine for part of its English translation (Schley, 2023). LLMs are software programmed to teach itself patterns in inputs and then use those patterns to generate new patterns based…

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The Usefulness of Japanese Proverbs

Posted on June 8, 2025 by Chris Kincaid

Proverbs and folklore preserve the wisdom and hard-learned lessons of the common class. Both pass down orally, taking on regional flavors over time until someone comes along and writes them down. Proverbs, because of their pithiness and use of metaphor, tend to remain in regular speech long after folktales become literature. Sometimes proverbs become folded…

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Japan’s Rice Shortage Problem

Posted on June 4, 2025 by Chris Kincaid

In Japan’s history, rice was once a currency and a commodity. Rice remains a staple grain throughout Japan and Asia. No doubt you’ve heard about Japan facing a shortfall of rice supply against their rice demand, causing prices to rise. But this problem has been gaining momentum since at least 2023 for a variety of…

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Only Time Will Tell: Mechanized Time in Old Japan

Posted on May 25, 2025 by Chris Kincaid

A day divided into 24 hours of 60 minutes, which are each 60 seconds in length, feels natural. But at one time, daylight didn’t divide so mechanically. Many mistakenly think people didn’t care about timekeeping even just a century-and-a-half ago. The idea: agriculturally based economies didn’t need hourly timekeeping and instead focused on seasonal and…

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Japan’s Once Exotic Culture is Now Humdrum

Posted on March 16, 2025 by Chris Kincaid

More than a century ago, the West had little contact with Japan. The fabled Asia, distant and strange to Westerners, was a land of mystical stories, of elixirs of immortality, and lands where gods were found everywhere. It was civilized and pagan, advanced and locked in time. Japan had just begun to open to the…

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