Culture

Princess Ayako, the third daughter of Princess Hisako and the late Prince Takamado, Emperor Akihito’s cousin, married a 32-year-old worker at shipping firm NYK Line in October 2018. The husband of the 27-year-old princess is Kei Moriya, a commoner and graduate of Keio University in Tokyo. Their wedding ceremony was planned for Oct. 29 at Meiji Jingu Shrine in Shibuya Ward, Tokyo.

Under the Imperial House Law, a princess will lose her Imperial status if she marries a commoner. Princess Mako, 26, the eldest granddaughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, is set to become engaged with Kei Komuro, 26, also a commoner, who courted her while she attended university. Their formal wedding will take place in 2020.

UNESCO has decided to add 12 sites to the World Heritage list that are linked to the history of the country’s persecuted Christians.

The sites include the Oura Cathedral in Nagasaki, the oldest surviving church in the country which is already designated as a national treasure; and the remains of Hara Castle, a site of the Shimabara-Amakusa Rebellion that led to establishment of a national policy of seclusion and the beginning of the hidden Christians’ unique system to transmit their faith and beliefs by themselves.

The newly added sites “bear unique testimony to a cultural tradition nurtured by hidden Christians in the Nagasaki region who secretly transmitted their faith during the period of prohibition from the 17th to the 19th century,” the committee said on its website.

Businesses in Tokyo are continuing to look for ways to get foreign visitors to spend their time and cash on the capital’s wide-ranging nightlife options. Travel agencies are arranging special events for foreign tourists such as taiko (drum) performances, while some hotels are extending the business hours of their restaurants to allow guests to socialize into the early hours.

In January (2018), the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said it planned to survey foreign tourists on what they enjoy about the capital’s nightlife, including restaurants, theaters and sporting events, to better cater to their interests and encourage spending.

A Japanese medical school has been accused of manipulating the test scores of female applicants for years to artificially depress the number of women in the student body, a scandal that has triggered sharp criticism.

The revelations have highlighted institutional barriers that women in Japan still face as they pursue work in fields that have long been dominated by men.

Tokyo Medical University reduced the test scores of women to keep their numbers at about 30 percent of entering classes. For the 2018 school year, 8.8 percent of men and 2.9 percent of women were accepted, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.

The newspaper quoted an unnamed source as saying that school administrators justified the practice out of the belief that women were more likely to drop out of the profession after marriage or childbirth.

Japan has the lowest rate of gun deaths in the industrialized world. Why is that? Watch the video and discuss it with your teacher, or write about it using the discussion questions below.

David O. Russell’s crime drama “American Hustle” could be a big winner at the Academy Awards. But for the movie’s many international fans, it may take a little longer to realize it. In their country, there is simply no word that captures the true essence of “Hustle.”

So in Israel the film is known in Hebrew as “American Dream.” In France, it’s translated as “American Bluff.” In Argentina, it’s “American Scandal.” In Portugal, it’s “American Sting.” In Quebec, it’s “American Scam.” In Spain, it’s the “Great American Scam.” And in Turkey, it’s merely known as “Trickster.”

Arie Barak, whose public relations company represents the studios of Fox, Disney and Sony in Israel, said that in this era of globalization the trend is to try to stick as much as possible to the original title, particularly with blockbusters and well-branded superheroes like Batman and Superman. Other times, a literal translation does the trick just fine.