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Why are boys in Japanese anime so often voiced by women? Starting with Masako Nozawa, the voice of Dragon Ball’s Goku
In the original Japanese version, Goku’s voice belongs to a woman born in 1936. The arrangement traces back to a very practical problem in the 1950s: dubbing was done live, and there was no room for mistakes.
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Why Does a Famous Japanese Inventor Hold His Breath Underwater to Find Ideas? Dr. NakaMats, Who Turned His Whole Life Into an Experiment
He says his best ideas come “0.5 seconds before death.” For more than ninety years he has turned meals, illness and elections into invention projects. It all started at fourteen, when he wanted to make pouring soy sauce easier for his mother.
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Japanese Ikebana Is Obsessed With Vases. Why Did a Grand Master Arrange Flowers in Rubber Boots? Atsunobu Katagiri’s Eight Months in Fukushima
In Japanese ikebana, there are rules even for the angle of a single flower. When the grand master of an ikebana school walked onto a coast devastated by a nuclear disaster, with no vase and no room to display flowers in, what was left of those rules?
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After Clearing 3,000 Rooms of People Who Died Alone, Why Does She Turn Them Into Miniatures? Estate Cleaner Miyu Kojima
At 17, a Japanese estate cleaner nearly lost her father to a “lonely death.” Later she walked into thousands of rooms where no one had said goodbye, then shrank them, one by one, and set them before strangers.
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Many Still Want to Hear the Dead Speak. Why Are Japan’s Blind Mediums Disappearing? Take Nakamura, the Last Blind Itako
She lost her sight at three, became an apprentice at thirteen, and spent her whole life speaking for the dead. People still come looking for her. What has vanished is the world that made her a medium.
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Do People Who Face Death Every Day Know More About Living? Japanese Encoffiner Akiko Omori and Her 4,000 Farewells
She has sent off more than 4,000 people. The one she remembers most is a wife who smiled from beginning to end beside her husband’s body.
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The Producer Behind Ghibli: Toshio Suzuki, the Editor Hayao Miyazaki Once Refused to Talk To
He can’t draw, and he isn’t a director. Yet Studio Ghibli’s films began with him sitting next to Hayao Miyazaki for three days.