In winter, Japan’s northernmost main island Hokkaido is a place of snow-covered forests and white-crested volcanoes mirrored in glacial lakes. It’s also the land of the Ainu, an Indigenous people intimately connected to the environment through their hunting, fishing and storytelling traditions, and animist beliefs

MASAKI KOBAYASHI’S HUGELY INFLUENTIAL JAPANESE HORROR

The smell of the greasepaint, the roar of the crowd, the flare of the floodlights – what enchantments they conjure! If you’d visited a regional playhouse over two centuries ago, though, a very differe

Today, almost all performances can be digitally preserved. Go to a concert – Taylor Swift, Tom Jones or Bon Jovi – and most of the audience will be recording the experience on their phones. Plays, ope

JAPAN IS A LAND FULL OF UNIQUE, DIVERSE EXPERIENCES, AND KOKO HOTEL IS THE GATEWAY TO ITS LESSER-VISITED CORNERS.

‘Dear Mr Grieg: I am writing to you in connection with a plan that I propose to implement, and in which I wish to invite your participation.’ The tone is impeccably formal and business-like, but the l