“The message is that the Buddha is within and moving about in very mysterious ways,” says James Ulak, senior curator of Japanese art at the Smithsonian Institution’s Freer and Sackler Galleries. More →

May 11, 2012

For Holocaust Remembrance Day we talk with Ilie Wacs and Deborah Strobin, a brother and sister who have written a memoir about their family’s life as Jewish refugees in the Far East during World War II and their connection to the larger Jewish story of survival and endurance. More →

April 20, 2012

Watch more of Kim Lawton’s interview with a sister and brother who describe how their family survived World War II in a Jewish ghetto in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. More →

April 20, 2012

The widespread crisis in Japan is marked by ongoing relief efforts and acknowledgment of the impermanence of life. More →

March 18, 2011

The Earthquake Thunder Fish, Yosuke Ueno Since its “opening” in 1854 by U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew Perry, Japan often has been defined in the West by a single, simple image. Sometimes that image has been one of exotic, romantic tradition … More →

March 18, 2011