Top Stories - Obituary

HANOI, Vietnam -- Thousands of Vietnamese fishermen are giving a royal send-off to a 15-ton dead whale, gathering at a southern Vietnamese village to pay homage at a funeral for the creature they call "Your Excellency."

I posted a few days ago a video to a Japanese Horror Movie review by Rodger Swan also known as Tokyo Swan and recently Iwate Swan. Rodger Swan passed away last week. This is my tribute video to him talking about his life and his influence on so many people to come to Japan and study the language and culture.

Cardinal Peter Seiichi Shirayanagi, the retired Archbishop of Tokyo, died on December 30 at the age of 81. A native of Tokyo, he was ordained to the priesthood in 1954 and appointed auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese in 1966. He became coadjutor in 1969, and Archbishop of Tokyo the following year, remaining in that position until his retirement in 2000.

...in the People’s Repressive State of China (PRoC), Abraham Lincoln’s stance on national unity during the U.S. Civil War and his opposition to the institution of slavery have been summoned up by PRC officials, media, and elites in efforts to explain and legitimate their own response to those they disparage as “separatists” in Taiwan and Tibet.

In a photograph taken only a few weeks ago, the supermodel – described as Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld's new "muse" – was the star of the fashion house's latest campaign advertising handbags.

A body found at the bottom of a cliff on a mountain in Gunma Prefecture has been identified as that of Yoshito Usui, author of the popular manga "Crayon Shin-chan."

On occasion Japan annoys me - this calms me down.

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Deep in Aichi, located in a remote shrine in Hacho city, are the remains of the late Hideki Tojo. I had coffee with his caretaker on a foggy downcast afternoon.

Renowned psychoanalyst Takeo Doi died on Sunday afternoon. He was 89.

Doi, a graduate of University of Tokyo's faculty of medicine, later studied at the Menninger School of Psychiatry in the U.S. in 1950, where he focused on the behavioral and psychological differences between Japanese and Americans.

Hideo Ko, the Japanese singer famous for pioneering the chanson form of French singing, has died of pneumonia at the age of 90.

I took this tour and it was awesome.

The room in which Japanese novelist and nationalist Yukio Mishima committed ritual suicide in 1970 is among the most popular locations on a tour of the Defense Ministry’s headquarters in Tokyo’s Ichigaya district.

Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan, South Korea's first cardinal and a tireless advocate for democracy who stood up to a string of military dictators, died Monday. He was 86.

Kim was ordained as cardinal by Pope Paul VI in 1969. He passed away at Seoul's St. Mary's Hospital, said Lee Hee-yeon, an official with the Archdiocese of Seoul.

Liang Yusheng, a pioneer in Chinese martial arts novels, has died, news reports said. He was 85.