Kenji Ara

Japan at the meeting point of economic history and culture.

Kenji Ara is a Japanese-American writer who splits his attention between economic history and cultural criticism, usually finding that the two explain each other better than either does alone. Raised between Osaka and California, he writes about Japan from a rare vantage point — close enough to feel the weight of lost-decade economic history personally, distant enough to see why generations of foreigners fell in love with an idea of Japan that the country itself never promised to be.