Guardian Weekly

SOUNDS OF THE CITY

Tokyo is that most modern of cities, the microchipped metropolis where vending machines and lavatory seats seem to have enough artificial intelligence to beat a Russian grandmaster at chess. What’s interesting about this hypermodernity is that it has arrived alongside an extraordinary renunciation of violence by a society for so long considered synonymous with it.

The samurai class, once hailed around the world as the paragon of martial virtue,

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