Throughout the twelfth century, two rival clans, the Minomoto and the Taira, struggled for supremacy in Imperial Japan. Each attempted a rebellion and, for a ti

The Tale of the Heike is Japan's great martial epic; a masterpiece of world literature and the progenitor of all samurai stories, now in a major and groundbreak

The Genpei War of 1180-1185 signaled a crucial shift in Japanese history because it gave birth to the shogunate, or government run by warriors. How was the emer

Minamoto Yoshitsune should not have been a samurai. But his story is legend in this real-life saga. This epic warrior tale reads like a novel, but this is the t

"Akasegawa is the kind of artist who inspires everybody every time he makes a new piece of art." -Yoko Ono In the 1970s, estranged from the institutions and pra