There is something deeply magnetic about a locked door, a sealed wall, or a staircase that vanishes into silence. Castles have stood for centuries as symbols of power and grandeur, but behind their ...

Castles in Osaka and Nagoya, for example, might be replicas, but they are vitally important in their roles toward the unification of Japan more than 400 years ago. But regardless of whether original ...

If I could time travel, I probably wouldn’t choose Japan during the late 15th- to early 17th-centuries. Those were times of great upheaval and constant civil wars, as feudal lords (daimyo) staked out ...