Someone once said – all the best stories ever told were stories of revenge. The French novelist Alexandre Dumas is rightfully called the father of genre literature and the creator of a bunch of adventure fiction tr [...]

On January 11th 2017, exactly a year and a day after David Bowie returned to his home planet, my father passed away. He was suffering from a horrid, ugly and painful illness. It lasted too long, hurt too much. It tur [...]

So this happened. Yesterday, I was browsing the web looking for pictures of Gackt - you know the dude, Gackt Camui, Japan's greatest rock star, Mr. Perfect himself, the man who served as the inspiration for numerous p [...]

AFTERWORD – THE TOSHIZO HIJIKATA PROJECT So you made it through my overly long retelling of the life and deeds of my favorite history’s tragic hero, Toshizo Hijikata. Congratulations – and thank you for sticking [...]

THE STORY OF TOSHIZO HIJIKATA – EPILOGUE: A MEMORY (THE LIVING AND THE DEAD) The short-lived Ezo Republic fell exactly one week after Toshizo Hijikata’s death. The President, Admiral Takeaki Enomoto, wanted to [...]

THE STORY OF TOSHIZO HIJIKATA – FINAL CHAPTER: THE HATAMOTO OF EZO Take a look at a map of Japan. See where Hokkaido is? It’s the northernmost island of the Land of the Rising Sun, much more scarcely populated [...]