Discover Ichi-go Ichi‑e, the Japanese Art of Savoring Every Moment

Each cul­ture has its own say­ings about the unique­ness and tran­sience of the present moment. In recent years, the Eng­lish-speak­ers have often found them­selves remind­ed, through the expres­sion “YOLO,” that they only live once. (The ques­tion of whether that should real­ly be “YLOO,” or “You Live Only Once,” we put aside for the time being.) In Japan, unsur­pris­ing­ly, one some­times hears a much more ven­er­a­ble equiv­a­lent: “i**chi-go ichi‑e,” which some read­ers acquaint­ed with the Japan­ese lan­guage should be assured has noth­ing to do with straw­ber­ries, ichi­go. Rather, the say­ing’s under­ly­ing Chi­nese char­ac­ters (一期一会) can be trans­lat­ed as “one time, one meet­ing.”

The Bud­dhis­ti­cal­ly inflect­ed “i**chi-go ichi‑e” is just one in the vast library of yoji­juku­go, high­ly con­densed apho­ris­tic expres­sions writ­ten with just four char­ac­ters. (Oth­er coun­tries with Chi­nese-influ­enced lan­guages have their ver­sions, includ­ing sajaseon­geo in Korea and *chéngyǔ *in Chi­na itself.) It descends, as the sto­ry goes, from a slight­ly longer say­ing favored by the six­teenth-cen­tu­ry tea mas­ter Sen no Rikyū, “ichi-go ni ichi-do” (一期に一度).

One must pay respects to the host of a tea cer­e­mo­ny because the meet­ing would only ever occur once — which, of course, it would, even if the cer­e­mo­ny was a reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled event. For we nev­er, to bor­row an ancient Greek take on this whole sub­ject, step into the same riv­er twice; no two events, sep­a­rat­ed in time, can ever tru­ly be iden­ti­cal.

One impli­ca­tion, as not­ed in the explana­to­ry videos above from the BBC and Einzel­gänger, is that we should savor what­ev­er moment we hap­pen to find our­selves in, how­ev­er imper­fect, because we won’t get a sec­ond chance to do so. And if it offers lit­tle or noth­ing to enjoy, we can find solace in the fact that its par­tic­u­lar dis­plea­sure, too, can nev­er revis­it us. With the past gone and the future nev­er guar­an­teed, the present moment, in any case, is the only time that actu­al­ly exists for us, so we’d bet­ter make our­selves com­fort­able with­in it. Though these ideas have per­haps found their most ele­gant and mem­o­rable expres­sion in Japan, they’re hard­ly con­sid­ered exclu­sive cul­tur­al prop­er­ty there. The Japan­ese title of For­rest Gump, after all, was Fore­su­to Gan­pu: Ichi-go Ichi‑e.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What is the Secret to Liv­ing a Long, Hap­py & Cre­ative­ly Ful­fill­ing Life?: Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese Con­cept of Iki­gai

Wabi-Sabi: A Short Film on the Beau­ty of Tra­di­tion­al Japan

Marie Kon­do v. Tsun­doku: Com­pet­ing Japan­ese Philoso­phies on Whether to Keep or Dis­card Unread Books

The Art of the Japan­ese Teapot: Watch a Mas­ter Crafts­man at Work, from the Begin­ning Until the Star­tling End

Memen­to Mori: How Smil­ing Skele­tons Have Remind­ed Us to Live Ful­ly Since Ancient Times

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Sto­icism, the Ancient Greek Phi­los­o­phy That Lets You Lead a Hap­py, Ful­fill­ing Life

Based in Seoul, Col­inMarshall writes and broad­cas**ts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities* as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro.* Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

J.R.R. Tolkien, Using a Tape Recorder for the First Time, Reads from The Hobbit for 30 Minutes (1952)

in * Audio Books, Literature * | January 5th, 2026

Hav­ing not revis­it­ed The Hob­bit in some time, I’ve felt the famil­iar pull—shared by many readers—to return to Tolkien’s fairy-tale nov­el itself. It was my first expo­sure to Tolkien, and the per­fect book for a young read­er ready to dive into moral com­plex­i­ty and a ful­ly-real­ized fic­tion­al world.

And what bet­ter guide could there be through *The Hob­bit *than Tolkien him­self, read­ing (above) from the 1937 work? In this 1952 record­ing in two parts (part 2 is below), the ven­er­a­ble fan­ta­sist and schol­ar reads from his own work for the first time on tape.

Tolkien begins with a pas­sage that first describes the crea­ture Gol­lum; lis­ten­ing to this descrip­tion again, I am struck by how much dif­fer­ent­ly I imag­ined him when I first read the book. The Gol­lum of The Hob­bit seems some­how hoari­er and more mon­strous than many lat­er visu­al inter­pre­ta­tions. This is a minor point and not a crit­i­cism, but per­haps a com­ment on how nec­es­sary it is to return to the source of a myth­ic world as rich as Tolkien’s, even, or espe­cial­ly, when it’s been so well-real­ized in oth­er media. No one, after all, knows Mid­dle Earth bet­ter than its cre­ator.

These read­ings were part of a much longer record­ing ses­sion, dur­ing which Tolkien also read (and sang!) exten­sive­ly from The Lord of the Rings. A YouTube user has col­lect­ed, in sev­er­al parts, a radio broad­cast of that full ses­sion, and it’s cer­tain­ly worth your time to lis­ten to it all the way through. It’s also worth know­ing the neat con­text of the record­ing. Here’s the text that accom­pa­nies the video on YouTube:

When Tolkien vis­it­ed a friend in August of 1952 to retrieve a man­u­script of The Lord of the Rings, he was shown a “tape recorder”. Hav­ing nev­er seen one before, he asked how it worked and was then delight­ed to have his voice record­ed and hear him­self played back for the first time. His friend then asked him to read from The Hob­bit, and Tolkien did so in this one incred­i­ble take.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Lis­ten to J.R.R. Tolkien Read Poems from The Fel­low­ship of the Ring, in Elvish and Eng­lish (1952)

J. R. R. Tolkien Admit­ted to Dis­lik­ing Dune “With Some Inten­si­ty” (1966)

When the Nobel Prize Com­mit­tee Reject­ed The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien “Has Not Mea­sured Up to Sto­ry­telling of the High­est Qual­i­ty” (1961)

J. R. R. Tolkien Reads from The Hob­bit, The Lord of the Rings & Oth­er Works

J.R.R. Tolkien Snubs a Ger­man Pub­lish­er Ask­ing for Proof of His “Aryan Descent” (1938)

Josh Jones* is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. *

When Two Filmmakers Make the Same Movie — and One of Them Is Werner Herzog

in * Film, Nature * | January 2nd, 2026

In 1991, the French hus­band-and-wife vol­ca­nol­o­gist-film­mak­er team Mau­rice and Katia Krafft were killed by the flow of ash from the erup­tion of Mount Unzen in Nagasa­ki. Inex­plic­a­bly, Wern­er Her­zog did­n’t get around to mak­ing a film about them for more than 30 years. These would seem to be ide­al sub­jects for the doc­u­men­tary half of his career, a large por­tion of which he’s spent on por­traits of eccen­tric, roman­tic, often fool­hardy, and more than occa­sion­al­ly ill-fat­ed indi­vid­u­als who pit them­selves, or in any case find them­selves pit­ted, against the raw ele­ments of nature. Their cou­ple­hood makes the Kraffts a slight excep­tion in that line­up, but it also makes them even less resistible to a more con­ven­tion­al doc­u­men­tar­i­an — not that a doc­u­men­tar­i­an could get much less con­ven­tion­al than Her­zog.

Hence, per­haps, the appear­ance of two entire­ly sep­a­rate doc­u­men­taries on the Kraffts in the same year, 2022: Her­zog’s The Fire With­in, and Sara Dosa’s Fire of Love. The Like Sto­ries of Old video above per­forms a direct com­par­i­son of the two films, both of which make heavy use of the vol­cano footage shot by the Kraffts them­selves.

Her­zog assem­bles it into word­less, oper­at­i­cal­ly scored, and some­times quite long sequences, inten­si­fy­ing their qual­i­ty of the sub­lime, which we feel in that aes­thet­ic zone where awe of beau­ty and fear of exis­ten­tial anni­hi­la­tion over­lap com­plete­ly. These do noth­ing to advance a nar­ra­tive, but every­thing to put forth what Her­zog has often referred to in inter­views as a sense of “ecsta­t­ic truth,” a dis­til­la­tion of real­i­ty that can­not be cap­tured by any con­ven­tion­al doc­u­men­tary means.

The video’s host Tom van der Lin­den describes Fire of Love as “much more fast-paced. Images come and go so quick­ly that they don’t real­ly have a chance to reveal that strange, secret beau­ty, to take the spot­light with their own mys­te­ri­ous star­dom. Instead, they feel sub­servient to what­ev­er pre­de­ter­mined emo­tion the nar­ra­tive wants you to expe­ri­ence,” as if the direc­tor is giv­ing you orders: “Be in awe. Feel the romance. And now the com­e­dy.” That hard­ly sug­gests incom­pe­tence on the part of Dosa and her col­lab­o­ra­tors, or any defi­cien­cy in her high­ly acclaimed film. But it does give us a sense of what becomes weary­ing about the tech­niques of main­stream cin­e­ma in gen­er­al, fic­tion­al, or non­fic­tion­al. The truth is that Wern­er Her­zog may be unique­ly well placed to appre­ci­ate not just the fear­some­ly enrap­tur­ing object of the Kraffts’ obses­sion, but also the dri­ving pas­sion, and flash­es of ridicu­lous­ness, in the Kraffts them­selves — who were, after all, fel­low sol­diers of cin­e­ma.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dream-Dri­ven Film­mak­ing of Wern­er Her­zog: Watch the Video Essay, “The Inner Chron­i­cle of What We Are: Under­stand­ing Wern­er Her­zog”

An Intro­duc­tion to the Paint­ing of Cas­par David Friedrich, Roman­ti­cism & the Sub­lime

Watch the Destruc­tion of Pom­peii by Mount Vesu­vius, Re-Cre­at­ed with Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion (79 AD)

Under­wa­ter Vol­canic Erup­tion Wit­nessed for the First Time

Two Ways To Shoot The Same Scene: A Com­par­i­son of The Shop Around the Cor­ner (1940) and You’ve Got Mail (1998) Shows How Film­mak­ing Changed Over the Decades

Wern­er Her­zog Dis­cov­ers the Ecsta­sy of Skate­board­ing: “That’s Kind of My Peo­ple”

Based in Seoul, Col­inMarshall writes and broad­cas**ts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities* as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro.* Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Birth of Espresso: The Story Behind the Coffee Shots That Fuel Modern Life

in * Food & Drink, History * | January 2nd, 2026

Espres­so is nei­ther bean nor roast.

It is a method of pres­sur­ized cof­fee brew­ing that ensures speedy deliv­ery, and it has birthed a whole cul­ture.

Amer­i­cans may be accus­tomed to camp­ing out in cafes with their lap­tops for hours, but Ital­ian cof­fee bars are fast-paced envi­ron­ments where cus­tomers buzz in for a quick pick-me-up, then head right back out, no seat required.

It’s the sort of effi­cien­cy the Father of the Mod­ern Adver­tis­ing Poster, Leonet­to Cap­piel­lo, allud­ed to in his famous 1922 image for the Vic­to­ria Arduino machine (below).

Let 21st-cen­tu­ry cof­fee afi­ciona­dos cul­ti­vate their Zen-like patience with slow pourovers. A hun­dred years ago, the goal was a qual­i­ty prod­uct that the suc­cess­ful busi­nessper­son could enjoy with­out break­ing stride.

As cof­fee expert James Hoff­mann, author of The World Atlas of Cof­fee points out in the above video, the Steam Age was on the way out, but Cappiello’s image is “absolute­ly lever­ag­ing the idea that steam equals speed.”

That had been the goal since 1884, when inven­tor Ange­lo Morion­do patent­ed the first espres­so machine (see below).

The bulk brew­er caused a stir at the Turin Gen­er­al Expo­si­tion. Speed wise, it was a great improve­ment over the old method, in which indi­vid­ual cups were brewed in the Turk­ish style, requir­ing five min­utes per order.

This “new steam machin­ery for the eco­nom­ic and instan­ta­neous con­fec­tion of cof­fee bev­er­age” fea­tured a gas or wood burn­er at the bot­tom of an upright boil­er, and two sight glass­es that the oper­a­tor could mon­i­tor to get a feel for when to open the var­i­ous taps, to yield a large quan­ti­ty of fil­tered cof­fee. It was fast, but demand­ed some skill on the part of its human oper­a­tor.

As Jim­my Stamp explains in a Smith­son­ian arti­cle on the his­to­ry of the espres­so machine, there were also a few bugs to work out.

Ear­ly machines’ hand-oper­at­ed pres­sure valves posed a risk to work­ers, and the cof­fee itself had a burnt taste.

Milanese café own­er Achille Gag­gia cracked the code after WWII, with a small, steam­less lever-dri­ven machine that upped the pres­sure to pro­duce the con­cen­trat­ed brew that is** **what we now think of as espres­so.

Stamp describes how Gaggia’s machine also stan­dard­ized the size of the espres­so, giv­ing rise to some now-famil­iar cof­fee­house vocab­u­lary:

The cylin­der on lever groups could only hold an ounce of water, lim­it­ing the vol­ume that could be used to pre­pare an espres­so. With the lever machines also came some new jar­gon: baris­tas oper­at­ing Gaggia’s spring-loaded levers coined the term “pulling a shot” of espres­so. But per­haps most impor­tant­ly, with the inven­tion of the high-pres­sure lever machine came the dis­cov­ery of cre­ma – the foam float­ing over the cof­fee liq­uid that is the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of a qual­i­ty espres­so. A his­tor­i­cal anec­dote claims that ear­ly con­sumers were dubi­ous of this “scum” float­ing over their cof­fee until Gag­gia began refer­ring to it as “caffe creme,“ sug­gest­ing that the cof­fee was of such qual­i­ty that it pro­duced its own creme.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2021.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Cof­fee Entre­pre­neur Rena­to Bialet­ti Gets Buried in the Espres­so Mak­er He Made Famous

The Life & Death of an Espres­so Shot in Super Slow Motion

The Bialet­ti Moka Express: The His­to­ry of Italy’s Icon­ic Cof­fee Mak­er, and How to Use It the Right Way

Every­thing You Ever Want­ed to Know about the Bialet­ti Moka Express: A Deep Dive Into Italy’s Most Pop­u­lar Cof­fee Mak­er

*Ayun Hal­l­i­day *is an author, illus­tra­tor, and the­ater mak­er in NYC.

What’s Entering the Public Domain in 2026: Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, All Quiet on the Western Front, Betty Boop & More

in * Books, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Law, Music * | January 1st, 2026

Though it isn’t the kind of thing one hears dis­cussed every day, seri­ous Dis­ney fans do tend to know that Goofy’s orig­i­nal name was Dip­py Dawg. But how many of the non-obses­sive know that Mick­ey’s faith­ful pet Plu­to was first called Rover? (We pass over in dig­ni­fied silence the qua­si-philo­soph­i­cal ques­tion of why the for­mer dog is humanoid and the lat­ter isn’t.) It is Rover, as dis­tinct from Plu­to, who pass­es into the pub­lic domain this new year, one of a cast of now-lib­er­at­ed char­ac­ters includ­ing Blondie and Dag­wood as well as Bet­ty Boop — who, upon mak­ing her debut in Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios’ Dizzy Dish­es of 1930, has a some­what canoid appear­ance her­self. You can see them all in the video above from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Cen­ter for the Study of the Pub­lic Domain, with much more infor­ma­tion avail­able in their blog post mark­ing this year’s “Pub­lic Domain Day.”

The year 1930, write the Cen­ter’s Jen­nifer Jenk­ins and James Boyle, was one “of detec­tives, jazz, speakeasies, and icon­ic char­ac­ters step­ping onto the cul­tur­al stage — many of whom have been locked behind copy­right for near­ly a cen­tu­ry.”

Nov­els that come avail­able this year include William Faulkn­er’s *As I Lay Dying, *Dashiell Ham­met­t’s The Mal­tese Fal­con, and Agatha Christie’s The Mur­der at the Vic­arage; among the films are Lewis Mile­stone’s Best Pic­ture-win­ning All Qui­et on the West­ern Front, Vic­tor Heer­man’s Marx Broth­ers pic­ture Ani­mal Crack­ers, and Luis Buñuel and Sal­vador Dalí’s L’Âge d’Or. In music, com­po­si­tions like “I Got Rhythm” and “Embrace­able You” by the Gersh­win Broth­ers as well as record­ings like “Nobody Knows the Trou­ble I’ve Seen” by Mar­i­an Ander­son and “Sweet Geor­gia Brown” by Ben Bernie and His Hotel Roo­sevelt Orches­tra have also, at long last, gone pub­lic.

Reflec­tion on some of these works them­selves sug­gests some­thing about the impor­tance of the pub­lic domain. With the title of Cakes and Ale, anoth­er book in this year’s crop, Som­er­set Maugh­am makes ref­er­ence to “a clas­sic pub­lic domain work, in this case Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night”; so, for that mat­ter, does Faulkn­er, giv­en that the line “as I lay dying” comes from the Odyssey. “To tell new sto­ries, we draw from old­er ones,” write Jenk­ins and Boyle. “One work of art inspires anoth­er — that is how the pub­lic domain feeds cre­ativ­i­ty.” Today, we’re free to take explic­it inspi­ra­tion for our own work from Nan­cy Drew, “Just a Gigo­lo,” Blondie, Mon­dri­an’s Com­po­si­tion with Red, Blue, and Yel­low, Hitch­cock­’s Mur­der!, and much else besides. And by all means use Rover, but if you also want to bring in Dip­py Dawg, you’re going to have to wait until 2028.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What’s Enter­ing the Pub­lic Domain in 2025: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Ear­ly Hitch­cock Films, Tintin and Pop­eye Car­toons & More

The Harlem Jazz Singer Who Inspired Bet­ty Boop: Meet the Orig­i­nal Boop-Oop-a-Doop, “Baby Esther”

Car­toon­ists Draw Their Famous Car­toon Char­ac­ters While Blind­fold­ed (1947)

Watch Restored Ver­sions of Clas­sic Fleis­ch­er Car­toons on Youtube, Fea­tur­ing Bet­ty Boop, Koko the Clown & Oth­ers

Vin­tage Audio: William Faulkn­er Reads From As I Lay Dying

16 Free Hitch­cock Movies Online

Based in Seoul, Col­inMarshall writes and broad­cas**ts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities* and the book *The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Woody Guthrie Creates a Doodle-Filled List of 33 New Year’s Resolutions (1943): Beat Fascism, Write a Song a Day, and Keep the Hoping Machine Running

in * Uncategorized * | January 1st, 2026

On Jan­u­ary 1, 1943, the Amer­i­can folk music leg­end Woody Guthrie jot­ted in his jour­nal a list of 33 “New Years Rulin’s.” Nowa­days, we’d call them New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions. Adorned by doo­dles, the list is down to earth by any mea­sure. Fam­i­ly, song, tak­ing a polit­i­cal stand, per­son­al hygiene—they’re the val­ues or aspi­ra­tions that top his list. You can click the image above to view the list in a larg­er for­mat. Below, we have pro­vid­ed a tran­script of Guthrie’s Rulin’s.

1. Work more and bet­ter 2. Work by a sched­ule 3. Wash teeth if any 4. Shave 5. Take bath 6. Eat good — fruit — veg­eta­bles — milk 7. Drink very scant if any 8. Write a song a day 9. Wear clean clothes — look good 10. Shine shoes 11. Change socks 12. Change bed cloths often 13. Read lots good books 14. Lis­ten to radio a lot 15. Learn peo­ple bet­ter 16. Keep ran­cho clean 17. Dont get lone­some 18. Stay glad 19. Keep hop­ing machine run­ning 20. Dream good 21. Bank all extra mon­ey 22. Save dough 23. Have com­pa­ny but dont waste time 24. Send Mary and kids mon­ey 25. Play and sing good 26. Dance bet­ter 27. Help win war — beat fas­cism 28. Love mama 29. Love papa 30. Love Pete 31. Love every­body 32. Make up your mind 33. Wake up and fight

We wish you all a hap­py 2018.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!**

Note: This fine list orig­i­nal­ly appeared on our site back in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Pow­er­ful Mes­sages That Woody Guthrie & Pete Seeger Inscribed on Their Gui­tar & Ban­jo: “This Machine Kills Fas­cists” and “This Machine Sur­rounds Hate and Forces it to Sur­ren­der”

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Go-Get­ter List of New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions (1955)

Anto­nio Gram­sci Writes a Col­umn, “I Hate New Year’s Day” (Jan­u­ary 1, 1916)

The Top 10 New Year’s Res­o­lu­tions Read by Bob Dylan

The Mystery of How a Samurai Ended up in 17th Century Venice

in * History * | December 31st, 2025

It would­n’t sur­prise us to come across a Japan­ese per­son in Venice. Indeed, giv­en the glob­al touris­tic appeal of the place, we could hard­ly imag­ine a day there with­out a vis­i­tor from the Land of the Ris­ing Sun. But things were dif­fer­ent in 1873, just five years after the end of the *sakoku *pol­i­cy that all but closed Japan to the world for two and a half cen­turies. On a mis­sion to research the mod­ern ways of the new­ly acces­si­ble out­side world, a Japan­ese del­e­ga­tion arrived in Venice and found in the state archives two let­ters writ­ten in Latin by one of their coun­try­men, dat­ed 1615 and 1616. Its author seemed to have been an emis­sary of Ōto­mo Sōrin, a feu­dal lord who con­vert­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty and once sent a mis­sion of four teenagers to meet the Pope in Rome — a mis­sion that took place ear­li­er, in 1586.

So who could this undoc­u­ment­ed Japan­ese trav­el­er in the fif­teen-tens have been? That ques­tion lies at the heart of the sto­ry told by Evan “Nerd­writer” Puschak in his new video above. The let­ter’s sig­na­ture of Haseku­ra Roke­mon would’ve con­sti­tut­ed a major clue, but the name seems not to have rung a bell with any­one at the time.

“In 1873, there was like­ly no one on plan­et Earth who knew why Haseku­ra Roke­mon was in Venice in 1615,” says Puschak. The rea­sons have to do with the arrival of Chris­tian­i­ty in Japan — or at least the arrival of the first major Jesuit mis­sion­ary — in 1549. Not every ruler looked kind­ly on their work, and espe­cial­ly not Toy­oto­mi Hideyoshi, who ordered them removed from the coun­try in 1587 and lat­er had 26 Catholics cru­ci­fied in Nagasa­ki.

Hideyoshi was suc­ceed­ed by the more tol­er­ant Toku­gawa Ieya­su (1543–1616), dur­ing whose rule the Japan­ese-speak­ing Fran­cis­can fri­ar Luis Sote­lo arrived in Japan. Over the ensu­ing decade, he worked not just to spread his faith but also to build hos­pi­tals, one of which suc­cess­ful­ly treat­ed a Euro­pean con­cu­bine of the feu­dal lord Date Masamune. The two men got on, real­iz­ing the mutu­al ben­e­fit their rela­tion­ship could bring: per­haps Sote­lo could found a new dio­cese in Date’s north­ern ter­ri­to­ry, and per­haps Date could estab­lish links with the Span­ish empire. In order to accom­plish the lat­ter, he had a ship built and a team assem­bled for a mis­sion to Europe, includ­ing Sote­lo him­self. He sent with them a loy­al retain­er, a samu­rai by the name of Haseku­ra Roke­mon — or to use his full name, Haseku­ra Rokue­mon Tsune­na­ga, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his meet­ing with the pope and adop­tion of Roman cit­i­zen­ship. He may have been Japan­ese, but a mere tourist he cer­tain­ly was­n’t.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 17th Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Samu­rai Who Sailed to Europe, Met the Pope & Became a Roman Cit­i­zen

21 Rules for Liv­ing from Miyamo­to Musashi, Japan’s Samu­rai Philoso­pher (1584–1645)

A Mis­chie­vous Samu­rai Describes His Rough-and-Tum­ble Life in 19th Cen­tu­ry Japan

How to Be a Samu­rai: A 17th Cen­tu­ry Code for Life & War

Hand-Col­ored 1860s Pho­tographs Reveal the Last Days of Samu­rai Japan

Meet Yasuke, Japan’s First Black Samu­rai War­rior

Based in Seoul, Col­inMarshall writes and broad­cas**ts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities* and the book *The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

J. R. R. Tolkien Admitted to Disliking Dune “With Some Intensity” (1966)

in * Books, Literature * | December 30th, 2025

One can eas­i­ly imag­ine a read­er enjoy­ing both The Lord of the Rings and Dune. Both of those works of epic fan­ta­sy were pub­lished in the form of a series of long nov­els begin­ning in the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry; both cre­ate elab­o­rate worlds of their own, right down to details of ecol­o­gy and lan­guage; both seri­ous­ly (and these days, unfash­ion­ably) con­cern them­selves with the theme of what con­sti­tutes hero­ic action; both have even inspired mul­ti­ple big-bud­get Hol­ly­wood spec­ta­cles. The read­er equal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the work of J. R. R. Tolkien and Frank Her­bert turns out to be a more elu­sive crea­ture than we may expect, but per­haps that should­n’t sur­prise us, giv­en Tolkien’s own atti­tude toward Dune.

“It is impos­si­ble for an author still writ­ing to be fair to anoth­er author work­ing along the same lines,” Tolkien wrote in 1966 to a fan who’d sent him a copy of Her­bert’s book, which had come out the year before. “In fact I dis­like DUNE with some inten­si­ty, and in that unfor­tu­nate case it is much the best and fairest to anoth­er author to keep silent and refuse to com­ment.”

That lack of elab­o­ra­tion has, if any­thing, only stoked the curios­i­ty of Lord of the Rings and Dune enthu­si­asts alike, as evi­denced by this thread from a few years ago on the r/tolkienfans sub­red­dit. Was it the mate­ri­al­ism and Machi­avel­lian­ism implic­it in Dune’s world­view? The pre­pon­der­ance of invent­ed names and coinages that sure­ly would­n’t meet the ety­mo­log­i­cal stan­dard of an Oxford lin­guist?

Maybe it was the aris­to­crat­ic iso­la­tion — a kind of anti-fel­low­ship — of its pro­tag­o­nist Paul Atrei­des, who comes to pos­sess the equiv­a­lent of Tolkien’s Ring of Pow­er. “In Dune, Paul will­ing­ly takes the (metaphor­i­cal) ring and wields it,” writes Evan Ama­to at The Cul­tur­ist. “He leads, trans­forms, and con­quers. The uni­verse bends to his vision. He suf­fers for it, yes, and ques­tions it, but he nev­er tru­ly rejects the call to rule. Con­trast this with the world of Mid­dle-earth, where all Tolkien’s heroes do the oppo­site. When Fro­do offers the Ring to Aragorn, he refus­es. Even Sam­wise, hum­ble as he is, feels the surge of the Ring’s pow­er, and lets it go.” Assum­ing he man­aged to get through the first Dune nov­el, Tolkien could hard­ly have approved of the nar­ra­tive’s moral arc. Whether his or Her­bert’s vision puts up the more real­is­tic alle­go­ry for human­i­ty’s lot is anoth­er mat­ter entire­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

J. R. R. Tolkien Expressed a “Heart­felt Loathing” for Walt Dis­ney and Refused to Let Dis­ney Stu­dios Adapt His Work

Frank Her­bert Explains the Ori­gins of Dune (1969)

When the Nobel Prize Com­mit­tee Reject­ed The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien “Has Not Mea­sured Up to Sto­ry­telling of the High­est Qual­i­ty” (1961)

Why You Should Read Dune: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Frank Herbert’s Eco­log­i­cal, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci-Fi Epic

J. R. R. Tolkien Writes & Speaks in Elvish, a Lan­guage He Invent­ed for The Lord of the Rings

Based in Seoul, Col­inMarshall writes and broad­cas**ts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities* and the book *The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Brian Eno’s Book & Music Recommendations

in * Books, Music * | December 30th, 2025

If you’re a reg­u­lar lis­ten­er, you know that Ezra Klein wraps up his pod­cast inter­views with a famil­iar ques­tion: what three books would you rec­om­mend to the audi­ence? When Klein inter­viewed Bri­an Eno in Octo­ber, the pro­duc­er had these three books to offer.

First up was Print­ing and the Mind of Man, a cat­a­log from an exhi­bi­tion held at the British Muse­um in 1963. “It was about the his­to­ry of print­ing, but actu­al­ly, the book is about the most impor­tant books in the West­ern canon and the impact that they had when they were released.” “It’s such a fas­ci­nat­ing book because you real­ly start to under­stand where the big, fun­da­men­tal ideas that made West­ern cul­ture came from.”

Next came A Pat­tern Lan­guage by the archi­tect Christo­pher Alexan­der. “It’s real­ly a book about habi­tat, about what makes spaces wel­com­ing and fruit­ful, or hos­tile and bar­ren.” Eno has returned to the book again and again over the years. “Over the course of my life, I’ve bought, I would say, 60 copies of that book because I always give it to any­one who is about to ren­o­vate a house or about to build a house. It’s a great read, and you would love it.”

His third rec­om­men­da­tion was Naples ’44, a war diary kept by Nor­man Lewis, a British intel­li­gence offi­cer sent to Naples dur­ing World War II. “He kept a diary, and this is the most fab­u­lous diary you’ll ever read. It’s just hilar­i­ous­ly fun­ny, deeply mov­ing, and total­ly confusing—and you real­ize that Naples was, like, anoth­er plan­et.”

Under­stand­ably, Klein couldn’t let the inter­view end with­out also ask­ing what albums influ­enced Eno most. In response, Eno offered The Rur­al Blues, a series of record­ings of Black Amer­i­can music from the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. It’s the same music that lat­er inspired pop and rock musi­cians in Eng­land when Eno came of age. He also point­ed to the Vel­vet Underground’s self-titled third album, call­ing it a “beau­ti­ful, beau­ti­ful record, beau­ti­ful­ly con­tro­ver­sial in many ways.” He then added: “In fact, prob­a­bly with­out that record, I wouldn’t have been a pop musi­cian.” Many oth­er musi­cians have said the same.

And final­ly, despite being an athe­ist, Eno select­ed a gospel record­ing act known as The Con­sol­ers, best known for their 1955 track “Give Me My Flow­ers.” You can lis­ten to more of their great­est hits here.

Along­side his musi­cal and lit­er­ary influ­ences, Eno recent­ly shared his own ideas in the book What Art Does: An Unfin­ished The­o­ry.

**Relat­ed Con­tent **

Bri­an Eno on the Loss of Human­i­ty in Mod­ern Music

A 6‑Hour Time-Stretched Ver­sion of Bri­an Eno’s Music For Air­ports: Med­i­tate, Relax, Study

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of 20 Books That Could Rebuild Civ­i­liza­tion

Jump Start Your Cre­ative Process with Bri­an Eno’s “Oblique Strate­gies” Deck of Cards (1975)

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

How Far Back in History Can You Start to Understand English?

in * English Language, History, Language * | December 29th, 2025

It’s easy to imag­ine the myr­i­ad dif­fi­cul­ties with which you’d be faced if you were sud­den­ly trans­port­ed a mil­len­ni­um back in time. But if you’re a native (or even pro­fi­cient) Eng­lish speak­er in an Eng­lish-speak­ing part of the world, the lan­guage, at least, sure­ly would­n’t be a prob­lem. Or so you’d think, until your first encounter with utter­ances like “þat troe is daed on gaerde” or “þa rokes for­leten urne tun.” Both of those sen­tences appear in the new video above from Simon Rop­er, in which he deliv­ers a mono­logue begin­ning in the Eng­lish of the fifth cen­tu­ry and end­ing in the Eng­lish of the end of the last mil­len­ni­um.

An Eng­lish­man spe­cial­iz­ing in videos about lin­guis­tics and anthro­pol­o­gy, Rop­er has pulled off this sort of feat before: we pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured him here on Open Cul­ture for his per­for­mance of a Lon­don accent as it evolved through 660 years.

But writ­ing and deliv­er­ing a mono­logue that works its way through a mil­len­ni­um and a half of change in the Eng­lish lan­guage is obvi­ous­ly a thornier endeav­or, not least because it i