TOKYO — In this land of wonders, a bastion of liberal democracy in a continent dominated by imperial powers, contradictions abound. The Japanese sit silently in metro cars and stroll noiselessly to work on bustling streets, but cheer raucously at baseball games. Bullet trains whisk by at 200 miles per hour, and impossibly sophisticated toilets […]

TOKYO — In this land of wonders, a bastion of liberal democracy in a continent dominated by imperial powers, contradictions abound.