TEMPURA Magazine – Number 23: Japanese Advantures

A Coffee Table Mags pick for Japan obsessives ready to leave Tokyo behind — TEMPURA is the most adventurous Japan magazine in print, and the one that surprises every time.

TEMPURA, a magazine about japan: japan as you‘ve never read it before,

TEMPURA Magazine was born in 2019. Its mission? To open the doors to a Japan far removed from clichés. Co-founded by Emil Pacha Valencia, Editor-in-Chief, Clémence Fabre, Artistic Director, and Olivier Cohen de Timary, Publishing Director, TEMPURA is a magazine aimed as much at lovers of Japan as at curious readers seeking inspiration.

A different side of Japan begins where the cities end.
In this new issue of Tempura, we follow the trails, forests and mountain paths that reveal another face of the archipelago.

Japan is often imagined as a land of ultra-dense cities and perfectly raked Zen gardens. Yet beyond the concrete and neon lies another archipelago: little-known hiking trails, mountain lodges perched high above the valleys, rice fields and bamboo forests stretching as far as the eye can see. For this new issue, we laced up our hiking boots and left the paved roads behind to explore a Japan that remains largely overlooked, while reflecting on another way of relating to nature and the living world.

Join us for a breath of fresh air across the Japanese archipelago!

In this issue:

🧗In Chamonix, we investigate a little-known chapter in mountaineering history: the Japanese mountaineers whose passion for the Alps, and for the people who live there, left lasting traces.

🏕️ We pitch our tent in Japanese-style campgrounds, where heated low tables coexist with meticulously engineered high-tech barbecues.
 
📷 Wildlife photographer Manabu Miyazaki has spent decades observing animals in the forests. We meet a man who has chosen patience, solitude and a life close to the wild.
 
🖼️ Philosopher Augustin Berque helps us understand the Japanese relationship to landscape, one shaped as much by contemplation as by harmony.
 
🎒 We take you along an epic 210-kilometre trail through Shizuoka, where nature and culture intertwine at every step.

🎣 And as more Japanese women take up fishing, hiking and camping, outdoor activities are becoming a subtle form of resistance to traditional expectations and the weight of patriarchy.

And also:

🕌 Our long-form investigation immerses readers in the Kurdish communities of Tokyo’s suburbs, caught between cultural heritage and an ongoing struggle for recognition.

🥦 Journalist Johann Fleuri recounts how she unexpectedly became vegan in the land of tonkatsu and ramen.
 
🍳 Writer Ryoko Sekiguchi reflects on chefs without borders who constantly reinvent culinary traditions.
 
🐈 Cult author Jake Adelstein explores the Japanese relationship with pets, and what it reveals about society.
 
🛖 In the mountains of Nasu, we spend the night in a remote refuge lit by oil lamps, run by the same family for five generations.

And plenty more surprises.