Abigail Leonard is a Tokyo-based journalist who covers Japanese politics and culture. Stories she reported from Japan earned a 2018 National Headliner Award and a 2018 James Beard Foundation Media Award Nomination. She was a 2011 East-West Center Japan Fellow, a 2010 UN Foundation Journalism Fellow and is currently Vice President of the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan, a 2,000-member national press club. When she’s not reporting, she enjoys biking around Tokyo with her two kids.
At a recent uchimizu event at the Higo-Hosokawa Garden, participants in lightweight kimonos used wooden ladles to spray water in long arcs that caught the late-afternoon light.
In 2016, Japan received a record number of applications for refugee status. It rejected 99 percent of them.