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December 22, 2024
 

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Victoria James
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 16, 2003
Into psychic free-fall
We're so used to Tokyo's cramped streets that the endless parallel perspectives offered by the spacious grid of roads in central Ginza can make the head spin. And recently, they've become more dizzying still. Hanging from every lamppost along Chuo-dori is an eye-catching image: A young woman, her scarf...
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Apr 4, 2003
Fusion dancer's grace and flavor
When you think of Australian cuisine do you first think "oxymoron," imagining barbecued kangaroo steak washed down with a swill of Foster's lager?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 16, 2003
A struggle against tyranny
Composed more than 2,000 years ago and first devised for performance in religious festivals, the dramas of Ancient Greece have never lost their powerful relevance. When, for example, a pair of New York-based actresses hit on the idea of a global theatrical protest against war with Iraq, they devised...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 23, 2003
The picture of innocence?
Sex, nudity and violence -- there's a lot of it happening in Kobe.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 19, 2003
Welcome to the terrordome
"Terror" is much on our minds these days. Whether we believe that terrorist activity has made the world a more dangerous place to live, or condemn the "war on terror" as a mere cover for U.S. President George W. Bush's political ambition, the concept of terror has saturated our daily life.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 19, 2003
A new home for world-class art
With the opening of "The Romantic Tradition in British Painting, 1800-1950," The Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art seems set to take its place as an art institution of international standing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 5, 2003
Artists in search of absolute painting
"We call together all young people and -- as young people who bear the future -- we want to acquire freedom for our hands and lives, against the well-established older forces. Everyone belongs to us who renders in an unfalsified way everything that compels him to be creative."
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Dec 1, 2002
'Mongrel' seeker after new self-understandings
"One day, people will realize they are a mongrel people with a mongrel history."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 20, 2002
Painter and powerbroker to the shoguns
Throughout history, powerful regimes have used art to reinforce their control and shore up their claims to legitimacy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 13, 2002
The garden of Escher delights
"Mathematicians," wrote M.C. Escher in a 1958 essay, "have opened the gate leading to an extensive domain, but they have not entered this domain themselves. By their very nature they are more interested in the way in which the gate is opened than in the garden lying behind it."
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Nov 10, 2002
The mismeasure of Emperor Meiji
EMPEROR OF JAPAN: Meiji and His World 1852-1912, by Donald Keene. Columbia University Press: New York, 2002, 922 pp. + xiii + 18 pp. of illustrations, $39.50 (cloth) Like any great story, history prefers that its leading men (and women) have some sparkle, whether a foible (Henry VIII's marital tangles;...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 30, 2002
The noble art of collecting
Artists trying to earn a living before these days of government grants, international art fairs and global cultural celebrity were at the mercy of the people holding the purse strings. Teaching was (and remains) a way of getting by, but for the premodern artist, real security depended largely on catching...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Oct 20, 2002
Bon Appetit!
Le Cordon Bleu. The name conjures up images of starched linen laid three-ply across a table, heavy silverware and plain white plates bearing artfully arranged food. "Cordon Bleu" was once synonymous with all that is best in cooking. And if, in these days of fusion cuisine, its image seems a little stuffy...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 9, 2002
The ugly truth about Pre-Raphaelite beauty
Had Sigmund Freud psychoanalyzed whole eras, not mere individuals, the late 19th century would have been a prime candidate for his therapist's couch. Take the example of empire-building Britain. Victorians may have been prudish to the extent of covering shapely table legs, but they were sexually voracious....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 4, 2002
Everlasting beauty left by everyday lives
Two thousand years from now, what will archaeologists unearth from the ruins of our civilization? Cars? Rice cookers? For sure, examples of "technology" so outdated as to provoke incredulity. The U.S. government believes that future humans -- or perhaps extraterrestrial excavators -- will uncover still-toxic...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 28, 2002
A total feast for the eyes
This is total theater. Shinkyogeki, new-style Beijing Opera, is a combination of almost every performing art known to the East and the West. It should be a cross-cultural mess -- but it's not. At its best, as in the staging of "Yang-kui-fei and Abe-no-Nakamaro," which is now touring Japan, it's breathtaking....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 21, 2002
Afghan heritage is back from the brink
Like many exhibitions, "Afghanistan: A Timeless History" tells a story. It's not the story of Afghan art, though; nor, despite its title, the story of Afghanistan itself -- a country whose millennia of strife are expressed in every artifact now on display at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2002
Felicien Rops: Days of madness
The catalog of the Felicien Rops exhibition is wrapped in the anonymous brown paper more often used to disguise pornography than art. The display itself, now at the Machida City Museum of Graphic Arts, would, if art galleries issued such things, come with a parental advisory label. With a preponderance...
COMMUNITY
Aug 11, 2002
One god to rule them all
All new regimes know their enemies. Having swept away the forces of the shogunate, the architects of the 1868 Meiji Restoration found themselves facing another foe. This fifth column was invisible: Its ranks were made up of yokai (ghosts) and bakemono (monsters), kappa (water sprites) and tengu (goblins)....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 7, 2002
Artists of the Sun King eclipsed
Even as art galleries and museums around the world contend with falling visitor numbers, stepping inside a Japanese museum can feel more like braving Mitsukoshi on the first day of the summer sales.
Nippon Steel alleges undue White House influence on doomed deal review
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Dec. 10.
Record 78% of people in Japan feel anxious, government survey finds
The public opinion survey on people's lives, conducted by the Cabinet Office, found that 28.1% of respondents think that their standard of living is at a lower-middle level among the general public — the highest percentage to give that response in 35 years.
Police raided suspect's home to arrest him after fatal Kitakyushu stabbing
Broken window glass is seen at Masanori Hirabaru's house in Kitakyushu's Kokuraminami Ward.
Taiwan lawmakers brawl over bills that would 'damage democracy'
Lawmakers from the Democratic Progressive Party and opposition party Kuomintang brawl in parliament in Taipei on Friday.
Mother hopes for reunion with daughter ensnared by Tokyo host clubs
The Kabukicho district in Tokyo, where the daughter of a woman in her 60s fell deeply into the host club culture.
Casual workouts, cool living, ‘complete’ food: Japan’s health trends of 2024
In 2024, efficiency trumped effort among Japan's fitness-focused aspirants.
The mighty Mekong River's growing plastic problem
A group of elephant keepers in Chiang Saen, Thailand, remove plastic waste from the Ruak River, a tributary of the Mekong River, as a pair of Asian elephants bathe behind them.
Japanese officials inspect Yokota Air Base over PFAS concerns
The Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo in September 2019. An inspection of the base by Japanese government officials on Friday came amid public pressure to investigate suspected links between the use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam by the U.S. base and contamination of soil and groundwater in western Tokyo.
Crime numbers rise in Japan for second straight year
A police officer stands in front of the residence of a man alleged to have stabbed two junior high school students in Kitakyushu.
A year of Oscar wins and a quiet push for diversity
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Evil Does Not Exist,” released in Japanese theaters in April, sharply dramatizes the clash between rural and urban values. The film won five awards at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, including the second-place Silver Lion prize.

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