Victoria James - The Japan Times

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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

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

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

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.

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.

Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.

The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'

By Tomoko Otake

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