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December 21, 2024
 

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Mike Sunda

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Mike Sunda
Mike Sunda is a music writer focusing primarily on electronic music and the Tokyo club scene. He graduated from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, England with a degree in Japanese and has been contributing to The Japan Times since 2010.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / 2010s: Decade in Review
Oct 31, 2019
Halloween's rise in the 2010s provided Shibuya crossing with plenty of tricks and treats
While Halloween has been around in Japan for a few decades it wasn't until recently that it became a true phenomenon, especially at Tokyo's iconic Shibuya crossing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 31, 2018
Machina and Shohei Fujimoto pair up for a multimedia performance at Mutek
As Mutek gears up for its third edition in Japan, the festival, which originated in Montreal and now runs in regular installments around the world, looks set to deliver its most robust offering in Tokyo to date.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 9, 2017
Renick Bell discovers the art inside the algorithms
In 2017, algorithms are everywhere.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music / Sound Off
Jan 8, 2017
Where Japan's club culture needs to go in 2017
Last month, I was invited to speak at the inaugural Tokyo Dance Music Event — a conference consisting of workshops and talks, loosely modeled on long-running international equivalents like the Amsterdam Dance Event.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 13, 2016
Latour: rethinking ecological crisis from the ground down
The earth underneath Tokyo is trembling. This time, however, the activity is not seismic; it is not one of the many tremors that intermittently punctuate daily life in this city. It is, rather, a constant trembling: a condition of the global ecological crisis in which we now find ourselves.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 14, 2016
Digging for gold on Record Store Day
No longer the territory of purists and DJs alone, records have once again started to be recognized as a perfectly legitimate medium through which to collect and consume music.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 26, 2015
Flipping back through the good reads of 2015
Before we turn the page on the year, here's a selection of our reviewers' favorite books.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 6, 2015
Soichi Terada arrives fashionably late to the global house-music scene
Good things come to those who wait. For 50-year-old producer Soichi Terada it's a wait that has lasted more than 20 years, but now he's one of the most in-demand artists in the house music scene, and has just returned from a tour of Europe that saw him perform in front of capacity crowds in some of the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 12, 2015
London producer Visionist comes to Japan amid a wave of grime-oriented events
Even within Britain, grime has long been considered a niche genre. Pioneered by east London artist Wiley in the early 2000s, whose dark, stripped-down 140-beats-per-minute rhythms drew on U.K. garage and two-step influences and updated them, the sound then evolved on the rooftops of inner-city council...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 11, 2015
Director Koji Fukada explores nuanced human-robot divide in 'Sayonara'
Whether it's the anthropomorphic cyborg cat Doraemon, Sony's artificially intelligent canine pet Aibo or even baby harp seals created to assist dementia patients, robots have long been recognized in Japan as capable of providing therapeutic and emotional assistance for their human owners.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 31, 2015
Cary Joji Fukunaga's 'Beasts of No Nation' challenges audience perceptions in both content and delivery
There was a time when the term "straight-to-video" conjured up images of cheap, low-quality sequels and B-movie knock-offs, inevitably featuring the likes of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal, and destined to line the shelves of video rental stores without ever making it to the vaunted window display....
JAPAN / Politics
Sep 26, 2015
Nation's youth are attempting to establish a new political norm
"Tell me what democracy looks like!"
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Aug 14, 2015
Wagyu: More at stake than craftsmanship for marginalized slaughterhouse workers
When it comes to cuts of meat, there are few sights that raise expectations like the marbling of a prime cut of wagyu beef. Brands like Kobe and Matsuzaka are already household names in Japan, and increasingly consumers and chefs the world over are buying into the luxury meat, with import bans lifted...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jun 27, 2015
Visualizing Japan's 'ugly' online desires with cultural critic Hiroki Azuma
In 2009, critic and philosopher Hiroki Azuma had a dream. It was a recurring dream (as befitting of someone well-versed in the psychoanalysis of Freud and Jacques Lacan), and riddled with complexities. In his own words, which open the introductory chapter of "General Will 2.0: Rousseau, Freud, Google,"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 15, 2015
The 3-D world of NHK yx Koyxen's abstract techno
Kohei Matsunaga does not see things like you and I see things. Take the 3-D glasses that he is rarely photographed without, for instance. Throwaway red-and-blue anaglyph paper frames from cinema's distant past, they have become an apt visual trademark for the Osaka-based artist, who delights in operating...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 24, 2015
Young Juvenile Youth courts clubs and charts
Whether it's younger stars like Sam Smith and Charli XCX whose pasts have seen collaborations with producers such as Disclosure, Alex Metric and Starkey, or established names like Bjork delving into the underground to work with Arca and The Haxan Cloak, the trajectories of pop and club music have never...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 23, 2015
From dusk till dawn at Roppongi Art Night
For all the criticism that can be levelled at the conventional "white cube" gallery space — its quasi-religious, sanitized hush and incongruity with large-scale interactive installations and other emergent forms of media art — as a visitor, it's at least unlikely that you'll wander into the path...
CULTURE / Books
Mar 28, 2015
'License to Play' compiles research on all things ludic in Japanese culture
The stereotype of a stressed-out salaryman, vacantly sipping on his post-overtime can of beer, does little to confirm that Japanese society is deeply clued into notions of fun and play.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 28, 2015
'Japanese New York' reveals the migrant experience of Japanese artists in the Big Apple
In "Japanese New York" author Olga Kanzaki Sooudi draws on her observations of Japanese artists in Lower Manhattan to paint a vivid picture of migrants in New York. Her study includes biographical and fictional representations of the migrant experience as relayed in the literature of Mori Ogai, the films...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 17, 2015
Jay Z lays blueprint for streaming success
Hip-hop megastar Jay Z, real name Shawn Carter, has fulfilled all the conditions to complete a takeover of Swedish technology company Aspiro, after shareholders gave the necessary approval to his offer.
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.
A year after going private, structural reforms bearing fruit for Toshiba
Toshiba's Corporate Senior Executive Vice President Koji Ikeya speaks during an interview in Tokyo on Monday.
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.
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.
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.
Curiosity didn’t kill the meme: Why cats still rule Japanese YouTube
A screen shot from YouTube user @lagelda shows the simplicity of going viral in Japan in 2024: A cat dancing to EDM in front of a green screen.
With rare Asia carrier deployment, France seeks greater interoperability
The flight deck of the French Navy's Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier during a stop at Changi Naval Base in Singapore in May 2019

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Yasuyuki Yoshida stirs a brew in a fermentation tank at his brewery in Hakusan.
The quake that shook Noto's sake brewing tradition
By Alex K.T. Martin

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