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Matt Larking
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 25, 2011
It's a woman's world inside manga
Bijin-ga (pictures of beautiful women), long a staple of ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) and its erotic sub-genre shunga (spring pictures), is mostly moribund in contemporary art. A variant form, however, lives on in shojo manga, serialized comic books that are often flush with romantic narratives and target,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 10, 2005
The thing itself
In October 1968 Nobuo Sekine dug a hole in the ground, shaped the extracted dirt into a large cylinder and called the work "Phase -- Mother Earth." It was probably an experiment, influenced by discussions of the new Land Art and Minimalist works taking place in the United States.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 15, 2005
Independent brushstrokes
A commonly heard accusation is that Japanese oil painters are followers rather than innovators. It is a criticism that has been made against many early adopters in this country -- be they filmmakers, fashion designers, chefs or rock musicians -- and one that has even come from painters' compatriots....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 17, 2005
Artists' works join the EU
In the last 30 years, the central eastern European nations of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary have experienced tumultuous times. Under communism, state control and censorship forced artists to be regional and nationalistic, but since the soft slides into capitalism and democracy epitomized...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 28, 2004
Should Buddhist art be left in the temples?
The most poignant work in Kyoto National Museum's "Treasures of a Great Zen Temple, The Nanzenji: Commemorating the 700th Memorial Year of Emperor Kameyama" is a hand scroll titled "Prayer for the Prosperity of Zenrinzenji [Nanzenji]" from the hand of Emperor Kameyama himself.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 23, 2003
Klimt's women: more feared than loved?
Pornography and women's liberation: It is an incongruous coupling, but one that characterizes the artistic output of Gustav Klimt.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 2, 2003
On a director's storyboard far, far away
Is there a person in the Western world -- or even globally, given Hollywood's cultural reach -- who is unaware of "Star Wars"? In a society increasingly described as amnesiac, in which pop culture seems to come with an expiry date, George Lucas' movie trilogy (now with two -- soon to be three -- "prequels")...

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Yasuyuki Yoshida stirs a brew in a fermentation tank at his brewery in Hakusan.
The quake that shook Noto's sake brewing tradition