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December 24, 2024
 

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Cameron Allan Mckean

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Cameron Allan Mckean
Cameron Allan McKean is a culture editor and staff writer at The Japan Times. He writes about contemporary art, folk crafts and disasters in Japan.
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT
Mar 3, 2018
The color of climate change in Japan's Yaeyama archipelago
Depleting reefs may profoundly reshape Ishigaki Island's tourism industry.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jul 15, 2017
Kamiko: Growing paper clothes in rural Japan
A small community in Miyagi Prefecture is struggling to continue making one of its most-famous craft exports — Shiroishi handmade paper and paper clothes
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
May 12, 2017
Denim dreams: Dyeing to live in the industrial heart of Okayama
Hirohiko Sunami's hands emerge from his indigo vat covered in rivulets of fermenting natural dye. The light is dim in this Kojima workshop, but a few stray sunbeams reflect off the millions of bubbles at the vat's surface as Sunami pulls a piece of cotton from the dark liquid. "Look," he says. While...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Nov 5, 2016
'Mr. Turtle': Yusaku Kitano's bizarre, award-winning novel about artificial intelligence
Mr. Turtle wants to borrow a Philip K. Dick novel from a local Japanese library. But "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is on loan, so he borrows a book on "The Making of Blade Runner." This scene from Yusuke Kitano's award-winning sci-fi novel "Mr. Turtle" sums up its narrative strategy: Don't tell...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 18, 2016
Sci-fi and fact at the Okayama Art Summit
The city of Okayama was flattened by incendiary bombs in 1945. Many people died, more than 12,000 homes were destroyed and Okayama's centuries-old wooden castle burned to its stone foundations. In 1966, the donjon was rebuilt with modern concrete, which was likely made in Mizushima — a smoke-spewing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 16, 2015
Nissan award echoes a maturing art world
The biennial Nissan Art Award isn't new now, and it wasn't really new when it began in 2013, either — something Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn is fully aware of.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Jun 6, 2015
Refusing to check out of the Hotel Okura
With the iconic landmark poised to close for renovation in August, we explore its significance to the development of modernist architecture in Tokyo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 4, 2015
Curator Okwui Enwezor tackles grim realities at Venice Biennale, while Japan sticks to tired festival formula
Ugly, joyless, aggressive, didactic, morose, self-righteous, unpleasant; these are just some of the words used in the press to describe the recently opened 56th Venice Biennale in Italy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 18, 2015
'At Kasetsu' and the poetry of everyday life in temporary housing
Four years have passed since the evacuees displaced by the Fukushima nuclear disaster moved into kasetsu (temporary housing). Many are unable to return home as their houses are still contaminated.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 11, 2015
'The SAGE Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies' examines when modern Japan began
The first chapter in this dense collection of Anglophone academia asks, "How and when did modern Japan begin?" Editor James D. Babb, a lecturer in politics at the University of Newcastle, has collated a selection of texts that address this question, many of which grapple with the ostensibly inscrutable...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 4, 2015
'Encore! The New Artisans' is a visual bible of decorative, sometimes gimmicky crafts
Craft, writes author Olivier Dupon, "is no longer a trend; it is at last enshrined in contemporary life."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 7, 2015
Memories of Mount Qilai: The Education of a Young Poet
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jan 10, 2015
Code + culture: New Internet artists from Japan
If the Internet is an ocean, why do we spend so much time floating on its surface? What's really going on down there? Not just in the deepest, darkest trenches, but among the forgotten protocols, faulty algorithms and emerging parameters outside the busy shipping lanes and far from the crowded life rafts...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 28, 2014
The Goude, the bad and the ugly
On Aug. 15, 1977, an issue of New York Magazine was released with an image of Jamaican singer and model Grace Jones on the cover: She is almost naked, standing on one very long leg; her oil-coated torso twisting to face the camera, with one hand lightly holding a microphone and the other effortlessly...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 17, 2014
Ryuichi Sakamoto delves into cities and nature at Sapporo International Art Festival
Sapporo is generally known for three things: snow, ramen and beer. These things, and festivals such as the Snow Festival or City Jazz, are what draw more than 14 million tourists to the city every year.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 29, 2014
Tropfest gives Japan a peek at Australia
The homegrown Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia will have competition for eyeballs this year as Australia's Tropfest descends on Japan. The event claims — perhaps a bit tongue-in-cheek — to be the "world's largest short-film festival."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 15, 2014
Short-film festival holds Tokyo edition
Short-film fever is hitting Tokyo this month, with festivals planned in arty-nooks and cinema-crannies across the capital. But not all short-film festivals are created equal — the good ones are both cleverly curated and take daring approaches in how they screen films.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 21, 2014
Artists' mission to revitalize an onsen town
It begins with a long, slow hiss. The valves open, and a thick fog is released into the air, pouring from the roof of Dogo Onsen Honkan, the famous three-tiered bathhouse built in Matsuyama, Ehime Prefecture, in 1894. It flows down the side of the building, past bathers in bathrobes on the open balcony...
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Apr 14, 2014
Nakako Hayashi's delicate war against big fashion
The world's garments might be made in factories, but fashion is made in the media. In an age when trends coalesce and melt away in the time it takes to put a "#" in front of a keyword, an age when fashion has the potential to be more democratic and idiosyncratic than ever, isn't it strange then, that...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Feb 10, 2014
Japan's leather industry, almost as tough as old boots
In his east Tokyo workshop, across the Sumida river from Asakusa Station, Katsuhiko Nakano is surrounded on all sides by bags and tools. He is one of the few leather craftsmen in the city who makes goods by hand.
Bankruptcies and suicides rise as Japanese struggle with mounting debt
Lawyers estimate that personal bankruptcies in Japan are on track to reach the highest since 2012 this year.
Japan accuses Google of violating antimonopoly law
The Japanese antitrust watchdog said that Google forced smartphone makers to preinstall its search app on their devices, sources say.
Okinawa people stage rally against sexual assaults by U.S. servicemen
Sorane Sakihama, a 22-year-old college student, speaks at a rally in the city of Okinawa on Sunday protesting against sexual assaults by U.S. soldiers.
Zelenskyy to replace Ukraine ambassador to Japan
Ukrainian Ambassador to Japan Sergiy Korsunsky delivers a speech during a handover ceremony of Self-Defense Force vehicles to Ukraine, at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo, in May last year.
Is Japan finally ready to tap its abundant geothermal energy potential?
Steam rises from a geothermal plan in Yuzawa, Akita Prefecture. Despite its long history and potential, geothermal provided just 0.3% of Japan's overall energy mix in the fiscal year from April 2023
A brief history of ‘osechi ryōri,' Japan's edible tradition for the new year
Japan's traditional New Year cuisine has a long history, though modern developments have led to slight changes in the way things work.
Casual workouts, cool living, ‘complete’ food: Japan’s health trends of 2024
In 2024, efficiency trumped effort among Japan's fitness-focused aspirants.
Is Japan finally ready to tap its abundant geothermal energy potential?
Steam rises from a geothermal plan in Yuzawa, Akita Prefecture. Despite its long history and potential, geothermal provided just 0.3% of Japan's overall energy mix in the fiscal year from April 2023
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.
North Korea aiding Russia where it needs it most, Canadian general says
North Korean special forces soldiers march and shout slogans during a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of the country's founding father, Kim Il Sung, in Pyongyang in April 2017.

Podcast

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

Longform

Visitors to Kyoto walk along a street near Kiyomizu Temple in April. A popular tourist spot, Kyoto has seen what locals feel to be an overwhelming amount of tourists in 2024.
Is Japan ready for 60 million tourists?
By Kathryn Wortley

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