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November 21, 2024
 

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James Hadfield
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 15, 2014
YMO's Yukihiro Takahashi recruits Towa Tei, Cornelius, Yoshinori Sunahara, Tomohiko Gondo and Leo Imai for an impressive supergroup
One of the unspoken rules in the progress-fixated world of electronic music is that you don't get bonus points for dwelling on past glories. So when Yukihiro Takahashi — drummer, vocalist and dapper elder statesman of electro-pop — convened a star cast of musicians at Tokyo's Ex Theater Roppongi...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jul 1, 2014
Leftfield J-pop, '70s influenced rock and shadowy R&B: Our favorite albums of 2014 (so far)
In his Strange Boutique column last week, Ian Martin wrote about the need for a canon in Japanese music in order for newcomers to the scene — especially those writing about it — to gain some context into what is being released.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
May 3, 2014
Akira
"Kanedaaaa!" "Tetsuoooo!" For a generation of teenagers growing up in the 1990s (this writer included), Katsuhiro Otomo's "Akira" was our gateway drug to the imaginative excesses of Japanese pop culture. With its immaculately rendered visions of high-tech chaos, psychokinetic battles, revolutionary sects...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 26, 2014
'Granta' opens a window into Japanese literature
With such a piddling amount of Japanese fiction finding its way into English translation each year, you learn to make the most of what you can get. So when this year's Tokyo International Literary Festival marked the launch of not one, but two compendia of Japan-related writing, it felt like an embarrassment of riches. In addition to the latest issue of 'Monkey Business,' the annual journal edited by veteran translators Motoyuki Shibata and Ted Goossen, the festival welcomed the arrival of a Japan-themed issue of the British quarterly, 'Granta,' released simultaneously in English and Japanese.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 22, 2014
Simi Lab delivers a mixed message on 'Page 2: Mind Over Matter'
Few genres are as freighted with the politics of authenticity as hip-hop. Just last month, the New Yorker kicked off a fresh round of controversy when it ran a profile of Lord Jamar, a cantankerous middle-aged rapper who rails against what he sees as the softening — and whitening — of modern hip-hop....
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle
Apr 5, 2014
Reinventing the wheel: the future of cycling in Tokyo
On Jan. 24, a full-page advert appeared in the Tokyo edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun for a petition on behalf of the capital's cyclists. "Join the new governor in making Tokyo a bicycle city," read the headline for the ad, which reeled off a series of suggested improvements: more extensive cycling lanes,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Apr 3, 2014
Bob Dylan is the latest in a list of legends to visit these shores
Clad in a T-shirt for U.K. punk pioneers The Clash, 16-year-old Kyo Asada probably doesn't fit most people's image of a typical Bob Dylan fan. But judging from the crowd lined up outside Tokyo's Zepp DiverCity on the opening night of his latest Japan tour, Dylan draws a diverse bunch — not just the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 29, 2014
Just So Happens
It's a moment that many expats secretly dread: the unexpected phone call from home, announcing the death of a family member. For Yumiko, the protagonist of Fumio Obata's debut graphic novel, it's the demise of her father in a hiking accident that propels her back to Tokyo from her home in London. Leaving...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Feb 15, 2014
The Pornographers
Akiyuki Nosaka's "Grave of the Fireflies," a harrowing, semi-autobiographical tale of two young siblings fending for survival in the aftermath of World War II, helped him win the prestigious Naoki Prize for literature in 1967.
Japan Times
CULTURE
Feb 13, 2014
Japan gets in the mood for love this Valentine's Day
Love is all around at this time of year, but on Valentine's Day in Japan it isn't so evenly distributed. The festival of romance has long suffered from a gender imbalance here: Feb. 14 is traditionally a day for women to give presents to men — not just their partners, but also often fellow students,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Feb 8, 2014
Drawing on the past reveals the Showa Era
The rest of the world knew him as Hirohito, but to his subjects he was always just "the Emperor." Known posthumously as Showa, Japan's 124th monarch reigned for over 60 years, during which he would be witness to both the best and worst of times.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 28, 2014
Ten years on, Hyperdub finds that it pays to be weird
Most journalists hope to get a few decent quotes from an interview. Steve Goodman ended up getting a record label.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jan 18, 2014
The Setting Sun
Career nihilist Osamu Dazai had already attempted suicide four times when he published his most famous novel in 1947. "The Setting Sun" quickly became a byword for the decline of Japan's aristocracy in the wake of World War II, but its portrait of a country adrift from its spiritual moorings would resonate...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 14, 2014
Blue Hawaii surfs Net to an Asia tour
Though they hail from the same Montreal music scene that spawned crossover electronica star Grimes, the members of Blue Hawaii don't have any illusions about where they rank in the popularity stakes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 17, 2013
The best Japanese albums of 2013: Yosi Horikawa, 'Vapor'
Few albums this year rewarded repeat listens as generously as Yosi Horikawa's "Vapor." The Chiba-based producer makes fecund, wide-eyed electronica constructed from manipulated field recordings, percussion, ethnic chants and slightly new-age keyboards. If that sounds awful on paper, it's intoxicating...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 3, 2013
Alive wants to give music fans a say in who comes to Japan
You watched the video for their comeback single on YouTube, devoured the reviews and retweeted the hype. When the album came out, you bought it immediately and had it on repeat for weeks afterwards. And then you waited, waited ... but they never came.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 26, 2013
Daito Manabe set to work his visual magic at Electraglide
In late 2008, a YouTube video began to circulate online of a bespectacled man with electrodes attached to his face, short bursts of electricity making his muscles twitch in time to a soundtrack of glitchy electronica. Titled "electric stimulus to face -test3", the clip would eventually rack up more than...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Nov 5, 2013
One Direction takes the J-pop path to success
By the group's standards, it was a low-key finale. When One Direction completed its eight-month Take Me Home Tour at the second of two Makuhari Messe shows last Sunday in Chiba, it was in front of a relatively compact audience of 12,000 Japanese fans, whose adoration seemed good-humored rather than hysterical....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Oct 12, 2013
Review: My Bloody Valentine at Tokyo International Forum
For fans of My Bloody Valentine, patience isn't so much a virtue as a requirement. This, after all, is a band that took 22 years to follow up its sophomore album, and then did it with a record that — for all its admirers — felt more like a B-sides collection than a fully formed statement.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Sep 25, 2013
Dommune takes a new direction with My Bloody Valentine gig
Noise — vast, enveloping noise — is at the core of My Bloody Valentine's music. Halfway through "You Made Me Realise," the quartet lands on a single chord that proceeds to suck the entire song into a gawping, sense-scrambling maw of distortion. On the 1988 recorded version of the track, this "holocaust...
Ishiba delays meeting with Trump, citing legal restrictions
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba waves upon arrival for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, in Callao, Peru, on Friday.
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Rising sex tourism exposes loopholes in Japan's anti-prostitution law
While financial misfortunes during the COVID-19 pandemic may have driven some women to work the streets, others simply want more money to spend — or want to pay off their debts — at host clubs.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

Podcast

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

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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