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November 22, 2024
 

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Nobuko Tanaka

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Nobuko Tanaka
Nobuko Tanaka is a stage writer who has regularly contributed contemporary theater and dance articles to The Japan Times since 2001. She also writes for several Japanese and overseas magazines and web sites. As a promoter, she takes Japanese artists to foreign theater festivals.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 11, 2013
Welsh approach to 'national' theater is efficiently different
Always keen to break new ground, Keiko Miyata, artistic director of the New National Theatre Tokyo (NNTT), has created a series titled "With: linking theater" as the centerpiece of this season's program. In this, she has lined up three appetizing collaborations by asking playwrights from Wales, South...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 9, 2013
'Natch' gets ghostly on stage
"If I thought too much about my future plans, I would kind of get stuck," says Natsumi Abe. "So I just try to concentrate on the next day's work and do it as well as I can."
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Mar 17, 2013
Ghosts of Cowra breakout haunt Japan to this day
Prisoner A: " 'Never live to experience the shame of being taken prisoner by the enemy' ... that's what the Imperial Japanese Military Regulations say, hence there must be no prisoners. So what's happening here now are the dreams of ghosts" — from "Cowra no Hancho Kaigi" ("Honchos' Meeting in Cowra")....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 8, 2013
Aspiring thespians get help in realizing dreams
If you had a son or daughter who announced they wanted to be a stage actor, whatever would you say to them?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 21, 2013
Redefining conventions of the play
Without doubt, Takahiro Fujita is the most prominent newcomer in the world of Japanese contemporary theater. To a considerable extent that's because the 27-year-old playwright/director has an unusual trademark style — to create works that often have the same lyrical phrases and series of movements...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 8, 2013
Theater groups play together
Fresh from a U.S. tour, "Zero Cost House," the first international collaboration work between Yokohama's Chelfitsch company and Philadelphia's Pig Iron Theatre Company (PITC), opens at Kanagawa Arts Theatre next week with its original U.S. cast.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 1, 2013
Cirque offshoot 7 Fingers has lofty ambitions
Since first touring its native province of Quebec in 1984, the self-styled "multifaceted creative force" that is Canada's Cirque du Soleil has become a major global phenomenon with several permanent venues.
Japan Times
Events / Events In Tokyo
Jan 24, 2013
South Korean dance show aims for the eyes, not the ears
South Korean entertainment is excelling in a lot of disciplines, and stage performance is one of them. Now a groundbreaking action-drawing show, "Hero," will take its turn trying to impress Japanese audiences.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 23, 2013
'Coriolanus' comes home — to Kyoto
It's a fair bet that many people at the Globe Theatre in London last May expected the Kyoto-based Chiten (Point) Company to present a stereotypically Japanese, samurai-style "Coriolanus," complete with taiko drums and period armor.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 27, 2012
Social awareness takes center stage
Japan's calamities of March 2011 — the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and the start of an ongoing nuclear disaster — changed not only the social awareness of the general public who make up theater audiences, but also how dramatists approached their work. Many questioned why so many mistakes...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 29, 2012
From an underdog in the U.S. to Japan's top dog
Two years ago, 32-year-old director/translator Eriko Ogawa returned to Japan after 10 years in New York and presented a riveting production of "The Late Henry Moss," Sam Shepard's 2000 Pulitzer prize-winning tale of loves and hatreds in a frontier family way out West.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Nov 23, 2012
Classic tale gets multicultural
After first appearing at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center (SPAC) 13 years ago, Swiss-Colombian director/actor Omar Porras is on his way back there this weekend with a time-honored classic in tow.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Nov 16, 2012
Theater wants to involve locals
The Tokyo-based Ryuzanji Company has been pushing the boundaries of contemporary drama since it was founded by director/actor Show Ryuzanji (whose real name is Shoji Fujioka) in 1984. Now, it is coproducing a huge musical with Toshima Ward centered on the northern Tokyo hub of Ikebukuro.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Oct 26, 2012
Director Kazuko Watanabe to stage localized version of 'Orpheus'
Tokyo's Bunkyo Civic Hall will mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of literary giant Ougai Mori with a one-off staging of Christoph W. Gluck's 1762 opera "Orfeo ed Euridice" as translated and reworked by Mori, and simply retitled "Orpheus."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 26, 2012
Festival/Tokyo theater event to give Asia a starring role
Japan has been on a bit of a losing streak for a while now. In 2010, it was overtaken as the world's second-largest economy by China, and in 2011 the nation was rocked by the Great East Japan Earthquake and the ensuing tsunami and nuclear crisis.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage / WEEK 3
Oct 21, 2012
Dramatists explore the essence of language in new play
In a small studio just a seagull's squawk from Tokyo Bay in the Higashi Gotanda district of Shinagawa Ward, a unique play titled "Understandable?" briefly delighted packed houses of baffled Japanese and others recently with its absurd-but-not, "abandoned- in-translation" dialogue devoid of subtitles....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 18, 2012
Kentaro makes hip-hop personal
Almost the whole of Kentaro's life has been devoted to dance — in particular to hip-hop dance — ever since he first saw it on television as an elementary school boy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 13, 2012
The woman who could bring Beppu back to life
In Japan's performing arts scene, it's widely believed that 32-year-old Akane Nakamura is one of the country's most famous globally known theater producers. As executive director of the theater production company Precog and the performing arts nonprofit Drifters International — which she founded in...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Sep 2, 2012
Film star Satoshi Tsumabuki moves up to a new stage
Wearing a headband and tracksuit, Satoshi Tsumabuki — the 31-year-old darling of the Japanese entertainment world — was easy to spot among a crowd of actors in a rehearsal studio in downtown Tokyo recently. He was there preparing for "Egg," Hideki Noda's new play, which opens Wednesday at the Tokyo...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 30, 2012
'Our Planet' director focuses on Japan's locals
Just three years ago, in 2009, Yukio Shiba burst to stardom at age 27 with his masterful first play, "Waga Hoshi" ("Our Planet"), which premiered in Tokyo and the following year scooped Japanese contemporary theater's prestigious Kishida Kunio Award.
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.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
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.

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