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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
Jul 12, 2012
Public theater takes on a leading role
Once upon a time, Japanese contemporary theater shared the limelight with youth-cultural movements that were rocking the nation. Back then, in the late 1960s and '70s, the avant-garde works of the angura (underground) theater scene had such an affinity with the radical student movement that they often...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 3, 2012
Koki Mitani: Japan's Mr. Comedy
Koki Mitani is far and away the nation's best-known dramatist. Although theater is quite a niche medium here, most people in Japan — whether male or female, young or not so young, Japanese or not — recognize his face, even if they couldn't name many of his works. Recently, indeed, I was amazed when...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 1, 2012
Shizuoka eyes theatrical bridge over to Avignon
Stranger things have happened, and in the near future a vibrant cultural bridge across Eurasia may be built between the city of Shizuoka in the beautiful foothills of Mount Fuji, and ancient Avignon in the artists' mecca of Provence in the South of France.
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
May 20, 2012
'Alien' actress at home with a robot
Even today in the performing arts in Japan, gaijin (lit. "aliens"), as foreigners are called, are still often presented like something to be gawped at in a Victorian freak show.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 17, 2012
There is trouble on Kafka's shore
Seventy-six-year-old theater director Yukio Ninagawa is famed and honored the world over for his magnificently visualized stagings of Shakespeare and Ancient Greek tragedies — as well as modern Japanese plays.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 4, 2012
Monkeying around on the stage
Britain's longest-serving theater critic, Michael Billington of The Guardian newspaper, is famous for not lavishing praise on his subjects easily or often.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Apr 27, 2012
Acrobatic bicyclists to make Shizuoka a stage
If your Golden Week schedule isn't full yet, how about visiting a picturesque tea-growing district set against the backdrop of Mount Fuji and enjoying street theater performed by Italian artists?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 12, 2012
Songha prepares for a Wilde John the Baptist
A year ago, Songha Cho changed his professional name to plain and simple Songha — explaining that there is no appropriate kanji for Cho, though there is for Songha. That problem, the third-generation Korean-Japanese said, is just one of many complications faced in daily life here by people with Korean...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 16, 2012
A modern take on American theater classic
SIS Company's new production of "The Glass Menagerie" by the U.S. playwright Tennessee Williams (1911-83) looks like a marriage made in theatrical heaven between one of Williams' masterpieces and an impressive cast.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 15, 2012
Let the theater help you become as free as a bird
One day, William Tuckett's big sister decided that she wanted to take ballet classes. Soon after, Tuckett's mother realized that if both her children went to the class, she could have two hours free to herself. He may have had no choice attending classes at age 6, but the now world-renowned dancer and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 17, 2012
'TeZukA' animates the stage
Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is nutty about anime and manga. Speaking to him at a cafe in his native Antwerp, Cherkaoui drops all the right names into his conversation and gets as giddy as an otaku (obsessive) discussing Japanese pop culture.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 20, 2012
Drawing up a performance without talk
Language can sometimes be an obstacle for non-Japanese wanting to enjoy arts performances in Japan. In South Korea, however, artists are getting around this problem with theater programs that don't use verbal elements.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 20, 2012
Condors fly in the face of contemporary dance scene
The Japanese are often described as being inward-looking and stoic, with a sense of humor that often fails to connect with people from overseas. However, there are still rare birds among that bunch.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 22, 2011
Japan's dramatists take on the 'nuclear village'
The place to start when reviewing this year's highlights in contemporary Japanese theater, has to be The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11. That day led to a nation in mourning, an ongoing nuclear crisis and an awakening among dramatists, who saw the importance of their role to stimulate debate...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Dec 16, 2011
Cinderella tale gets K-popped
The curtain had hardly gone down at the world premiere of "Kun (Goong) — Love in a Palace" in Seoul in 2010 when the musical suddenly became the hottest ticket in South Korea's entertainment scene.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Dec 9, 2011
Chelfitsch's Okada returns to Japan with a special version of his hit play
Chelfitsch theater company founder Toshiki Okada is back with "Five Days in March," a play written in his hallmark style of youth slang.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 24, 2011
Seigo Hatasawa is no ordinary school teacher
Japan's performing arts world is massively centered on Tokyo, yet one of its leading lights is based in Aomori City in the country's deeply unchic far north — and he's a school teacher.
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Nov 11, 2011
Reworked play goes bilingual
Following critical acclaim for their first international collaboration program, "Wannabe," Tokyo's Kakikuukyaku Theater Company will present its second collaborative effort, "Kensatsukan ("The Government Inspector") at Komaba Agora Theater from this weekend.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 6, 2011
Gamarjobat: Pantomime artists who have plenty to say
Tough-looking with their cockscomb mohawks — the red one topping Ketch!; the yellow one, HIRO-PON — the "silent-comedy" duo Gamarjobat ("Hello" in Georgian) are now well into a 31-stop tour that's filling theaters around the country with whoops and rollicking laughter — as well as their own "language"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 15, 2011
Francois Girard and a woman of many letters
"This wonderful project started when my friend, the Lebanese writer Wajdi Mouawad, gave me a book and said I should make a movie out it," Francois Girard explains. "But after I read it I got back to him and said, 'Sorry, I disagree with you. This is really not right for a movie — but it's perfect for...
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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