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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
Mar 2, 2006
TIF pushes theater's borders
With guest productions from as far afield as Kuwait, Israel, Germany and the United States, this year's 12th annual Tokyo International Arts Festival (TIF) is delivering a challenging program of theater and dance from some of the world's leading dramatists. In doing so, TIF -- held for the first time...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 24, 2006
Essence of womanhood from top flamenco muse
One of the so-called "Three Muses" at the summit of flamenco dancing, along with Sara Baras and Maria Pages, is Eva Yerbabuena. The Granada-born dancer returns to Japan riding a wave of success in the wake of her performances last year at the Spanish Pavilion at Aichi Expo, and at the Flamenco Festival...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 16, 2006
Awkward casting mutes plays impact
In "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams, a classic story of youthful dissatisfaction, you'd expect to see a restless young actor dig into the role of Tom Wingfield and explore his frustration. It is surprising, then, that in the current production of the play at the New National Theatre, director...
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 10, 2006
Youthful dramatics
Oriza Hirata, founder of the cutting-edge, Tokyo-based Seinendan Theater Company that has been at the forefront of Japanese contemporary drama for over a decade, is one of Japan's leading scriptwriters and directors. But as owner of the Komaba Agora Theater, two stops down the Keio Inokashira Line from...
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Feb 3, 2006
Kabuki duo turn Bard into a mythical folktale
Ryutopia Company shot to prominence in December 2003 with its Noh staging of "Macbeth." Since then, Ryutopia's 48-year-old director Yoshihiro Kurita has twice more pulled off the feat of breaking the Tokyo-Osaka stranglehold on Japanese theater by luring the nation's critics north through the snows for...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 19, 2006
"Stuff Happens" : So what do you think about it?
The night I got back home from the premiere of "Stuff Happens," the BBC World television news led off with a report on a further mess in Iraq -- the chief judge in the trial of deposed president Saddam Hussein had resigned following criticism of his "soft attitude" toward the defendant. I felt strongly...
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 13, 2006
Director reworks Russian epic with gender twist
Ten years ago, then aged 40, contemporary theater actor/director Hideki Noda was, even by his own standards, bold to write a play based on "Crime and Punishment," the lengthy 19th-century masterpiece by the Russian writer Feodor Dostoevski. His "Gansaku Tsumi to Batsu (Fake Crime and Punishment)" runs...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 29, 2005
A gradual rise to excellence
A loss of direction appeared to afflict large parts of the Japanese theater world in the beginning of 2005 as last year's promising stream of new actors and directors failed to live up to their 2004 debuts. Dramatists responded by looking outward for inspiration, creating an upsurge in international...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 15, 2005
Director Koki Mitani and the gentle indecision of Japanese juries
When 44-year-old writer/director Koki Mitani was young, he got so excited watching "Twelve Angry Men," a classic American jury-room film directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Henry Fonda, that he wanted someday to make his own original version.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 6, 2005
You cannot force them to sing it in Japan, or to listen in London
"In this 60th anniversary year of the end of the war . . . I thought it was the right time to ask about Japan's current movement toward constitutional revision -- especially the revision of (war-renouncing) Article 9," said 53-year-old Ai Nagai, founder of Nitosha (Two Rabbits) Theater Company, as she...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 22, 2005
The Bard in abundance in Edo Japan
After four hours rejoicing in my seat as I watched "Tempo 12-nen no Shakespeare (Shakespeare in the 12th year of Tempo)" at the Theatre Cocoon, had I been wearing one I would have taken off my hat to the team who delivered the marvelous, grand-scale production -- director Yukio Ninagawa, writer Hisashi...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 7, 2005
Salaryman nightmare, otaku dreams
Playwright David Mamet was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his play "Glengarry Glen Ross." Two years before that, however, an earlier, major work, "Edmond," had fared less well with the critics.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 17, 2005
The Tokyo Python returns
Once upon a time in the 1980s, there was a theater company called Gekidan Kenko (Health Theater), whose zany, nonsensical and sometimes radical stagings became the stuff of cult legend. But then, in 1992, this quirky gem was dissolved by its quirky Japanese founder, self-styled Keralino Sandoroviich,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 3, 2005
New dimensions in dance
Noism is a veritable supernova in the rapidly expanding universe of Japanese contemporary dance. It burst on the scene in 2004 as the residential company of the Niigata Ryutopia Theater, two years after its founder, 30-year-old Jo Kanamori, returned from Europe.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 20, 2005
Shock & awe: hotshots wow Shibuya
Two leading contenders to the throne of the contemporary drama world, now long occupied by Yukio Ninagawa, are certainly Suzuki Matsuo, 42, founder of the Otona Keikaku theater company, and the Asagaya Spiders' 30-year-old founder, Keishi Nagatsuka. Currently both of these rising stars happen to be staking...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 20, 2005
The Bard on the hanamichi
With his characters given samurai names and clad in kimono, whatever would the Bard make of this "Twelfth Night" by Japan's foremost Shakespeare dramatist, 69-year-old Yukio Ninagawa? This veteran theatrical explorer long vowed never to tackle kabuki, but is doing just that with "Twelfth Night" to packed...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 6, 2005
'Noises Off' finds the right director
While tragedy is universal, comedy tends to be far more culturally specific, and this is especially true with theater. When drama is transposed out of its vernacular, audiences can be expected to tune in more easily to a mournful melodrama or saga of self-destruction than to a humorous work with all...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 15, 2005
A new cherry for a new theater
Theatre Cocoon in Shibuya is renowned for staging some of the best contemporary drama in Japan, whether from established masters such as Yukio Ninagawa and Hideki Noda, or young blades like Suzuki Matsuo.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 8, 2005
House of babel that bubbles over
Hot on the heels of Hisashi Inoue's new play "Hakone Gora Hotel," which opened at the New National Theatre in Tokyo, "Kokugo Gannen (The First Year of the Japanese Language)," a vintage classic by the same playwright that premiered on the other side of Shinjuku at the Kinokuniya Hall in 1986, has now...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 8, 2005
A fling to remember
The all-male reworking of "Swan Lake" by English choreographer Matthew Bourne has become a dance and stage legend since its November 1995 premiere at Sadler's Wells Theater in London. This powerful piece of ballet zeitgeist toured widely before arriving in Japan in spring 2003. With nonstop curtain calls,...
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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