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November 21, 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
Nov 22, 2016
Spirit of Ninagawa and Shakespeare strong in Takahiro Fujita's daring take on 'Romeo and Juliet'
Takahiro Fujita was really looking forward to the new year in 2016. He'd already been honored when dramatist supreme Yukio Ninagawa asked him to write a play for him to direct. Now, they were each set to stage separate versions of "Nina's Cotton," that new work inspired by the life of Japan's worldwide...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 25, 2016
'Short-term' visitor to Japan serves up a rare Shakespeare treat after only 20 years
When Peter Goessner's wife got a contract to teach at a university in the city of Kitakyushu, Fukuoka Prefecture, and they came to Japan with their 3-year-old daughter in 1993, the Leipzig, East German-born director and actor thought it would just be "a short-term life experience," he told The Japan...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 6, 2016
Festival/Tokyo speaks with a defiant voice
Press conferences are usually upbeat affairs, but at the one held to herald Festival/Tokyo — a two-month theater festival that kicks off Oct. 15 — Artistic Director Sachio Ichimura appears looking worried and begins proceedings by bemoaning the event's financial situation and wondering aloud about...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 27, 2016
Munby's 'Crucible' speaks to societies built on fear
"When the opportunity came to work at Theatre Cocoon in Tokyo, I was so excited about the great dramatist Yukio Ninagawa being the artistic director there," the English director Jonathan Munby declared.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Sep 22, 2016
Kabuki's Bando Tamasaburo V takes Kodo drum troupe in an artistic new direction with 'Spiral'
To celebrate its 35th anniversary, the internationally renowned Kodo drumming troupe staged three days of performances at Tokyo's Suntory Hall in mid-August, with a different theme for each show.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 23, 2016
Dance icon Saburo Teshigawara's 'Magic Flute' brings abstract notes to Mozart's final gem
Since studying visual arts and sculpture before taking up ballet at the age of 20 in 1973, Saburo Teshigawara has become a world-renowned choreographer and dancer whose unique style and aesthetic sense has even drawn him commissions from the Paris Opera Ballet, Frankfurt Ballet and Nederlands Dans Theater....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 26, 2016
'Dragon Quest' show pulls its audiences into the action
For gamers and lovers of sheer theatrical spectacle alike, the summer's hottest ticket seems sure to be for "Dragon Quest Live Spectacle Tour," whose 40 shows nationwide are set to be attended by some 400,000 people — with everyone receiving a wristband enabling them to influence the onstage action....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 26, 2016
Butoh for kids has fun with 'birthday suit' tale
"Gloomy," "eerie," "vulgar," "avant-garde" and "conceptual" are adjectives often used to describe butoh, the genre of Japanese modern dance started in 1959 by Tatsumi Hishikata and Kazuo Ohno in which performers usually paint their near-naked bodies white.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 14, 2016
Teppei Koike and Haruma Miura strut proudly onto the stage in 'Kinky Boots'
For fans of musicals in Japan, the buzz surrounding Teppei Koike and Haruma Miura is reaching a peak thanks to the pair's newest production: the first-ever Japanese version of the award-winning hit "Kinky Boots."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 21, 2016
Lepage's '887' addresses memories in magical ways
Almost a year after "887" premiered in Toronto in July 2015, and following five-star reviews at every stop on a multinational tour that took in the world's biggest annual theater event, the Edinburgh International Festival, the latest play by Robert Lepage — the Canadian famously dubbed "an alchemist...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 21, 2016
Dramatist speaks up for the downtrodden and new thinking in Japan
Fifty-three year-old Oriza Hirata unexpectedly arrived early for our 9 a.m. interview in a Tokyo family restaurant one recent Sunday morning. Not only that, but the famed playwright and director turned up alone without the squad of minders such people's managers generally send along to stop them making...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 16, 2016
Jo Kanamori and Oriza Hirata retell 'La Bayadere' with a dose of political awareness
The atmosphere at the Imperial Bolshoi Kamenny Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia, must have been electric on Feb. 4, 1877. That was the day Austrian composer Ludwig Minkus premiered "La Bayadere" — the latest masterpiece of classical ballet by French choreographer Marius Petipa — to some of Europe's...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 24, 2016
'Tell Me' lays bare one woman's quest
The first thing Yojiro Ichikawa said when we sat down for our recent interview in a Tokyo rehearsal studio was, "Shall I speak in English?"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 18, 2016
'Macbeth': What's done is done again
Few storytellers can match Shakespeare for his vast range of timeless themes and awesome characters. Imagine what the Bard could have accomplished if he had had a laptop and smartphone.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 16, 2016
Exploring the funny side of familial angst
After it opened on Broadway in 2007, "August: Osage County" scooped a Tony for best play and earned a Pulitzer Prize for U.S. playwright Tracy Letts.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 13, 2016
World was a stage for acclaimed theater director Yukio Ninagawa
Acclaimed stage director Yukio Ninagawa was a titan of global theater but his hand felt astonishingly fragile when I shook it in delight in 2012 after the world premiere of "Trojan Women," which brought together a remarkable ensemble of Japanese, Arab-Israeli and Jewish-Israeli actors.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 28, 2016
Theater festival's roots dig deep into Shizuoka
In recent years, theater fans and artists here and abroad have increasingly been wakening up to the fact that cherry blossoms aren't the only spring bounty in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 26, 2016
The double delight of 'Grand Hotel'
It started life in 1929 as "Menschen im Hotel" ("People in the Hotel"), the first novel by Austrian writer Vicki Baum, but its storyline — set in the Grand Hotel in Berlin in 1928 — first became widely known through 1932's Oscar-winning film "Grand Hotel" starring silver-screen idols John Barrymore,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 22, 2016
Strindberg's surrealistic 'Dream' heralds a pivotal era for KAAT
He doesn't officially become Kanagawa Arts Theatre's artistic director until April 1, but Akira Shirai wasn't fooling when he declared, "I aim to make KAAT (the official acronym of his Yokohama base) a place where we take a whole fresh look at theater's role in today's Japan."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 25, 2016
An English director teams up with a kabuki star to retell a timeless tale of heartbreak in 'Eternal Chikamatsu'
English director David Leveaux has been a jewel in the crown of Japanese theater since 1988, when he first came here as a pinch-hitter after a compatriot pulled out of directing a Tokyo production of "Dangerous Liaisons." A 13-year stint as artistic director of the innovative Theatre Project Tokyo company...
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.

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