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December 22, 2024
 

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Thu-Huong Ha
Thu-Huong Ha is the culture critic at The Japan Times, focusing on contemporary art and fiction. Previously she was a reporter for Quartz, an editor for TED.com and an executive producer of TEDxNewYork. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, The Believer, and ArtReview, among others. Her debut novel, "Hail Caesar," was published by Scholastic/PUSH in 2007. Get in touch: [email protected] or instagram.com/whatthusee.
People in cities across Japan will pop into their local convenience store for any number of products they believe will help them with a night of drinking.
LIFE / Lifestyle / Longform
Dec 6, 2024
Hangover cures are everywhere in Japan — but do they work?
Japan’s suspect remedies make up 20% of the world’s market for hangover cures, but their success lies more in marketing than science.
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 19, 2024
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
“The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” newly translated into English, is an explicit rerun of the author’s older works with an alternate ending.
Izumi Suzuki’s autobiographical novel “Set My Heart on Fire” is the first novel by the author and actor to appear in English.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 12, 2024
‘Set My Heart on Fire’: Izumi Suzuki captures the heady cravings of youth
The cult writer’s autobiographical novel follows its unapologetic groupie narrator as she romps through Yokohama’s underground music scene in the 1970s.
Yuko Mohri uses “invisible forces” — gravity, weather, air, magnetic fields — to create jazzy kinetic sculptures.
CULTURE / Art
Nov 1, 2024
Yuko Mohri is a maestro of unstable elements
After a banner year at the Venice Biennale, the creator of jazzy kinetic sculptures opens her first large-scale exhibition in Japan.
Sanzo K. Matsunaga’s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel “Bari Sanko” centers on two men involved in an office hiking club. One is into dangerous off-path trekking, the other is more of a by-the-book conformist.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 19, 2024
Akutagawa winner ‘Bari Sanko’ takes office politics to the mountains
Though the plot takes time to get going, Sanzo K. Matsunaga’s novel takes a nuanced look at the implications of being an independent thinker in Japan’s corporate culture.
Han Kang is the first South Korean author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
CULTURE / Books
Oct 10, 2024
South Korean author Han Kang wins Nobel Prize in literature
Han is the first Asian woman and the first writer from South Korea to receive the award.
Bourgeois is perhaps best known among the general public for her giant steel spider sculptures, particularly in Tokyo, where a nearly 10-meter tall bronze cast of the original spider has loomed over the walkway in Roppongi Hills since 2003.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 4, 2024
Japan’s biggest Louise Bourgeois exhibit yet leans into ambivalence
At Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, a large-scale retrospective of the visionary artist emphasizes her complex feelings toward femininity, memory, parenthood and the human body.
“A Whisper in the Eye of the Storm,” by Canadian artists Caitlind R. C. Brown and Wayne Garrett is an outdoor installation of around 14,000 recycled lenses of varied prescriptions.
CULTURE / Art
Sep 27, 2024
Weather makes for an unpredictable artist at Nagano art festival
Fram Kitagawa’s Northern Alps Art Festival embraces its inconvenient location and the natural elements.
Hiroyuki Sanada and the cast and crew of "Shogun" accept the award for best drama series at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, California.
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Sep 16, 2024
‘Shogun’ and the painstaking art of ‘getting it right’
The Emmys-sweeping period drama went to great lengths to achieve historical accuracy — but that's just one piece of a bigger puzzle.
Hiromi Kawakami’s “Under the Eye of the Big Bird” takes place in a future where humans have developed genetic mutations that allow them to read minds and have powers of prescience.
CULTURE / Books
Sep 3, 2024
'Under the Eye of the Big Bird': Hiromi Kawakami's speculative future sets civilization adrift
The author reimagines sexual reproduction, family ties and societal roles in a passionless world that is neither a dystopia nor an improvement on reality.
Keiichi Tanaami died on Aug. 9 after a 60-year career as a Pop Art pioneer. He was 88.
CULTURE / Art
Aug 24, 2024
Remembering Keiichi Tanaami's surreal grotesqueries
The Pop Art pioneer passed away at age 88 on Aug. 9. His posthumous retrospective, “Adventures in Memory,” turns nightmare into fantasy.
Earthquakes are a fact of life in Japan, but there are strategies to keep yourself from spiraling into stress and despair over future catastrophes.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Aug 17, 2024
Dreading the Big One? How to manage pre-disaster anxiety.
Anxiety about potential natural disasters can take its toll, but mental health experts say there are practical solutions.
Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
COMMUNITY / Issues / Longform
Aug 9, 2024
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’
You've likely heard of the American dream. In Japan, where no such concept exists, immigrants forge their own ideals.
Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan’s “The Objects from Another Place,” erected at a former power station, was created in the likeness of structures that appeared in children’s playgrounds all over the former Soviet Union.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 27, 2024
Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale's quiet expansion of hyper-local art
The event’s ninth edition doesn’t offer new bangers, but its detailed installations in the verdant mountains of Niigata Prefecture still present a unique experience.
Summer in Japan is now consistently brutal enough to drive you indoors and keep you there until autumn.
COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA
Jul 27, 2024
When did summer in Japan stop being fun?
Summer in Japan used to be something to enjoy. Now, it’s something to endure.
Naoki Prize winner Michi Ichiho (left), and Akutagawa Prize winners Sanzo K. Matsunaga (center) and Aki Asahina pose with their award-winning books at a news conference in Tokyo on Wednesday.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 17, 2024
Three novelists named for Akutagawa and Naoki awards
Authors Sanzo K. Matsunaga and Aki Asahina won the Akutagawa Prize for literary writers, while the Naoki Prize for genre fiction went to Michi Ichiho.
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability / OUR PLANET
Jul 14, 2024
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
As summers get hotter across the world we’re met with a paradox: To stay cool, it seems we’re compelled to consume more.
Toshiko Takaezu made vases and bowls in all shapes and sizes, some that could fit in your palm and some towering over your head.
CULTURE / Art
Jun 23, 2024
The Japanese-American ceramicist who made pots as big as her
The exhibit “Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within,” on view at the Isamu Noguchi Museum, is part of a resurgence of interest in the Hawaiian artist of Okinawan descent.
Natsuko Imamura’s new short story collection "Asa: The Girl Who Turned into a Pair of Chopsticks" explores the worlds of three alienated girls whose problems are anything but typical.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 16, 2024
‘Asa: The Girl Who Turned into a Pair of Chopsticks’: Uncanny tales of troubled young women
Natsuko Imamura's narrators are young women with dogged resolve, few scruples and a naivete that borders on delusion.
Eschewing the comfort of Tokyo’s air-conditioned museums, the inconvenient art movement draws viewers into the countryside to see artworks such as Christian Boltanski’s “Les Regards.”
CULTURE / Art
Jun 7, 2024
A list of Japan’s remote art sites
Get off the beaten path this summer and discover art tucked away in the farthest reaches of Japan.
Nippon Steel alleges undue White House influence on doomed deal review
U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on the economy at the Brookings Institution in Washington on Dec. 10.
Record 78% of people in Japan feel anxious, government survey finds
The public opinion survey on people's lives, conducted by the Cabinet Office, found that 28.1% of respondents think that their standard of living is at a lower-middle level among the general public — the highest percentage to give that response in 35 years.
Police raided suspect's home to arrest him after fatal Kitakyushu stabbing
Broken window glass is seen at Masanori Hirabaru's house in Kitakyushu's Kokuraminami Ward.
Taiwan lawmakers brawl over bills that would 'damage democracy'
Lawmakers from the Democratic Progressive Party and opposition party Kuomintang brawl in parliament in Taipei on Friday.
Mother hopes for reunion with daughter ensnared by Tokyo host clubs
The Kabukicho district in Tokyo, where the daughter of a woman in her 60s fell deeply into the host club culture.
Casual workouts, cool living, ‘complete’ food: Japan’s health trends of 2024
In 2024, efficiency trumped effort among Japan's fitness-focused aspirants.
The mighty Mekong River's growing plastic problem
A group of elephant keepers in Chiang Saen, Thailand, remove plastic waste from the Ruak River, a tributary of the Mekong River, as a pair of Asian elephants bathe behind them.
Japanese officials inspect Yokota Air Base over PFAS concerns
The Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo in September 2019. An inspection of the base by Japanese government officials on Friday came amid public pressure to investigate suspected links between the use of PFAS-containing firefighting foam by the U.S. base and contamination of soil and groundwater in western Tokyo.
Crime numbers rise in Japan for second straight year
A police officer stands in front of the residence of a man alleged to have stabbed two junior high school students in Kitakyushu.

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