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December 23, 2024
 

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John L. Tran
This year’s T3 Photo Festival features work by contemporary artists such as Fuyuhiko Takata, whose video piece “Cut Suits”shows white-collar workers becoming naked by cutting their business attire off of each other. 
CULTURE / Art
Oct 18, 2024
T3 Photo Festival reflects on past and present of the medium
The Tokyo event marks the 50th anniversary of a landmark New York show of Japanese photography by juxtaposing images from that era with works by contemporary artists.
The eighth edition of the Yokohama Triennale, held at the Yokohama Museum of Art, opened in March this year with the theme “Wild Grass: Our Lives."
CULTURE / Art
May 14, 2024
Yokohama Triennale's eighth edition makes room for context
Curators Liu Ding and Carol Yinghua Lu's dynamic and vital show positions art at the vanguard of social change.
While the visual cues of cartoonishness, color and bounciness suggest fun and innocence, Saeborg’s “Saedog” performance nudges the audience toward contemplating captivity and confinement.
CULTURE / Art
May 2, 2024
Art award show offers trippy scenes of seeing and being seen
The two winners of the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award offer provocatively contrasting work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.
Heidrun Holzfeind documents urban and rural scenes, such as two policemen on bicycles nonchalantly rolling down a street, in her video piece "The 49th Year." The footage is presented alongside incarcerated New Left group leader Toshihiko Kamata’s writings about Japan’s highly supervised society in the exhibition "News from K."
CULTURE / Art
Nov 26, 2023
'News From K' captures the oppression of landscape
Letters from prison by New Left group leader Toshihiko Kamata reveal a sense of limbo in Heidrun Holzfeind’s new work.
Munakata Shiko's "Oshira-sama: The Flying Silkworm Deities" (1968)
CULTURE / Art
Oct 26, 2023
Major retrospective traces hero's journey of 'Japan's van Gogh'
An exhibition of Shiko Munakata's works shows evidence of a charismatic character and a career that reflects Japan's changing relationship with the West.
Naoya Hatakeyama’s “Rikuzen Takata 2011-2023” is a display of hundreds of color contact prints of his hometown, Rikuzen Takata, Iwate Prefecture. The images show the shifting landscape of a place that was heavily affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 13, 2023
Tokyo Biennale 2023 seeks healing through art
The contemporary art festival creates safe spaces for its artists and their works by embracing a “we accept anything” maxim.
Tokyo Gendai is described by fair organizers Art Assembly as Tokyo Bay’s first international contemporary art fair in 30 years.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 22, 2023
Can a new art fair finally put Tokyo on the map?
Tokyo Gendai puts on a good event but still needs to change Japanese opinions on contemporary art.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 22, 2023
Can a new art fair finally put Tokyo on the map?
Tokyo Gendai puts on a good event but still needs to change Japanese opinions on contemporary art.
Japan Times
JAPAN / PERSPECTIVES
Apr 3, 2023
Global competitiveness of Japan’s universities under scrutiny
The government is promising higher education institutions more capital to boost scientific research, but will this improve their international reputation?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 22, 2022
Sumida Mukojima Expo embraces an anarchic spirit
The local arts festival highlights the neighborhood of Kyojima's scrappy sense of character and its history of resilience.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 20, 2022
Memento mori: Photography in the face of the inevitable
The Tokyo Photographic Art Museum examines how we face our own mortality in the new exhibition “TOP Collection: The Illumination of Life by Death.”
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 10, 2022
Artizon Museum's Jam Session puts photography into perspective
This year's edition of the museum's annual series, which invites contemporary artists to play off canonical pieces, nudges viewers into rethinking the art of seeing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 1, 2021
Kyotographie taps into the echoes of hardship
The annual international photography festival reflects on times of major crisis.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 25, 2021
Tokyo's art scene looks back at recent history
Asian artists and curators examine the present through the lens of the past.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 12, 2020
Multidisciplinary collection in Tokyo depicts a paradox of restraint and restriction
The Fergus McCaffrey gallery has curated works that explore social and regional boundaries as well as the confinements of genre and convention.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 25, 2020
The subversive happiness of Tom of Finland’s men
The exhibition, which is the first solo show of Touko Valio Laaksonen artwork in Japan, comes on the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 1, 2020
Japan’s art institutions struggle to cope with the COVID-19 crisis
Since the quarantine of the Diamond Princess, Japan has gone from being one of the world’s most at-risk countries to lucky outlier, to being again fearful of COVID-19 getting out of control.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 25, 2020
Lee Ufan: The same but different
Lee Ufan’s new paintings look very different depending on where you are standing. From a distance, when you can take in several of the large canvases at the same time, abstract shapes seem to emphatically announce themselves as existing; however, they are also pointedly ambiguous as to what they are....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 19, 2020
Barry McGee: Painting outside the lines
'Potato Sack Body' can be enjoyed as a semi-abstract display of shapes and colors, but there are also cryptic artifacts, notations and visual references. If you lived through the '60s and '70s, the overall design and color palette will remind you that those decades were the best, and worst, of times.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 5, 2020
Constructing the self in 'One's Behavior'
A chamber piece of artworks, 'One's Behavior' explores both the connection and alienation that pervades the human psyche.
Zelenskyy to replace Ukraine ambassador to Japan
Ukrainian Ambassador to Japan Sergiy Korsunsky delivers a speech during a handover ceremony of Self-Defense Force vehicles to Ukraine, at the Defense Ministry in Tokyo, in May last year.
Bankruptcies and suicides rise as Japanese struggle with mounting debt
Lawyers estimate that personal bankruptcies in Japan are on track to reach the highest since 2012 this year.
Honda and Nissan consider mutual production of vehicles, report says
Honda CEO Toshihiro Mibe at the Japan Mobility Show 2023 at Tokyo Big Sight in October 2023.
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.
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.
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.
North Korea aiding Russia where it needs it most, Canadian general says
North Korean special forces soldiers march and shout slogans during a military parade marking the 105th birth anniversary of the country's founding father, Kim Il Sung, in Pyongyang in April 2017.

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