Search - works

 
 
CULTURE / Music
Jul 6, 2000

86-year-old composer going strong

At 86, Saburo Takata may be the oldest working composer of classical music in the world. Not that he feels like it.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Nov 27, 1999

The potter who set the scene on fire

In a brief span of time a few decades ago, one Japanese potter set the ceramic scene on fire, and as quickly as a brilliant meteor shooting across a night sky, disappeared. Yet his name and influence still circle the wheel that spins in most potters' studios; his immense impact on contemporary ceramics...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Apr 16, 2023

Japan springs into action for Salone del Mobile Milan 2023

The world’s largest annual furniture and design trade fair is back in full force, and Japanese designers are well represented.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Oct 7, 2022

Yoshio Osakabe: ‘There are probably a lot of old fans who actually don't want Murakami to win the Nobel’

Coined 'Harukisuto,' or 'Haruki-ists,' for their passionate devotion to Haruki Murakami, one fan talks about the joy he gets from the work of one of Japan's most-treasured authors.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 21, 2022

The Aichi Triennale as seen through four textures

The arts festival's conceptual works stand in stark contrast to its tactile pieces, from marimba-like instruments to ceramic interpretations of bombs, presented at the Aichi Arts Center.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 14, 2019

Kanjiro Kawai: Pots of incredible talent

The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto's 'Potter Kawai Kanjiro: Works from the Kawakatsu Collection' is just the fourth time it has presented such a substantial selection of works from its renowned Kawakatsu Collection of over 400 pieces.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 8, 2019

'Beyond the End: Ruins in Art History': What kind of beauty lies beneath ruins?

The exploration of the subject of ruins — their romanticization and fantasization — raises questions about the relationship between art, beauty and disaster.
Japan Times
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 5, 2017

Scandal-hit Kobe Steel has 'look the other way' culture, they say in its hometown

A retired Kobe Steel employee says the company's corporate culture was to look the other way even while you saw what was going on.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 13, 2017

At 104, Toko Shinoda talks about a life in art

The only living Japanese on a postage stamp, 104-year-old Toko Shinoda reflects on a lifetime devoted to art.
Japan Times
CULTURE / CULTURE SMASH
Jul 16, 2016

Anime discovers a rural outpost

For the past few years, the beginning of July has found me on a flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles to attend Anime Expo (AX), the largest annual North American convention devoted to Japanese popular culture, and its related industry-only event, Project Anime (PA). Both continue to break attendance records....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 5, 2016

Richard Aldrich on the plurality of painting

Richard Aldrich's "Eight Paintings" is his third solo exhibition with Misako & Rosen, but his first in their current exhibition space in Tokyo's Otsuka district. As the title suggests, it comprises eight small-scale works. It opens as his show "Time Stopped, Time Started" closes at Gladstone Gallery...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 19, 2015

Impressions of spiritual intimacy

There are two theories about post-impressionist art. One is that it was a continuation of the modernist spirit of the impressionists, with the application of ever-more scientific principles of color and light to the depiction of objects. The other is that post-impressionism was a re-assertion of an artistic...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 8, 2015

There's method in artistic 'madness'

Jiro Takamatsu is not easy to understand. He was an idiosyncratic avant-garde artist who worked with a variety of materials to create arcane art that expressed philosophical ideas. This is immediately off-putting to some and intriguing to others. However, the exhibition "Takamatsu Jiro: Mysteries" at...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 18, 2014

Sculpting the uncanny space between permanence and evanescence

Sculpture is supposedly the most solid and permanent of the creative arts, so it is a paradox that an artist like Junichi Mori — whose work often focuses on impermanence and evanescence — has chosen to work in this style, using materials like marble and wood, instead of something more fleeting and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 11, 2014

Tomoo Gokita's painterly coup

In a 2000, Gokita likened the relationship between fine artists and illustrators to that of martial artists and professional wrestlers. 'These days, though, wrestlers beat martial artists in MMA matches,' he noted. 'If I could do that in art, then I'm fine being an illustrator.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 4, 2014

Artist veils photos showing his genitalia to parry police censorship

The censorship action taken by police last month at an Aichi museum showing photos of a photographer's genitals constitutes a human rights violation and highlights the nation's shift toward a more controlling society, the artist said Thursday.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 25, 2013

The influences on and of Tetsumi Kudo

"Collection 3 — Works Related to Your Portrait: A Tetsumi Kudo Retrospective: From Anti-art of the 1960s to Art of the Present Day" is a contextual exhibition accompanying the superb "Tetsumi Kudo Retrospective" at the National Museum of Art, Osaka. It brings together foreign and Japanese artists,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 27, 2013

Portraits of an artist as a young man — and an older one

Yasumasa Morimura is a weird mixture of curator, artist and simple art lover. Throughout his career he has selected famous portraits and paintings of people and then faithfully recreated them, with the exception of superimposing his own face on the subjects.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 5, 2013

Outsider drawn to the circle of life

The discovery and promotion of works by self-taught or outsider artists — those who are not academically trained and create their works primarily for themselves, mostly beyond the cultural-commercial mainstream — are still relatively new activities in Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 28, 2013

The Powers behind American Pop Art

Brash, bold and unabashedly low-brow, much of Pop Art took inspiration from the imagery of popular culture to forge what many consider to be the preeminent art form of the mid-20th century.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Aug 2, 2013

Why acupuncture is giving doubters the needle

You can't get crystal healing on the National Health Service. It doesn't fund faith healing. And most doctors believe magnets are best stuck on fridges, not patients. But ask for a treatment in which an expert examines your tongue, smells your skin and tries to unblock the flow of life force running...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 24, 2013

Crawling through the mud in style

It's quite fitting that the major Osamu Suzuki (1926-2001) retrospective, the first since the ceramicist's passing, is taking place at The National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto, the hometown of the artist.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 27, 2013

Art that bloomed with the Feinbergs

As a simple matter of economic convenience, some of the best art collections in the world started out going against established taste. By avoiding what was already highly valued — and therefore expensive — collectors could build up impressive collections that could then help to dictate future tastes....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 2, 2013

The disconcerting unity of Raphael

Harmony can sometimes have a disconcerting side. This is one insight to emerge from the Raphael exhibition at the National Museum of Western Art, the centerpiece of which is one of the artist's acknowledged great works, the "Madonna del Granduca" (c. 1505).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 6, 2012

Reading between the lines of realism

Nineteenth century Russia is far better known for its composers and writers than for its artists. While the likes of Tchaikovsky, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy have a global resonance, the most famous Russian painters of the period remain internationally obscure. But this state of affairs is starting to change...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 24, 2012

The shaping of a Post-Impressionist

When the influential art critic Clement Greenberg described a particular painter as "the most copious source of what we know as modern art, the most abundant generator of ideas and the most enduring in newness," it wasn't, as some might expect, Pablo Picasso he was referring to but Paul Cezanne, a generation...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 9, 2012

Finding a piece of mind in contemporary art

"Yayoi Kusama: Eternity of Eternal Eternity" at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, presents the "late" style of the internationally renowned artist.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 9, 2012

Finding a piece of mind in contemporary art

"Yayoi Kusama: Eternity of Eternal Eternity" at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, presents the "late" style of the internationally renowned artist.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / INSIDE ART
Jul 7, 2011

Public to benefit from art indemnity system

If you've ever thought that the ¥1,500 admission ticket at the average touring exhibition in Tokyo is too expensive, consider this: The cost of insuring artworks for trips to Japan is around 0.2 percent of their appraised value.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 15, 2011

Yoshihiko Takahashi's messages in a bottle

The obvious property of glass is that it is transparent, but for Yoshihiko Takahashi this is only one of its essential characteristics. The prolific glass artist, whose career is being honored by a retrospective at the Crafts Gallery of the Museum of Modern Art Tokyo, clearly has several handles on the...

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?