Search - works

 
 
EDITORIALS
Jan 25, 2003

Diet's role in cleaning up politics

The economic debate in the Diet appears to be distracting legislators from an issue that is no less important: political ethics. It would be a great pity if this issue were to be sidelined under the pretext of prioritizing economic-recovery measures. Recent developments involving scandal-tainted politicians...
JAPAN / KANSAI BEAT
Nov 30, 2002

Literature museum goes into cyberspace

KOBE -- The opening earlier this month of a new museum of literature in Hyogo Prefecture was marked by the usual ceremonial pomp.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 30, 2002

The noble art of collecting

Artists trying to earn a living before these days of government grants, international art fairs and global cultural celebrity were at the mercy of the people holding the purse strings. Teaching was (and remains) a way of getting by, but for the premodern artist, real security depended largely on catching...
Japan Times
JAPAN / MUSEUM MUSINGS
Aug 24, 2002

Taro Okamoto museum throws open artist's inner sanctum

Even to those who are clueless when it comes to art and culture, the name Taro Okamoto will probably ring a bell. After all, the late avant-garde artist was responsible for the famous statement "Geijutsu wa bakuhatsu da!" ("Art is an explosion!")
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 14, 2002

Toil -- you're on candid canvas

In the mid-19th century, the French village of Barbizon was the artistic equivalent of the reality-TV show "Big Brother." In this tiny village with a population of just 352 (according to the 1872 census), the locals were under constant observation by the 100 or so artists reputedly living among them....
Japan Times
JAPAN / MUSEUM MUSINGS
Aug 3, 2002

Artist's work brings copper plate color prints to life

An impression of stillness amid the wonder of color is a beautiful thing to behold.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 31, 2002

Joan Miro: Reflections on the renewal of Spain

No artist's life and work -- not even Picasso's -- better represents the modern history of Spain than that of Joan Miro (1893-1983), whose early work from 1918 to 1945 is now on display at the Setagaya Art Museum.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 26, 2002

Finding a style of their own

Next year marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vincent van Gogh, popularly regarded in Japan (as elsewhere) as the quintessential artist. Unfortunately, it will be difficult for Japanese galleries to borrow works from abroad to celebrate this event, with insurance costs now three times higher...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 15, 2002

Offspring of poetry's artistic polygamy

Several events this month platform the spoken and written words in new combinations: An exhibition of Japanese and French "visual poetry" opens May 15; poetry marries improvisational live jazz and shakuhachi performance; and a book launch for an anthology of new writing offers readings, music and dance....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 3, 2002

The hair-raising art of Lennie Mace

A hair salon in Harajuku seems an unlikely venue for an art museum, especially one dedicated to a shaven-headed, New York artist who works principally in ballpoint pen.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Mar 20, 2002

Clay forms waiting to be unearthed

A lump of clay; what forms sleep undiscovered within? There are many ways potters can shape the "earth" they see, the most common is to throw it on a wheel or rokuro. Other ways include tebineri (hand-pinching), himo-zukuri (coil-building), tatara-zukuri (slab-building) or wari-gata (piece-molding)....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 13, 2002

A traveler possessed by light

Part of the game of art nowadays is for artists, whatever their influence or orientation, to avoid classification. Once this happens, their work often devolves into well-worm cultural cliche. One 20th-century artist who escaped this process, though, was Paul Klee (1879- 1940), whose work is as hard to...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 6, 2002

Impressionist master of time and space

If the world seems like a dark place at the beginning of the present century, an exhibition of work completed at the beginning of the last may help put things back in a more optimistic perspective. "Monet -- Later Works: Homage to Katia Granoff," is on show at the Iwate Museum of Art till Feb. 11 and...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Jan 16, 2002

Eternal vessels and dreams of clay

Machiko Ogawa's creations are like ancient memories wrought from clay and buried centuries ago, waiting to be discovered today. Like scenes long lost in the maze of the mind, the ceramic artist's work reappears as if emerging from a dream -- a dream formed of clay.
CULTURE / Art
Oct 3, 2001

Missing links steal the show

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is also a dubious honor. For some 15 years, until his death in 1610, Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio's brooding and beautiful works scandalized Church and patrons alike, and left a generation of followers -- and copycats -- in his wake.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 22, 2001

Thanks to 'doken kokka,' are Japan's best decades behind it?

THE EMPTINESS OF JAPANESE AFFLUENCE, by Gavan McCormack. Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe, 2001 (2nd edition), 311 pp., $27.95 (paperback). What went wrong? A decade ago few would have predicted the sustained malaise that has gripped Japan since the early 1990s.
JAPAN
Jun 9, 2001

Panel to call for freeze on dam, road projects

A key government economic panel will call for a freeze on dam and road projects on which construction has not yet begun when it issues a blueprint for reform on June 27, government sources said Friday.
CULTURE / Art
May 16, 2001

Kishida's short but brilliant career

When Japan opened up to the West after the Meiji Restoration, it had a lot of catching up to do. Achievements that took hundreds of years to develop in European civilization were transplanted to Japan in a few decades.
ENVIRONMENT / OUR PLANET EARTH
May 10, 2001

Long-protected holy mountain to be gutted by highway project

Japan's Environment Minister, Yoriko Kawaguchi, recently told Mick Corliss of The Japan Times that she would like to incorporate an "environmental perspective" into public-works projects. If she is serious, there could be no better place to begin than Mount Takao.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Mar 10, 2001

An innovative, magical potter

Meiji Era craftsmen lived in a world of divergent influences: Galle glass, French bronzes, Art Nouveau designs, Chinese celadons and tenmoku tea bowls, as well as their own traditions, whose product was at the crossroads between being an industrial export or the aesthetic vision of the individual artist....
CULTURE / Books / POETRY MIGNETTE
Feb 18, 2001

Avant-garde poet tosses Japan a luscious bouquet

The end of last year and the beginning of this one has produced a fine crop of poetry publications. Though each of these volumes deserves its own separate review, happily I'm able to give these works exposure here.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Dec 9, 2000

The tiny treasures of Hikaru Shimamura

The great 20th-century Japanese potter Kanjiro Kawai (1890-1966) marveled at items that were small and most people overlooked: a stone, a leaf, a box of matches. He would toss them over and over again in his hands.
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
Nov 11, 2000

Bringing a new shine to old Kutani

When I first looked at the work of Yasokichi Tokuda III (b. 1933) I had to put on a pair of sunglasses -- I was almost blinded by the intensity of his kaleidoscopic Kutani porcelain.
JAPAN
Sep 2, 2000

34 projects join those to be scrapped

The Construction Ministry listed 34 public works projects Friday for possible scrapping based on its own criteria for stopping wasteful spending.
CULTURE / Art
Aug 6, 2000

Urawa Art Museum picks art to make book on

Urawa Art Museum, which opened in April as the second public museum in Saitama Prefecture, is currently exhibiting 220 books created by 20th-century Western artists.
JAPAN
Jul 3, 2000

Detention of ex-minister Nakao extended

The Tokyo District Court has decided to allow former Construction Minister Eiichi Nakao to be detained for another 10 days through July 11, sources said Sunday.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
May 2, 2000

Everything about Tanizaki

TANIZAKI IN WESTERN LANGUAGES: A Bibliography of Translations and Studies, by Adriana Boscaro, with a list of films based on Tanizaki's works compiled by Maria Roberta Novielli. Ann Arbor, MI: Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2000, 82 pp., $19.95. This fine bibliography is one...
CULTURE / Art
Mar 11, 2000

Scorched in the fires of Iga

The influence on contemporary Japanese pottery from medieval kilns is still profound and deep, even though we have one foot into the 21st century. These high-fired unglazed stonewares can be found in potting centers commonly referred to as the Six Old Kilns (rokkoyo) -- the only problem is that this...
JAPAN
Jan 18, 2000

Dam vote clouds future of toothless plebiscites

Staff writer Sunday's plebiscite over a controversial dam project in Tokushima Prefecture may have triggered more questions and issues to be tackled than it has solved, as both government and citizens grapple to find a middle ground on incorporating residents' voices over public works projects. 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?