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Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 2, 2019

William I. Elliott's lifetime passion for Japanese poetry

A chance encounter with Shuntaro Tanikawa's poem, 'Humanism,' set William I. Elliott on the path to make modern Japanese poetry accessible to all.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Feb 24, 2019

Japan's hotels design new experiences

Among a crop of new hotels in Japan are several unique establishments aiming to support local artisans, while offering guests experiences that go way beyond a comfy bed and fine dining.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Dec 22, 2018

Rationale for extending Japan's copyright protections unclear

Several weeks ago, I was surprised to read that a revision to the copyright law would go into effect on Dec. 30, extending the current protection period from 50 years after an author's death to 70 years. When the extension was first discussed as part of the original 12-member Trans-Pacific Partnership...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 11, 2018

2018 was the year in Japan that saw the stage sing, while contemporary drama barely made a squeak

Musicals have flourished in 2018, with many young stars also helping to sell out straight plays in which they appeared. However, the contemporary drama scene in Japan has been unusually quiet this year in terms of new works and writers.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Dec 8, 2018

Japan's modern crime literature: Centuries in the making

Japan boasts an impressively large and growing body of native-grown mystery fiction that dates back to the 1920s.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 18, 2018

A pair of events centered on non-Japanese artists are helping to build bridges into Japan's manga market

The Japanese market for manga is worth hundreds of billions of yen and is a crowded field for many young Japanese illustrators to break into. And if you're coming from overseas, there are even more obstacles.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / WORKS BY JAPANESE WOMEN
Oct 20, 2018

Fierce and inventive, Yuko Tsushima's oeuvre goes beyond the 'I-novel' genre

Early on, Yuko Tsushima broke the boundaries of the traditional Japanese I-novel, giving voice to a voiceless minority by authentically depicting the struggles of single mothers in society as a single mother herself.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 25, 2018

Hokusai: Examining the enduring allure of a Japanese icon

Hokusai's thirst for new forms of expression and willingness to abandon established techniques continues to intrigue the world today.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 28, 2018

An education in modernist art teaching

The Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto surveys German, Japanese and Indian Bauhaus developments as part of a wider collation of international exhibitions and research in preparation for next year's Bauhaus centenary anniversary in Berlin.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / WORKS BY JAPANESE WOMEN
Jul 21, 2018

Fiercely intelligent and unstoppably prolific, Hiromi Ito is a modern literary provocateur

Love her or hate her — and her work tends to provoke strong passions in critics and fans alike — Hiromi Ito is a defining force in Japan's literary world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 3, 2018

Yayoi Kusama in Jakarta: She'll be your mirror

'Life is the Heart of a Rainbow,' the Yayoi Kusama exhibition now on at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Jakarta, is the first retrospective of the artist Indonesia has ever hosted.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 5, 2017

Hokusai's great wave that swept Europe

Innovative, creative, and immensely prolific, Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) was celebrated during his lifetime in his native Japan. His works were among the first major examples of Japanese art to be widely appreciated overseas in the second half of the 19th century.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 28, 2017

The beginning, end and rebirth of sculpture

The subtitle given to the retrospective of the 60-year career of Osaka-based Michio Fukuoka is oxymoronic: "A Sculptor Who No Longer Sculpts." He used to, but became frustrated and filled with doubt about creativity and so he made sculpture anyway, often about "doing nothing."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 14, 2017

Sachiko Kodama's laws of attraction

Entering the tatami-mat tearoom-style exhibition spaces at the back of Kyoto's specialist pewter art craft gallery, Seikado, spectators are apprised that the magnetism of the pieces on display might interfere with the strips on their credit cards. Those fitted with pacemakers are also asked to stand...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 24, 2017

Motonobu: The father of Kano styles

A family-run enterprise, the Kano school of painting was a consistent force in Japan's art world for more than 300 years, from the Muromachi Period (1336-1573) up until its fortune waned in the 19th century.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / BLACK EYE
Sep 17, 2017

Japanese professor studies U.S. 'birth of a nation' and finds common humanity

Understanding racial issues is key to knowing America's history and, through that, modern Japan's, says Keiko Shirakawa.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 27, 2017

'Record of a Night Too Brief': Hiromi Kawakami uncoils life's mysteries with an exploration of dreams

When I met the popular author Hiromi Kawakami in London recently, I asked her thoughts about the great authors of Japan's literary past. Did she, for example, enjoy the novels of Meiji Era (1868-1912) great Natsume Soseki?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 11, 2017

Kakiemon: Generations of beauty

There's still time to enjoy cherry blossoms. Through May 14, the Toguri Museum of Art in Tokyo is exhibiting a stunning new work by Sakaida Kakiemon XV, the current inheritor of one of the most famous names in Japanese porcelain. The very large lidded jar, commissioned by the museum to commemorate its...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 14, 2017

Masaaki Yamada: A painter of all stripes and colors

Masaaki Yamada (1929-2010) is like a mystery man of modernism. He apparently had no specialist art training of note and is known only by a skeleton biography that is mostly blank before 1943, and patchy thereafter. Said to have begun painting from the so-called tabula rasa of bombed out World War II...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 20, 2016

Raku: A traditional contemporary art form

At the opening of "The Cosmos in a Tea Bowl: Transmitting a Secret Art Across Generations of the Raku Family" at The National Museum of Modern Art, in Kyoto, the current head of the Raku family, Kichizaemon XV (b. 1949), explained that the event would be "an unprecedented and once-in-a-lifetime exhibition...
Japan Times
JAPAN / JAPANESE IN INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
Dec 19, 2016

Comments from workers of international organizations

According to statistics of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, more than 800 Japanese are working for international organizations. Such professionals include those doing clerical work at the organizations’ Japanese units, appointed to lead an organization by using expertise gained through their careers...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 13, 2016

Young artists to keep your eye on

In Kurt Vonnegut's 1982 novel "Deadeye Dick," a Japanese man walks into an all-night drugstore and gestures for the protagonist, Rudy Waltz, to follow him outdoors. There they gaze at the decapitated cupola of Rudy's childhood home, glistening white in the moonlight. It reminds the homesick man of Mount...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 8, 2016

Reality and imagination: a double brush

One take on the past two centuries of artistic development is as a cacophonous cache of "isms." With latter-day Japanese museum curation, impressionism regularly glistens as the golden-haired, oft-cited draw among recurrent "ism"-titled exhibitions — historical precedents, collection-building imperatives,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 8, 2016

The Setagaya Art Museum's 30th Anniversary Exhibition: Five Stories from the Collection

Nov. 19-Jan. 29
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 / Art
Sep 6, 2016

'Craft Arts: Innovation of "Tradition and Avant-Garde," and the Present Day'

Sept. 17-Dec. 4
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 7, 2016

Japan's conflicted art of World War II

The Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art's current exhibition, "1945±5: The Works that Survived through the Turbulent and Reconstruction Era," showcases modern Japanese art five years either side of the pivotal end of World War II. It addresses oil painting and mostly follows a conventional tale of Japan...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 17, 2016

Caravaggio: Art that has been through the wars

"In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."

Longform

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