Tag - festival

 
 

FESTIVAL

Japan Times
CULTURE
Jun 18, 2015
Yoyogi and Hisaya Odori parks get cultured during the summer
As one of the biggest tourist spots in Tokyo, Harajuku offers visitors endless consumerist pursuits — it's certainly not a place for those who seek peace and quiet.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / KANPAI CULTURE
Jun 12, 2015
Tasting the many shades of Japan's regional sake
At the risk of sounding like a killjoy, I have to confess that drinks festivals rarely excite me. These events are often promoted as learning opportunities that can help you improve your tasting skills and discover new brands. While the lure of convenience (the chance to sample hundreds of varieties...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Jun 3, 2015
Festival of off-center European films comes to Tokyo and Kyoto
One of the main goals of a film festival is to show movies that audiences won't get to see otherwise. For the festival operators there's another objective: testing reactions to films and stories, and using that information for marketing purposes. And with the number of film festivals being held in Japan...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
May 27, 2015
Could Kiyoshi Kurosawa's win at Cannes change Japan's luck?
Kiyoshi Kurosawa won the best director prize in the Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section on Sunday, but he also deserves a prize from the Japanese film industry for single-handedly turning its presence at the world's most prestigious film festival from a vague embarrassment to a cause for...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 21, 2015
The must-see list is long at Short Shorts film fest
When it comes to getting a movie fix these days, more people opt for their computer screens than venturing outside to a theater. Hollywood has countered this trend with a slew of 3-D blockbusters and cinematic largesse, but how does the short film fare?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 21, 2015
Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia searches for that 1-in-5,000 movie
Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia director Seigo Tono has been with the event since its second edition in 2000, when it was called the American Short Shorts Film Festival and showed only U.S. films. Since then it has evolved into what Tono describes as "a global event, featuring cutting-edge shorts from...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
May 13, 2015
Sign of the times as yakuza classic gets kudos at Cannes
In the early 2000s, when I was writing a book about yakuza movies, veterans of the genre's 1960s and '70s heyday I met had a fierce pride in their work but no illusions about its low ranking in the film-world hierarchy. In particular, the Toei studio's films about sword-swinging or gun-toting gangsters...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Apr 22, 2015
The Zushi Beach Film Festival resists the ban on loud music and tattoos
Zushi Beach — a popular getaway for people seeking to escape Tokyo's stifling summer heat — may have banned "loud" music, tattoos and barbecues, but hey, at least it still has a film festival.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 18, 2015
Is Asian cinema caught in a festival feeding frenzy?
On March 5, tickets went on sale for Joe Hisaishi's concert at a 1,200-seat theater in Udine, Italy — and they were sold out in less than a week. In Japan, where Hisaishi is well known as a composer for his soundtracks to films by Hayao Miyazaki, Takeshi Kitano and many others, this rush for tickets...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel / BACKSTREET STORIES
Feb 21, 2015
Finding thrills on plum blossom hill
February is a tricky month for venturing out in Tokyo. Daylight hours lengthen and the light softens slightly, but the weather itself seems controlled by a sadist at the thermostat.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS
Feb 21, 2015
Marguerite Paget: 'Get out, take a deep breath and go for it'
Kyotographie International Photography Festival spokeswoman Marguerite Paget on materialism, hammers and Bobby McFerrin
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 5, 2015
Message trumps the medium at JMAF
When Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase "The medium is the message" in the mid-1960s, the ensuing dialogue on media theory encouraged an approach that persists to the present day: to examine new types of technology through the societal and cultural changes that they engender.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 5, 2015
Film festival gives a lesson on the world of night school
The world of night school in Japan is so detached from mainstream society that many people are clueless as to the role it plays.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 5, 2015
Ruben Pater: Current advancements in drone technology are worrying
Dutch artist Ruben Pater discusses drones and survival in the modern age:
CULTURE / Art
Feb 5, 2015
Kazuhiro Goshima: The sheer amount of information in 4K ‘exceeds’ reality
Japanese artist Kazuhiro Goshima discusses film, movies and everything in between:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 4, 2015
Ninagawa still exploring in eighth take on 'Hamlet'
Yukio Ninagawa's "cherry-blossom" staging of "Macbeth" at the Edinburgh Festival in 1985, with actors in that famously Scottish play sporting kimono rather than kilts, was a sensation due to its radical reimagining of so revered a work.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 21, 2015
Avignon chief sees culture and politics sharing the stage
"The Avignon Festival is not only about shows and theater, but also about thinking, searching and seeking to understand the world and its politics — and offering an opportunity for three weeks' intellectual life experience every year," Olivier Py, the event's artistic director, declared with passion...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 21, 2015
French triumph frees SPAC pioneer to be bolder still
Following on Olivier Py's comment in the accompanying story that "everybody" at last year's Avignon Festival loved Satoshi Miyagi's "Mahabharata — Nalacharitam," which Py, as the festival's director, had awarded the honor of opening the event, I rolled up to Shizuoka Performing Arts Center to find...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 15, 2015
Documentary festival delivers an encore to Tokyo audiences
Last November, Japan Times film critic Kaori Shoji predicted that the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival's (YIDFF) program of screenings would slant toward sociopolitical analysis, focusing on substance over style. Audiences must have welcomed this weighty exposition of the documentary...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 1, 2015
Japan's artists aim to foster intra-Asia links
The subject of Japan's position in the world of Asian performing arts has been widely addressed over the past decade, and the new leadership of last year's Festival/Tokyo — its largest annual performing-arts event — vowed to step up efforts to develop collaborations and exchanges within Asia.

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