Nov 17, 2011

Songwriter’s album touches on quake

It might still be too early to understand the effect of March 11′s Great East Japan Earthquake on musicians living in the stricken Tohoku region, but as lives get back to normal artists will no doubt find ways to express themselves. Singer-songwriter Koji Ishikawa’s ...

Nov 11, 2011

Flamenco dancer Kagita tells a kabuki tale

The idea that flamenco and kabuki share the same sense of expression was the motivation for a pair of prominent Japanese dancers to base a flamenco performance on the kabuki play “Onna Goroshi Abura no Jigoku”(“The Lady-Killer and an Oil Hell”). That play was ...

Satoshi Kamata: Rebel spirit writ large

| Oct 2, 2011

Satoshi Kamata: Rebel spirit writ large

Monday, Sept. 19, was Respect for the Aged Day in Japan. But on that sweltering national holiday, it wasn’t the heat that that drew tens of thousands of people to Meiji Park in central Tokyo, but their concerns for all the nation’s citizens, and ...

Get your kicks in Japan

| Sep 18, 2011

Get your kicks in Japan

Walk the streets of Tokyo’s trendy Harajuku and Shibuya shopping districts and the sheer variety of fashion worn by people passing by can be, to the uninitiated, simply mind boggling. But, look at their feet and more often than not they are wearing shoes ...

Sep 2, 2011

Brazilian party brings Blitz

Yoyogi Park in central Tokyo hosts a number of internationally themed events, and this week the area will hoist the yellow, green and blue of the Brazilian flag overhead. The sixth annual Festival Brasil is being organized by The Brazilian Chamber of Commerce in ...

Emergency escape routes: Publisher maps the best way home

| Aug 21, 2011

Emergency escape routes: Publisher maps the best way home

The Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11 brought death and destruction on an horrific scale to a vast area of the northeastern Tohoku region. Some 300 km to the south, Tokyo also experienced a long and violent shake at 2:46 p.m., but it ...

From the <em>favelas</em> of Brazil come street-style dancers supreme

| Jul 21, 2011

From the favelas of Brazil come street-style dancers supreme

In a weeklong festival of street-dance performances and competitions being held at Kanagawa Arts Theatre (KAAT) in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture, starting from July 30, one dance group perhaps stands out in particular for its emotionally charged performances. As part of Compagnie Käfig, a dance ...

Films focus on Japan’s nuclear flashpoints

| Jul 17, 2011

Films focus on Japan’s nuclear flashpoints

The crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11 has revealed the danger posed by the storing of spent nuclear fuel in pools at the plant, because after the pools drained ...

| Jun 19, 2011

Temblor brings hope and tears to zoo

The Great Eastern Japan Earthquake on March 11 affected the animals in Ueno Zoo in Tokyo in both negative and positive ways. The most negative impact was the death, on April 16, of a female hippo named Satsuki, who succumbed to inflammation that spread ...