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The consumption tax increase next April will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people's financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the impact of the hike, experts say.
Every parent is all too familiar with The Tantrum. The screaming, the flailing arms, the angry head butting — and the timing (normally in the most inconvenient public place possible).
International events undermine Japan's democracy. Shame on the International Olympic Committee for being a party to it.
Tucked away behind the main museums in Ueno, the Tokyo University Art Museum may not be on most people’s radar, but it is definitely one of the city’s top museums in terms of curatorial quality. Whenever I go there, I am always delighted by ...
Francisco Liriano showed up at PNC Park on Tuesday afternoon in a suit with his suitcase packed for a trip St. Louis. The message reverberated through the Pittsburgh Pirates clubhouse. After 21 years away from the playoffs, it was time for the best story ...
Ian Martin is a freelance writer covering music and pop culture. He has been active in the Tokyo music scene as an indie event organiser, DJ and label owner since 2004 and has been contributing to The Japan Times music page for almost as long.
For Ian Martin's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Ten-thousand Kumamons doing an elaborate Busby Berkeley-style dance routine to Kyu Sakamoto’s international 1963 hit “Sukiyaki”? A 100-meter Hatsune Miku towering over the stadium while 80,000 spectators crane their necks for a glimpse up her skirt? Newly elected Prime Minister Pamyu Pamyu speeding up ...
“We’d be playing someone’s basement in America …” “And we only had five or six people there …” “We had some nights where the audience was zero.” As Yasuko “Yako” Onuki and Ichiro Agata prepare for a gruelling, 29-city North American tour to promote ...
The song “The Sun is My Enemy,” released 20 years ago on Sept. 1, 1993, may have only reached No. 15 on the Japanese singles charts, but its importance lingers. This was the first single released by musician Keigo Oyamada under his nom de ...
“Those voices makes me vomit! Too many people in one band is no good. It’s kind of scary. I feel like I’m suffering from car sickness all the time.” Sachiko Fukuda from noise-pop duo Umez is not a fan of AKB48. That didn’t stop ...
Writing a summer pop tune is easy. Just take an uptempo rhythm, add a catchy chorus, stir in some breezy lyrics and you have the soundtrack to a thousand summer romances and several lifetimes’ worth of wistful reminiscences. Making a summer album, on the ...
If pop culture is primarily about escapism, one of the enduring mysteries of the music world must surely be how the sounds of cold, wet afternoons in mid-1980s Manchester came to capture the imaginations of artists around the world. From the sunny shores of ...
For the past 10-15 years, Japan’s festival season has been dominated by four main events: Fuji Rock, Summer Sonic, Rock in Japan and Rising Sun. Of these, Fuji Rock is by far the best, with its mountain setting in Niigata Prefecture, and dependable lineup ...
On May 14, singer-songwriter Satoru Ono released a vinyl single titled “All My Colours.” Anyone who knows Ono’s work would have found themselves on familiar ground with the two tracks, in their mix of 1980s U.K. indie and ’90s Japanese neo-acoustic pop, delivered with ...
Tokyo’s Shimokitazawa neighborhood is one of the most important places for indie music in the city. A lively suburb at the nexus between the Inokashira and Odakyu train lines, it’s just distant enough from the big urban hubs of Shinjuku and Shibuya to avoid ...
There were some curious rumors flying around prior to the release of “5th Dimension,” the second album by idol quintet Momoiro Clover Z, some of them intriguing (“It’s going to be a concept album”) and some worrying (longtime producer Kenichi “Hyadain” Maeyamada reportedly called ...
The Tokyo Rocks festival, which had been scheduled for May 11 and 12, was an ambitious attempt to bring big-name overseas artists such as Blur, Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine together with a range of Japanese acts. On March 31, it was announced ...
“Before the gig, we were quite intimidated: a lowly rock band performing in front of a god. After, we found we could do it, and that was the turning point for us.” Going back to at least when Paul the Apostle saw the light ...