While proponents of contemporary Japanese art do not seem quite as preoccupied with attempts to shock as their Western counterparts, for curators and creators with an eye on finding fame and fortune overseas, courting controversy can seem almost like an obligation. But for a ...

In the mid-1980s, when Detroit was a city in decline, Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson (collectively known as the Belleville Three) kicked off a musical revolution. By working the futuristic electro sound of European acts like Kraftwerk and New Order into a ...

During the summer months in Japan, parks, baseball grounds and school yards come alive with the grimaces, grins, grunts and cries of triumph or dismay from people of advanced years who gather together to toss big metal balls at a little wooden one. The ...

Waris Ahluwalia has some good anecdotes. Like the one where Willem Dafoe asks him if it’s OK to give Spike Lee his number, and a couple of hours later he gets a call and the voice at the other end of the line says ...

Fashion designer Eri Utsugi is a very lucky lady: After only one catwalk outing, her mercibeaucoup brand will open six new stores in prime locations — starting with Aoyama and Ginza — over the course of the next seven weeks. This remarkable rollout is ...

H ailing from a conservative family of businessmen and bankers, as a young man in occupied Japan, Shu Uemura dreamed of becoming an actor. But, fearing that his weak constitution would hamper his chances of success, he instead enrolled at Tokyo Beauty Academy — ...

“Does that hurt?” asks the doctor. “Err, not really,” say I. “Right, turn it up to 40,” she tells the technician. Then it does kind of start to hurt. It feels as though somebody is firing a tiny laser beam into my cheek. Indeed, ...

Pret-a-porter a la Paris An arresting advertising campaign and highly desirable accessory line is winning Parisian womenswear brand Paule Ka more and more fans in Europe, and the brand is seeking to capitalize on its success at home with the opening of a flagship ...

For a week in July, Paris becomes an outpost of Tokyo as Japanese designers and buyers throng the catwalks, parties and cafes where business is done at the biannual men’s clothing collections The Paris menswear collections — five days of catwalk mayhem, cocktail parties ...

Beyond scribbled shopping lists and jotted memos, putting pen to paper is increasingly rare in this age of electronic communications. But that only serves to enhance the delight of discovering a hand-addressed envelope on the doormat. While sending a signed and sealed missive is ...

The pea-green artery pumping shoals of company staffers into the heart of Japan Inc. every morning, and funneling them home by night, perfectly exemplifies Japanese efficiency. The sheer volume of bodies shifted is what takes the cake: If there is something dehumanizing about shuffling ...