Fifteen years ago, photographer Naoyuki Kobayashi was on a joint Chinese-Japanese mountaineering expedition in the Himalayas when an avalanche took the lives of 17 of his fellow climbers. He has been returning to the Meili Snow Mountain, where the tragedy occurred, ever since, in ...

Japan’s talking heads of a liberal persuasion are clearly troubled by a rising nationalistic sentiment they detect throughout the land. But while speculation on the geopolitical consequences of any such shift may be an absorbing topic, trends in the world of culture — and ...

Architectural accessories Synonymous with refined New York-style luxury, jeweler Tiffany & Co. has signed up California-based Pritzker Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry to enhance its conservative image with a little left-field design credibility. The stellar collaboration has resulted in six lines of jewelry, each drawing ...

Soccer might be known as the beautiful game, but it has never inspired beautiful design. As the World Cup in Germany gets into full swing, patriotic fervor will move millions of fans to purchase their team’s jersey, resulting in innumerable crimes against good taste. ...

The annual “No Border” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, received unprecedented media coverage this year. Titled “From Nihonga to Nihonga,” it ran from January to March, and featured fast-rising stars, including Hisashi Tenmyouya, Fuyuko Matsui and Kumi Machida, all of whom ...

Standing well over 180 cm in her two-tone Chanel pumps, Andree Putman, the Grand Dame of modernist design, is at once icon, icon-maker and iconoclast. Born in Paris in 1925, her illustrious career traverses friendships and collaborations with many of the last century’s revered ...

With the video-game business now outgrossing Hollywood’s box office, and anime being distributed to destinations as diverse as Patagonia and Phuket, the influence of Japan’s entertainment industry on young people worldwide has never been as powerful. But it doesn’t stop there, because interest in ...

Hillside Terrace Daikanyama Friday to Sunday New York-based indie art-fashion provocateurs Miho Aoki and Thuy Pham get up to all sorts of creative mayhem under the auspices of their label United Bamboo (www.unitedbamboo.com; [0120] 298-493). Their latest stunt is to gather around 50 artists ...

Sport couture The bottom lines of sportswear giants like Adidas make even the biggest fashion firms look like minnows, so it is no wonder that cutting-edge designers clamor to put their names on sneakers made by the big boys. Although there are dozens of ...

It might seem safe to assume that with a rapidly dwindling number of kids being brought into the world here in Japan, the market for kids’ clothes and toys would be shrinking fast. Not so: with fewer children around, more and more money is ...

“I’m just fed up with all the recycled cliches and the sensationalism,” says Samuel Bourdin, son of the celebrated French fashion photographer Guy Bourdin, over the phone from Paris. “The press tries to make my father out to be some kind of depraved monster, ...

Taste-makers You’re an ad exec who needs to make sure the celebrity you’ve hired to endorse your product is wearing flattering, up-to-the-minute gear. Who you gonna call? A top-notch stylist, that’s who. Same goes for magazine editors who have pages to fill with the ...