American rapper Kanye West’s seventh album, “The Life Of Pablo,” felt inescapable when it emerged this past February. But that wasn’t the case in Japan. Streaming music service Tidal — which initially had exclusive rights to “Pablo” — isn’t available here. This gave Toyomu ...
The members of Ogre You Asshole are bracing for something. At least, that’s what the title of their seventh album, “Handoru o Hanasu Mae Ni” (“Before Letting Go of the Handle”) suggests. (The album’s official English title is the less tense “Everythingsomethingnothing.”) “It’s not ...
The Japanese word for cute, “kawaii,” has been popping up more and more in the English lexicon in recent years. From the popularity of Hello Kitty to singer Gwen Stefani’s new kawaii-filled cartoon “Kuu Kuu Harajuku” being cute means making money, and it’s no ...
Toshiro Mifune was the first Japanese — or, for that matter, Asian — actor to become an international action star.
As the summer of 2014 came to a close, Atsuhito Omori found himself in a good position. The Nara-based artist who records ambient music as Ex Confusion had released an album titled “Flow” through buzzed-about New York label Orchid Tapes. Artistically, however, things weren’t ...
The 18th century was an exciting time for Japan. After unification in 1603, a remarkable spirit of innovation pervaded as urban centers grew and the arts flourished. The creativity came despite a policy of sakoku that the ruling Tokugawa shogunate enacted in 1633 to ...
“Good fences make good neighbors” is an often-quoted line from Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall” about two farmers united in their effort to rebuild a wall that divides their land. Less well known is the poem’s central query: “Why do good fences make good ...
A single drop of milk. A newborn baby. The ravages of war and terrorism. The defiance of those who protest and the fear of those entrapped. All are included in a multimedia project featuring Time magazine’s most influential images of all time, released Thursday ...
Last year, Japan experienced a surge of the Halloween spirit leading to estimates of ¥122 billion being spent on costumes, treats and entertainment. This year looks set to be much the same with spooky activities lasting for weeks — it’s less All Hallow’s Eve ...
More than 3,000 women and 900 men — that’s the number of lovers the main protagonist in Ihara Saikaku’s 1682 novel “Koshoku Ichidai Otoko” (“The Life of an Amorous Man”) tallies up as he reminisces. Saikaku, born in Osaka in 1642, became a renowned ...
As consumers move away from regular terrestrial TV toward online video content, it appears that the domestic TV industry itself needs to undergo its own paradigm shift.
