This year more than 150 new artworks are being introduced at the Setouchi Triennale, making a total of around 200 pieces in the islands' collection.

Naysaying is almost always risk-free, especially if you do it online. If you’re a cynic, you’re usually right, and if you’re wrong, you can just delete those errant tweets and posts and join the party. So last month, when Japan’s Upper House rubber-stamped a ...

The Toronto Comics Arts Festival, which celebrated its 10th anniversary this year, has of late made its name bringing over cutting-edge Japanese artists for signings, live drawing sessions and speaking events. The atmosphere at this year’s event, held in May, in many ways like ...

Our monster is scaly, spiky, reptilian — a cross between a dinosaur and an irradiated insect that shrieks like an angry bird. Our hero is lean, faintly muscular in a rubbery skintight suit with inscrutable praying-mantis eyes. They face one another, stomping left to ...

Clubbing in Japan is a kick. The country’s zeal for global pop trends and its prominent club scene draws big-name DJs and performers from the international circuit. Japan’s hodgepodge approach to urban planning means that clubs seem to blossom nearly anywhere — in the ...

Tokyo Disneyland (or “TDL” as it’s known to the Japanese) turns 30 on April 15, but like George Clooney, or heck, even the famed Mouse himself, age hasn’t withered it a bit. TDL means different things to the Japanese, but if you sift through ...

Pre-flight shopping at Narita airport a couple of weeks ago, I passed a mannequin sporting a light-blue necktie and a turquoise wig with pig tails dangling down to its mini skirt. The vision spoke volumes: It was Hatsune Miku, of course, Japan’s holographic, animated ...

The first question after a panel I once chaired at an anime convention in the United States sounded innocent enough. “So, what do you guys think about Crunchyroll?” The response was ferocious. A veteran staff member of a top U.S. anime distributor seized the ...

The iron gates of the short passageway, a stone’s throw from the increasingly trendy Montorgueil district of Paris and a brief walk from the prostitutes of Saint Denis, are closed to the public these days. It was here, in what was Passage Saumon off ...

There aren’t many celebrities who would make good journalists, but something tells me Norika Fujiwara is one. She’s well-traveled, socially active and not constrained by the mechanisms of public-relations strategies. In the new WOWOW mini-series “Onna to Otoko no Nettai” (which is rendered in ...