Transport authorities launched a full-fledged investigation Sunday into the derailment of a bullet train on the Akita Shinkansen Line in Daisen, Akita Prefecture, on Saturday afternoon.
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
Artists have added text to artworks for centuries, usually as a way to enhance or explain a concept. Tadanori Yokoo, however, combines painting and words in ways that often have no purpose at all. Sometimes, lettering is chosen for purely aesthetic purposes — to ...
Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is well-known for the opulence and eroticism of his works, which often focused on the female nude, and for his preoccupation with themes of death. This exhibition, which commemorates the 150th anniversary of Klimt’s birth, focuses on the ...
With the growing popularity of high-tech art, such as digital media and installations, engraving woodblock prints might seem primitive and old-fashioned. Many Japanese, in fact, associate woodblock printing with older-generation artisans, who they imagine slave fastidiously over works in the silence of a gloomy ...
Japan’s ancient capital of Kyoto has long been a popular theme for artists. This exhibition explores how Japanese painters from different eras have visualized and interpreted the city’s unique allure. Created at different points in history, the images also portray social and environmental changes ...
During the early 1970s Herbie Yamaguchi moved to London, where he lived for 10 years taking photos of the city’s vibrant music scene, and it was his book titled “London” that put his photography in the spotlight. Back in Japan, Yamaguchi continued to show ...
Hina Matsuri, Japan’s annual girls day festival, became a particularly popular celebration during the Edo Period. As part of the festivities, girls are given a set of ornamental dolls, which are put on display from February through March 3 — a ritual believed to ...
After meeting Muneyoshi Yanagi, a pioneer of the famous Mingei (folk arts) movement, artist Motoju Miyosawa (1909-2002) became a major advocate of the beauty of frugality, a quality that Mingei followers believed everyday objects possessed. During the 1960s, however, he chose to travel internationally ...
Sculptor Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), painter Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967) and photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto (1948-) are all known for the predominantly monochrome nature of their works. This exhibition explores the different approaches the artists have taken when experimenting with the use of black. Nevelson carved her ...
Today, advances in technology and globalization have left few artistic boundaries uncrossed, including that between reality and the imagination. Digital-imaging software and computer-generated graphics, for example, now allow artists to realize their visions for others to see. This exhibition features film works of 10 ...
Western-style painter Ei Nakau’s preferred style is abstraction. In 1968, he began a series titled “Cielito Lindo,” a project to which he still contributes 40 years later. As is evident in the way he pours paints directly onto the canvas, Nakau values unpredictability and ...
Over his 70-year career, Genichiro Inokuma (1902-1993) made several critical changes to his painting style. He began as a realist portrait artist, then moved onto geometric abstraction after the World War II, before becoming obsessed with portraying faces. His work initially appears to lack ...
Information about the life of Japanese people during the Jomon Period (Japan’s neolithic era) is limited, but the study of ancient ruins and archeaological finds have helped us develop a picture of their lifestyle. For example, it is assumed that they hunted boars in ...
