Economy | ANALYSIS
Households to take hit from tax hike
by Tomoko Otake
The consumption tax increase will hit every household in Japan hard, with many people’s financial future hanging on whether their wages rise enough to offset the hike's impact.
Art Topics
Art Jul 10, 2013
Gregor Schneider: temporary structures that resist conformity
by Stuart Munro
Seemingly out of nowhere, German artist Gregor Schneider exhibits major work at the recently opened TOLOT/heuristic Shinonome complex. His solo show brings together “It’s All Rheydt” (Kolkata, 2011) and photography from his largest undertaking, “Haus u r,” a house in his hometown of Rheydt ...
Art Jul 8, 2013
Propaganda: artifice by design
by Roland Elliott Brown
The word “propaganda” derives its modern use from the name of a 17th-century Roman Catholic institution, the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, or Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Established during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648, a sectarian conflict that devastated Europe ...
Art Jul 3, 2013
The 'floating world' that drifted to the West
by C.B. Liddell
The main pleasure of any extensive ukiyo-e (woodblock print) exhibition, like the “Floating World” show now on at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, is the evocation of the unique civilization that underlies this particular slab of global modernity. Among the sleek office buildings of the ...
Art Jun 27, 2013
Art that bloomed with the Feinbergs
by C.B. Liddell
As a simple matter of economic convenience, some of the best art collections in the world started out going against established taste. By avoiding what was already highly valued — and therefore expensive — collectors could build up impressive collections that could then help ...
Art Jun 27, 2013
What provoked Japan's contemporary photography?
by Mio Yamada
In 1968, as the world reeled from The Prague Spring, the turbulent union and student strikes in France, and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Japan, like so many other nations, found itself in the midst of social unrest. Citizens questioned ...
Art Jun 27, 2013
Everyday goods: the Japanese art of convenience
by C.B. Liddell
“Mingei” translates as “folk art” and is connected to objects that are made or used by ordinary people on an everyday basis. Usually this evokes hand-crafted objects, such as ceramics, baskets, items of woodwork, etc. As such, the term is evocative of the era ...
Art Jun 20, 2013
Are we all blinded by our sense of beauty?
by Stuart Munro
Sophie Calle is an enigma. She is an artist, writer, photographer and filmmaker yet doesn’t work exclusively in any of these areas. She has become famous for her work in photography but her objects and later films have drawn equal attention — work that ...
Art Jun 15, 2013
Time for a fresh look at the life and art of L.S. Lowry
by Rachel Cooke
In a somewhat stark meeting room at Tate Britain, the curators of its forthcoming L.S. Lowry show, T.J. Clark and Anne M. Wagner, are attempting, at my request, to extol the artist’s virtues to me. It’s a complicated business. For one thing, I have ...
Art Jun 13, 2013
The collector who saw the fine print
by Yoko Haruhara
The Nezu Museum is currently showing “Ceramics and Ukiyo-e Masterpieces from the Hagi Uragami Museum,” an exhibition of outstanding artworks collected over the years by the entrepreneur Toshiro Uragami, who donated them to the Hagi Uragami Museum in Yamaguchi Prefecture in 1996. How did ...
Art Jun 13, 2013
Observing the present and past is to see into the future
by Stuart Munro
For the past 48 years, Daido Moriyama has followed his photographic instinct, drawn to subjects whose characters appear as vibrant as they are tragic while leaving the question of which for us to decide. The act of exhibiting, through the unraveling of images, has ...
Art Jun 13, 2013
Making sense of medieval avatars
by C.B. Liddell
The Western model of sexual equality — one that drives women to focus on careers but also contributes to lower birthrates — may not be an entirely unmixed blessing, but the roots of the West’s gender attitudes run deep and stem from some interesting ...
Art Jun 9, 2013
Japan's Gutai artists celebrated like never before
by Bronwyn Mahoney
“Do what no one has done before,” was the rallying cry that Jiro Yoshihara, founder of the postwar Japanese art group the Gutai Art Association, demanded of his fellow members. A work by one of the group’s important painters, Kazuo Shiraga, fulfilled the edict ...