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.
Stage Feb 21, 2013
Redefining conventions of the play
by Nobuko Tanaka
Without doubt, Takahiro Fujita is the most prominent newcomer in the world of Japanese contemporary theater. To a considerable extent that’s because the 27-year-old playwright/director has an unusual trademark style — to create works that often have the same lyrical phrases and series of ...
Stage Feb 8, 2013
'Anjin' play launches yearlong celebration of U.K.-Japan ties
A play about William Adams, thought to be the first Englishman to set foot in Japan, is being staged in London to mark the start of J400, a yearlong series of events to celebrate 400 years of Anglo-Japanese relations. “Anjin: The Shogun and the ...
Stage Feb 4, 2013
Teen comes in third at Swiss ballet competition
An 18-year-old high school student won third place at the prestigious Prix de Lausanne ballet competition in Switzerland over the weekend. “I am satisfied with my performance, but I can’t still believe I became one of the top finishers,” said Masaya Yamamoto of Nomi, ...
Stage Jan 24, 2013
With 'Desh,' Khan proves you can go home again
by Kris Kosaka
If art's purpose is to ask the relevant questions, then British-Bangladeshi dancer Akram Khan successfully interrogates humanity — and himself — with his latest production, "Desh."
Stage Jan 23, 2013
'Coriolanus' comes home — to Kyoto
by Nobuko Tanaka
It’s a fair bet that many people at the Globe Theatre in London last May expected the Kyoto-based Chiten (Point) Company to present a stereotypically Japanese, samurai-style “Coriolanus,” complete with taiko drums and period armor. Instead, however, Japan’s contribution to the theater’s Globe to ...
Stage Dec 27, 2012
Social awareness takes center stage
by Nobuko Tanaka
Japan’s calamities of March 2011 — the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, and the start of an ongoing nuclear disaster — changed not only the social awareness of the general public who make up theater audiences, but also how dramatists approached their work. ...
Stage Nov 29, 2012
From an underdog in the U.S. to Japan's top dog
by Nobuko Tanaka
Two years ago, 32-year-old director/translator Eriko Ogawa returned to Japan after 10 years in New York and presented a riveting production of “The Late Henry Moss,” Sam Shepard’s 2000 Pulitzer prize-winning tale of loves and hatreds in a frontier family way out West. Though ...
Stage Oct 21, 2012
Dramatists explore the essence of language in new play
by Nobuko Tanaka
In a small studio just a seagull’s squawk from Tokyo Bay in the Higashi Gotanda district of Shinagawa Ward, a unique play titled “Understandable?” briefly delighted packed houses of baffled Japanese and others recently with its absurd-but-not, “abandoned- in-translation” dialogue devoid of subtitles. Showcasing ...
Stage Oct 18, 2012
Kentaro makes hip-hop personal
by Nobuko Tanaka
Almost the whole of Kentaro’s life has been devoted to dance — in particular to hip-hop dance — ever since he first saw it on television as an elementary school boy. Even today, as a well-known professional dancer who prefers not to reveal his ...
Stage Sep 28, 2012
Stage tribute to Jackson hits all the right notes
by Patrick ST. Michel
Like many people in the 1980s, Adrian Grant was a huge Michael Jackson fan. He was so fond of the “King of Pop” that he started a Jackson fan magazine titled “Off The Wall” in 1988. Grant says he wrote and designed the entire ...
Stage Sep 20, 2012
A principal of noh performance
by Rei Sasaguchi
The upcoming “Sakurama Kinki no Kai” is the 19th noh event in a series of performances by Sakurama Kinki of the Komparu School. Of the five noh schools still active today, the Komparu School is the most traditional, though it has, interestingly, taken the ...
Stage Sep 13, 2012
The woman who could bring Beppu back to life
by Nobuko Tanaka
In Japan’s performing arts scene, it’s widely believed that 32-year-old Akane Nakamura is one of the country’s most famous globally known theater producers. As executive director of the theater production company Precog and the performing arts nonprofit Drifters International — which she founded in ...