John L. Tran - The Japan Times

Today's print edition

Subscribe for more access

Meta

John L. Tran

For John L. Tran's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Apr 18, 2019

Kyotographie 2019: It's in the space

The banner image for "Vibe," the seventh edition of the Kyotographie International Photography Festival, is Scotsman Albert Watson's sepia-tinted portrait of Ryuichi Sakamoto, which was used for the musician's 1989 album "Beauty." It's an outrageously self-indulgent image, but so gorgeous, and the album itself so perfect, the indulgence can absolutely be forgiven. As an event that covers a broad range of photography appealing to different audiences, Kyotographie may never be able to hit all the right notes for everybody, nevertheless, this is Japan's most comprehensive, and most beautifully set event dedicated to the medium.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Apr 7, 2019

Art Basel Hong Kong: All the fun of the international art fair

As Hong Kong continues to rise as a hub of Asian contemporary art, Art Basel Hong Kong introduces a clutch of Japanese artists with plenty to say.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Apr 2, 2019

Katsumi Asaba is having a good laugh

One of Japan's top art directors brings together the mischievous, the comical and the jokers for an exhibition to prove 'Humor is the heart of communication.'

Japan Times

COMMUNITY / Our Lives / 20 QUESTIONS

Mar 23, 2019

Hiroki Ogasawara: Looking for a truly multicultural Japan

From the Olympics to English education, sociology professor Ogasawara has plenty to say about the state of Japan today.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Mar 19, 2019

Le Corbusier: Foundations of an architect

The National Museum of Western Art's survey of Le Corbusier is a revealing origins story that suggests his architectural creative vision may have had its roots in painting.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Feb 10, 2019

The art of video games: We're not just playing around anymore

As comment on the gaming industry, and by extrapolation, the human condition, 'In a Gamescape' at the NTT Intercommunication Center at times pretty merciless. But visitors should still play it out.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jan 8, 2019

'Beyond the End: Ruins in Art History': What kind of beauty lies beneath ruins?

The exploration of the subject of ruins — their romanticization and fantasization — raises questions about the relationship between art, beauty and disaster.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Dec 12, 2018

In 2018, art came via many anniversaries in Japan

This year saw a lot of anniversaries in Japan. It was 1868 when Crown Prince Mutsuhito became the Emperor Meiji, the official policy of national isolation ended and the country was set on a course to become a modern industrialized nation-state. This birthday seems like it could have been a great time to kick back and have a major celebration in commemoration of the end of feudalism and the advent of a new age of learning. However, as the prevailing narrative of Japan's transition into modernity is one in which it was forced into opening to the West and had to lose something of its traditional identity in order to avoid becoming a colonial territory, the 150th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration went by without much festivity.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Dec 4, 2018

'Les Mains sans Sommeil': It's not what you do, it's the way you do it

'Les Mains Sans Sommeil' is an ode to handiwork by Hermes artists-in-residence, whose experimental textile works wrestle with beauty and desire in surprising ways.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Nov 28, 2018

Shinzo Fukuhara: Shiseido's patron of beauty

As an artist, Shinzo Fukuhara may not be a household name, but his production of a photography magazine, founding of the Shiseido Gallery and writings on aesthetics were seminal to the development of art photography in Japan.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Nov 6, 2018

Waking up to Asia's growing role in art

One year after The National Art Center, Tokyo, and the Mori Art Museum presented the expansive "Sunshower: Contemporary Art From Southeast Asia 1980s to Now," The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, (MOMAT) has unveiled "Awakenings: Art in Society in Asia 1960s-1990s."

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 28, 2018

Duchamp and Japan: No rest for the urinal

If you want someone to blame for Banksy's stunt of shredding "Girl With Balloon" after selling it for $1.4 million at auction, your prime suspect currently has a major retrospective at the Tokyo National Museum.

Japan Times

CULTURE

Oct 20, 2018

Japonismes 2018 seeks to break down cultural stereotypes

A stupendous full autumn moon, bright orange and fat, flashes intermittently between the nondescript high-rise flats and offices on the drive to Charles de Gaulle Airport. It's an apt and beautiful reminder of one of the events that we, a group of Tokyo-based editors and writers, were invited to see earlier in the week at Japonismes 2018: Souls in Resonance. It was a theater production of "Tsukimi Zato" ("Moon-viewing Blind Man"), starring veteran kyogen performer Mansaku Nomura, wherein a townie from upper Kyoto out for a stroll in the countryside bumps into a gentle old blind man. The two characters merrily share sake and poems together but, after parting, the slightly drunk younger man doubles back and deliberately bumps into the blind man as a practical joke and roughly pushes him over. The punchline of the play is that the blind man, as he makes his way home, wonders sadly how there can be such different people in the world, not realizing that it was the same person.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 2, 2018

A master of Zen wisdom and dad jokes

If you are an older chubby man with a receding hairline and facing nothing but a decline into old age and death, there's always the work of Zen monk Sengai Gibon (1750-1837) to fall back on.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Sep 18, 2018

The art of architecture and photography

The current exhibition at Archi-Depot, 'A Gaze into Architecture: Phases of Contemporary Photography and Architecture' features the work of 13 artists, of whom more than half are Japanese. All the work is exceptional.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Sep 4, 2018

Indulging in post-apocalyptic nostalgia

With a theme of total annihilation and a techno-horror aesthetic, Hiroki Tsukuda's exhibition at Nanzuka sounds like it would be grim, but this isn't the work of a hopeless nihilist.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Aug 14, 2018

Mami Kosemura says it with flowers

Where Flemish still-life painters combined fruit, vegetables and flowers that could not normally be picked in the same season, and portrayed them together in an imaginary, but highly realistic pictorial space, Kosemura uses contemporary tools to achieve the same with photographic detail.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Aug 7, 2018

Swedish roots in Japan's taxonomy

While Japan's historical sakoku period of isolation may have limited any contact it had with Sweden what did transpire between the two nations is of historical, scientific and artistic importance.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jul 31, 2018

Bertrand Lavier's 'Medley' blows hot and cold

Bertrand Lavier seems to relish messing with our cognitive dissonance. As the self-taught artist, who originally studied horticulture, put it in a 2016 interview, 'Art is a matter of paradoxes on nearly every level.'

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jul 17, 2018

A photographer's return to Aomori

'I photograph landscape like it's skin' — artist Masako Kakizaki on her 'Aonoymous: Full Circle' project

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.

[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

When trying to trace your lineage in Japan, the "koseki" is the most important form of document you'll encounter.

Climbing the branches of a Japanese family tree

By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER

international-reports