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May 14, 2024
 

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Nobuko Tanaka

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Nobuko Tanaka
Nobuko Tanaka is a stage writer who has regularly contributed contemporary theater and dance articles to The Japan Times since 2001. She also writes for several Japanese and overseas magazines and web sites. As a promoter, she takes Japanese artists to foreign theater festivals.
For Nobuko Tanaka's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 14, 2015
Maya Inoue makes a play to refine her father's theatrical legacy
Hisashi Inoue's death at the age of 75 on April 9, 2010, at his home in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, was a major event in the postwar Japanese theater world. It moved many dramatists to stage works by the great author and playwright who combined comedy and searing social and political commentary into unique productions.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 2, 2015
Dramatist brings citizens of all ages together
Public theaters across the country are holding significantly more community productions and workshops aimed at local residents who are looking to get involved in performance art.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 28, 2015
TACT serves up some fantastical holiday fare
If you're so busy wondering how to spend the upcoming Golden Week holiday that you can hardly sleep, why not simply go and enjoy the TACT/Festival at TMET (Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre) in Ikebukuro — where you can count sheep, too, if you want.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 16, 2015
Shizuoka blooms with culture at theater event
With sunlight dappling fresh green leaves, flowers in bloom and birds singing, spring and early summer is when Europeans leave their homes to enjoy the arts at great annual events such as Germany's Theatertreffen and France's Avignon Festival.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Apr 2, 2015
Shinobu Terajima dresses down for risque role in 'All Nudity Shall Be Punished'
Sex and violence can be a good draw to get crowds out to the theater, but don't underestimate the power of actress Shinobu Terajima to bring audiences to a show.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 31, 2015
'Tenimyu' 2.5-D shows net over 2 million tickets sold
There's kabuki, noh, butoh, bunraku, regular plays, glitzy musicals and Japan's unique all-female Takarazuka musical theater troupe — but another home-grown performance-art genre has for some time been carving a niche in this country's diverse entertainment world in the shape of so-called 2.5-D musicals.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 25, 2015
Summit spotlights school dramatists
"Diversity is the outstanding attraction of high school drama, so I'm always appreciating afresh theater's myriad charms," the prominent director Keisuke Tanaka said with a beaming smile during a recent interview ahead of the fifth annual High School Drama Summit at Tokyo's leading Agora Theater.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 18, 2015
Psycho-drama mystery tests Tani's 'pop' principles
"Probably nobody ever got involved with theater the way I did," Kenichi Tani said with a laugh, explaining that because his teachers at school were "really boring" he set his sights on becoming an interesting teacher in the future.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 11, 2015
'Titanic' set to sail into Japanese hearts
English director Thom Southerland's reworking of the megahit Broadway musical "Titanic" was an instant sensation when it opened in August 2013 at the popular midsize Southwark Playhouse in a trendy part of South London by the River Thames.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 4, 2015
John Caird delivers home truths with 'Twelfth Night'
As an Honorary Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, John Caird may be one of the leading pillars of the English theater establishment, but in a recent interview with The Japan Times, this acclaimed director of plays, musicals and opera declared, "In a sense, some part of me is becoming a little bit Japanese."
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 25, 2015
Unique exhibition reveals some K-Ballet gems and pure Kumakawa gold
"Looking at my last 15 years' work, I see it as a series of excitements," Tetsuya Kumakawa told The Japan Times.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 18, 2015
'Mercury Fur' exposes a caring kind of depravity
After the premiere of "Mercury Fur" at Theatre Tram in Tokyo's lively Sangenjaya district this month, Issey Takahashi, who stars in that dystopian 2005 play by Philip Ridley, declared: "I think this is a very dark prophecy, but as I was acting my character Elliot today, I also felt it's a story of hope — or perhaps I should say that, as actors, we should make it a hopeful story."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 11, 2015
No-frills dramatist casts Japan in a different light
The title of Yudai Kamisato's new work "+51 Aviacíon, San Borja" references his grandmother's address in Lima and the international telephone dialling code of Peru — but that only hints at the unusually cosmopolitan background of this 32-year-old Japanese playwright and director who also has relatives in Okinawa, Hokkaido and the United States.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 11, 2015
Double bill seeks out unknowns
Like many others in Japan’s rising performing-artist generation, 34-year-old Ney Hasegawa says he first felt the lure of the stage when he went to see shōgekijō (small-scale youth theater) plays while he was in high school. After that, he started taking an interest in dance, too, and when he formed his company Fujiyamaannette in 2003, his clear aim was to blur the boundaries by creating unique and highly visual dance-theater programs.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 4, 2015
Ninagawa still exploring in eighth take on 'Hamlet'
Yukio Ninagawa's "cherry-blossom" staging of "Macbeth" at the Edinburgh Festival in 1985, with actors in that famously Scottish play sporting kimono rather than kilts, was a sensation due to its radical reimagining of so revered a work.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 28, 2015
Yokohama fest offers a performing-arts feast
Since Tokyo Performing Arts Market began in 1995, the annual event has established itself as one of Asia's leading trade shows for creators, producers and festival organizers — as well as being a great chance for general audiences to catch a wide range of cutting-edge works staged over a short period in the same area.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 21, 2015
Avignon chief sees culture and politics sharing the stage
"The Avignon Festival is not only about shows and theater, but also about thinking, searching and seeking to understand the world and its politics — and offering an opportunity for three weeks' intellectual life experience every year," Olivier Py, the event's artistic director, declared with passion during a recent visit to Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 21, 2015
French triumph frees SPAC pioneer to be bolder still
Following on Olivier Py's comment in the accompanying story that "everybody" at last year's Avignon Festival loved Satoshi Miyagi's "Mahabharata — Nalacharitam," which Py, as the festival's director, had awarded the honor of opening the event, I rolled up to Shizuoka Performing Arts Center to find out how Miyagi, its artistic director, now views his production of that epic Sanskrit poem penned between 200 B.C. and A.D. 200 — and what he has focused on since.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 24, 2014
2014: New horizons opened up in Japan's theater world
Looking back over the past 12 months in Japan's theater world, it's clear that one encouraging trend is a lessening of the capital's dominance.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Dec 17, 2014
Silence is golden in art-comedy for all
"I've been drawing pictures for as long as I can remember," Kentaro Kobayashi said when I asked him how he came to be such a versatile and popular entertainer.
Japanese stripper bids to have her porn movies taken off internet
Plaintiff Miyuki Ariga (left) speaks at a news conference along with her lawyer, Yoshitomo Morohashi, after filing a lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court on Monday.
Three men rearrested over brokering of overseas prostitution
A woman speaks of her experience of being sent to Macau by an overseas prostitution broker during an interview in Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward on April 8.
Ex-METI bureaucrat given 10-year sentence for drugging and raping women
The Tokyo District Court on Monday sentenced a former industry ministry bureaucrat to 10 years in prison for drugging six women with sleeping pills and then raping or groping them in 2022.
Money stolen via online transfers up fivefold in Tokyo
Special fraud cases in Tokyo in which stolen money was sent via online banking services grew some fivefold from the previous year in 2023.
How the discovery of a giant sword in Nara offers clues into ancient Japan
Archaeologists say a 1,600-year-old wooden coffin at the Tomio Maruyama tumulus in the city of Nara was kept in good condition probably because it was protected by a layer of clay and copper ions that had seeped out of the mirrors that were buried together.
In a rare event, the Northern Lights show up in Hokkaido
The Northern Lights in Nayoro, Hokkaido, on Saturday
Is black the new green for Japan’s flagging tea farmers?
George Guttridge-Smith brews tea at Kyoto Obubu Tea Farm in Wazuka, Kyoto Prefecture, where he serves as head of international development.
Japan's logistics firms seek partnerships to cope with driver shortage
Japan Post CEO Tetsuya Senda (right) and his Seino Transportation counterpart Satoshi Takahashi announce their companies' agreement on joint long-haul truck operations, in Tokyo on Thursday.
How the discovery of a giant sword in Nara offers clues into ancient Japan
Archaeologists say a 1,600-year-old wooden coffin at the Tomio Maruyama tumulus in the city of Nara was kept in good condition probably because it was protected by a layer of clay and copper ions that had seeped out of the mirrors that were buried together.

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