Matthew Larking - The Japan Times

Today's print edition

Subscribe for more access

Meta

Matthew Larking

For Matthew Larking's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jun 11, 2014

Imagination runs wild in Japanese contemporary art

"Nostalgia and Fantasy: Imagination and its Origins in Contemporary Art" is a ragtag grouping of nine individual artists and one unit, each of whom focus on extremely different things. It is difficult to say, in fact, where "nostalgia" and "fantasy" come into play in some instances. With only minimal wall-panel descriptions, contextualization is a major stumbling point, not the least with the subtitle and the supposed origins of the imagination in contemporary art. Many of the works, however, are outstanding.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

May 28, 2014

The 'Great Wave' that reached the West

Ukiyo-e prints could be found in Europe from at least 1795 at the Cabinet des Estampes at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. It was not until the 1850s, however, when trade between Japan and Europe began to flourish, that the craze for things Japanese began to crescendo.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

May 21, 2014

Japan's isolation didn't stop the West lending its colors

A common misperception of sakoku, Japan's closed-door isolation policy gradually enacted from 1633 by Tokugawa Iemitsu and his successors, is that Japan forsook the outside world.

CULTURE / Art

Apr 23, 2014

Best to approach Gursky's photos with a painterly eye

The invention of photography was supposed to bring about the death of painting.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Mar 5, 2014

Centre Pompidou picks the fruits of its curatorial success

Fruits of Passion' displays contemporary works that were acquired during the last decade by the Musu00e9e National d'Art Moderne (MNAM), Centre Pompidou. The exhibition begins, though, with the final threads of modernism.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Feb 19, 2014

'The refusal of time' is worth every minute

The former Rissei Elementary School site, nowadays an occasional cultural events center, was earlier home to the Kyoto Dento, the electric company whose technology helped industrialist Katsutaro Inabata to demonstrate the Lumière Brothers' cinématographe camera in 1897 — Japan's first experience with film. Significant as a historical spot for the beginning of cinema in Japan, the venue now inaugurates the build up to the 2015 "Parasophia: Kyoto International Festival of Contemporary Culture" with the Asia premiere of William Kentridge's "The Refusal of Time" (2012).

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Feb 5, 2014

Can nature solve humankind's errors?

Masato Kodama's sculptures are concerned with light, gravity and air. For him, light is a symbol of tomorrow and potential futures, gravity represents the present and the past, and air is associated with memory.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Dec 25, 2013

The influences on and of Tetsumi Kudo

"Collection 3 — Works Related to Your Portrait: A Tetsumi Kudo Retrospective: From Anti-art of the 1960s to Art of the Present Day" is a contextual exhibition accompanying the superb "Tetsumi Kudo Retrospective" at the National Museum of Art, Osaka. It brings together foreign and Japanese artists, foregrounding something of the diverse visual lexicon that characterized the late 20th-century art scene.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Dec 11, 2013

Somewhere between art and craft lies the beauty of Satoshi Someya

Satoshi Someya has produced a cerebrally engaging and visually alluring exhibition. His "Digesting Decoration" positions him among the most significant contemporary lacquer artists working today. The primary concern is with "use," as in the particularly utilitarian function of craft, as opposed to the ostensible "uselessness" of fine art. Someya aims to subtly problematize that essentialism, while establishing himself in a gray zone between the two.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Dec 4, 2013

Trapped by human society

Osaka-born Tetsumi Kudo's oeuvre has been the subject of a number of major international retrospectives since his death in 1990, and these indicate the artist's increasing postwar historical significance. The current National Museum of Art, Osaka retrospective is magisterial. With more than 600 pages, the bilingual catalog that accompanies it is now an essential art-history reference.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Nov 27, 2013

The Imperial Household of tradition

The catalog for The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto's exhibition, "Treasures of the Imperial Collection: The Quintessence of Modern Japanese Art," tells us that this "sublime collection of resplendent masterpieces shines brilliantly in the history of modern Japanese art." The collection, represented here by 180 paintings and crafts culled from the 9,500 objects gifted to the government in 1989 on the passing of the Showa Emperor, is spectacular.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Nov 13, 2013

The politics behind Japan's modern era of proletarian art

"Art and Literature in Japan 1926-1936" follows the close of the Taisho Era (1912-1926), which was characterized by democracy, artistic experimentation and widespread social self-absorptions by the citizenry in new fashions such as the "beach pajama" outfits of "modern" girls. The successive Showa Era (1926-1989) inherited this optimism, though seismic shifts for the arts and society in general were brought about as Japan embarked on its Fifteen Year War beginning in 1931. For the arts, these years saw a rocking back and forth between freedoms and restrictions, the latter winning out.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 23, 2013

For Japanese women painters, elegance came at expense of individuality

"Painted by Women: Elegance of Showa Period" announces a thematic concern of the time, 1926-89, on which the art world was rigidified. Japan had embarked upon a 15-year period of war (1931-1945) and the individual expressive liberties that had informed the Taisho Era (1912-26), were being reined in.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Oct 9, 2013

Explore the many ways to read cinema

Marcel Broodthaers' films mostly deal with relations between images and words, which is unsurprising given that he was a poet first who turned to film because he came to understand the medium as an extension of language. In their combination, he sought harmony between poetry, visual art and cinema. It is this lineage of artistic activity inaugurated by Broodthaers in the postwar period that the Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, seeks to trace to its postmodern flowering in the 1990s through to the present.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Sep 25, 2013

Kansetsu Hashimoto's Chinese rebellion

From the end of the Edo Period (1603-1867), Japanese art began to shift its fundamental cultural orientation from China to Europe. Kansetsu Hashimoto, however, (1883-1945) initially abjured, and this had much to do with his upbringing

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Aug 22, 2013

Aichi Triennale's best works deal with disaster

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11, 2011, a lot of art here has dealt with disaster. Not all the pieces in the second installment of the Aichi Triennale are on this theme — but the best ones are.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Aug 14, 2013

The nature of Japanese lacquer art

Katsuyuki Shirako (b. 1984) is a lacquer artist, though not one who accords specific primacy to that medium. His fourth show at Kyoto's eN arts in Kyoto, is predominantly photographs. Drawn from the artist's "Connect" series, these images show a combination of his carefully crafted lacquer forms with natural plants, leaves and flowers, such as irises and lilies.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

Jun 6, 2013

Get intimate with Ryota Aoki's work and discover its secrets

Known mostly for producing exquisite white ceramic ware, Ryota Aoki has about-turned for his current exhibition at Tomio Koyama Gallery, Kyoto. The overwhelming shift is to black wares: think practical, utilitarian tableware such as plates, cups, pitchers and vases. Inundated with orders, particularly from the United States and Canada, international demand for his work now outstrips the domestic, so the ceramicist has expanded his workshop staff to fill orders.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

May 30, 2013

Seeking impressions in the two-dimensional

The title of Yu Kiwanami's "Confirmation of Happiness" (2013) is, in a sense, a kind of betrayal; for happiness cannot, in fact, be confirmed. A woman stands before a landscape, her head cropped off by the top edge of the picture in an artistic act of decapitation. With no head, we cannot see if she smiles or not, and the body language is oblique. The landscape, dark and craggy with low horizon and an expansive empty sky, speaks more to a bleak and near-sinister psychology.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Art

May 9, 2013

The ghouls who played on the Japanese mind

“Japanese Ghosts and Eerie Creatures,” which features a selection of works from the mid-Edo Period to the Showa Era, is mostly play, with little horror.

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

Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

Prize winner Maki Imoto catches light with glass

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER

international-reports