For Irma Nunez's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
Yellow Magic Orchestra made its 1980 debut on the legendary American dance show “Soul Train” performing a cover of “Tighten Up” by Archie Bell & the Drells, two years after the November 1978 release of the trio’s eponymous first album Dressed in logoed button-downs with ...
For the director of the Japan Society in New York, it was a teenage encounter with a Shoichi Ida print that led to her love of art and its international influence
From Japan to Europe to the U.S., Nagasato's experience on the soccer field has taught her how to play smart.
How a child of wartime Japan embraced the unknown and became a textile conservator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Gakkin, a native of Wakayama and now a resident of Amsterdam, draws freehand, forgoing modern stencil machines to work directly on the body.
Based in Chicago with her American musician husband and their young daughter, Ayako Kato is an award-winning contemporary dancer, choreographer, curator, and teacher, promoting fūryū in her multidisciplinary collaborations and improvisations with national and international musicians.
As a boy in the 1980s, Yuri Suzuki fell under the spell of video games and his father's record collection. The family home was in bustling Shibuya Ward, near the border with Shinjuku, and the influence of global cultures within its walls was strong. Both parents were in publishing — his mother editor in chief of Soen, the seminal fashion magazine — and their tastes broad. Imports ranged from the classics to the avant-garde, with a tilt toward American popular culture. So young Yuri took indirect life lessons watching videotapes of "Saturday Night Live" as well as "MTV." His touchstones included both U.S. TV personality Mister Rogers and Italian music producer Giorgio Moroder. You could say he didn't fit in at school. ...
LOS ANGELES -- Presented a copy of the latest English-language collection of his work, Yoshihiro Tatsumi turns it over in his hands and says, "This looks too beautiful to be a comic book." Designed by acclaimed American cartoonist Adrian Tomine, "Abandon the Old in Tokyo" ...
CHICAGO -- There is something unnerving about saying "May I speak to Mr. Veloso, please" when you know that the voice at the other end of the line belongs to Caetano Veloso himself. Days have been spent in ecstasy and fear in anticipation of this ...
LOS ANGELES -- Ask the band directly, what are The Shins about, and the four friends' free-for-all flow of deadpan wit, wild metaphor and the occasional outburst of song (evidence of not just a clever group of people but a happy one) stops cold. "Oh, ...
