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September 20, 2025
 

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Thu-Huong Ha
Thu-Huong Ha is the culture critic at The Japan Times, focusing on contemporary art and fiction. Previously she was a reporter for Quartz, an editor for TED.com and an executive producer of TEDxNewYork. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, The Believer, and ArtReview, among others. Her debut novel, "Hail Caesar," was published by Scholastic/PUSH in 2007. Get in touch: [email protected] or instagram.com/whatthusee.
Otherwise common sights in Japan's supermarkets, the country's fruit and veggie boxes can hide surprising symbols of local pride.
LIFE / Style & Design
Sep 19, 2025
Behold the glory of Japan’s fruit boxes
Watermelon mountains and onion parades: The everyday cardboard containers for fruits and veggies are a designer’s delight.
Shuji Nakagawa created a teahouse using the same technique for making traditional wooden buckets.
CULTURE / Art
Sep 19, 2025
A bucket becomes a house in the hands of craftsman Shuji Nakagawa
At Go for Kogei 2025, a third-generation woodworker envisions new forms for a humble vessel.
Shinji Ohmaki’s “Tokinokage” exhibited at Fuji Textile Week 2021 shows the use of fabric as art.
CULTURE / Art
Sep 13, 2025
Japan's major art events converge this fall
Dozens of biennials, triennials, art festivals and fairs are taking place between September and December.
“Sympathy Tower Tokyo” is centered around Sara Machina, a star architect designing a new experimental prison in central Tokyo.
CULTURE / Books
Aug 30, 2025
ChatGPT controversy is the least interesting part of 'Sympathy Tower Tokyo'
In Rie Qudan’s futuristic Tokyo, AI and architects take on the prison system.
“Memory of Lines” is Chiharu Shiota’s second art installation on Teshima as part of the Setouchi Triennale.
CULTURE / Art
Jul 30, 2025
Artist Chiharu Shiota weaves a hidden marvel on Teshima
The artist cherished for her red-thread installations creates a new work in one of Japan’s famed art islands.
Akira Otani's genre-bending novel "The Night of Baba Yaga" takes place in Japan’s 1970s yakuza underworld and centers on the daughter of a mob boss and a ruthless martial arts fighter who serves as her bodyguard.
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jul 4, 2025
Queer-coded yakuza story wins prestigious U.K. crime writing award
With “The Night of Baba Yaga,” Akira Otani is the first Japanese writer to win the Crime Writers’ Association Dagger Award for crime fiction in translation.
“The man who planted Japanese animation” exhibition includes a variety of sketches, drawings and animation cels from Isao Takahata films such as color design for characters by Michiyo Yasuda from "Grave of the Fireflies."
CULTURE / Film
Jul 2, 2025
Ghibli’s Isao Takahata exhibit shows how beloved anime is made
A new show at Tokyo’s Azabudai Hills Gallery explores the painstaking process of the late “Grave of the Fireflies” and “Pom Poko” director.
Japan has a deep rogues' gallery of age-old "yōkai" (spirits), but a museum on the island of Shodoshima has released a new book collecting yōkai that reflect the uncertainties of the modern world.
LIFE / Lifestyle
Jun 14, 2025
'Rice swindler,' 'Face thief': Worried citizens invent new monsters
A decade-old contest for original "yōkai" art reflects what keeps people up at night in Japan.
Detail of Takashi Murakami, “Rakuchu-Rakugai-zu Byobu: Iwasa Matabei RIP” (2023-25)
CULTURE / Art
Jun 5, 2025
New Naoshima museum bets on Asia, not the West
The Naoshima New Museum of Art is Tadao Ando’s 10th contribution to the popular art islands.
After last year’s controversy over using AI to write about 5% of her novel, Rie Qudan was asked by an advertising magazine to write a short story where she uses AI for 95% of it. The resulting short story, “Kage no ame” (“Rain Shadow”), was published March 25.  
CULTURE / Books
May 24, 2025
AI fiction is already here. Are humans ready?
Last year, Rie Qudan faced controversy after admitting that chatGPT wrote 5% of her novel. Now she’s published a story she only wrote 5% herself, leaving 95% to AI.
“‘Future of life,’ by Ishiguro,” the World Expo pavilion by roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro, displays humanlike androids.
LIFE / Travel
May 2, 2025
Want to see the future at the Osaka Expo? Get in line.
Androids and lab-grown heart cells: A dispatch from the world fair.
Kengo Kuma & Associates oversaw the construction of the Malaysia pavilion, which is encased in interwoven rows of bamboo that appear to ripple.
LIFE / Style & Design
Apr 24, 2025
Built in a flash, Osaka Expo pavilions wrestle with sustainability
Architects of country pavilions speak on the challenges that shaped their design choices.
Palestinian American photographer Adam Rouhana’s exhibition at this year’s Kyotographie festival shows Palestinian life, not death and rubble.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 18, 2025
Kyotographie 2025 opts for laughter and levity in the face of global strife
Artists at the 13th edition of the international photography festival find humor and heart in their portrayals of humanity.
In the dystopian society of Sayaka Murata's latest book to come out in English, sex between married couples is considered incest and therefore taboo.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 14, 2025
'Vanishing World': Sayaka Murata’s vision of a sex-hating society
In Sayaka Murata’s latest book to come out in English, sex between married couples is considered taboo, and humans reproduce predominantly via IVF.  
“The Place of Shells” takes place mostly in Gottingen, Germany, where both the author and the book's narrator live, while also jumping both geographically and temporally to Sendai, Japan, through memories of the 3/11 disaster and its aftermath.
CULTURE / Books
Mar 10, 2025
Grief ebbs and flows between two tragedies in 'The Place of Shells'
Mai Ishizawa’s debut novel, which won one of the three Akutagawa Prizes awarded in 2021, is also her first to be released in English, translated by Polly Barton.
Excerpts from Natsume Soseki’s “Ten Nights of Dreams” and footage of dancer Min Tanaka and "shō" player Mayumi Miyata play across three large screens that are reflected in a mirror-like pool of water in the installation “Time Time.”
CULTURE / Art
Mar 4, 2025
Crowds shouldn’t stop you from seeing the hit Ryuichi Sakamoto exhibit
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo’s “Seeing Sound, Hearing Time” has far exceeded expected visitor numbers, but there could be an upside to the crowds.
In Tomoka Shibasaki's short story collection "A Hundred Years and a Day," time flows architecturally, through the life of structures such as a ramen shop or a cinema.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 22, 2025
'A Hundred Years and a Day': Short stories unfold through the lives of structures and spaces
In Tomoka Shibasaki’s curious collection, time flows architecturally, plots meander by design and humans are unnamed, ephemeral and often disappear.
“Mornings Without Mii,” Mayumi Inaba’s 1999 memoir, charts the course of the author’s 20-year relationship with her calico cat, Mii.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 16, 2025
'Mornings Without Mii': A cozy cat memoir that gets down in the muck
Mayumi Inaba’s 1999 memoir charts the course of the author’s 20-year relationship with her calico cat, Mii.
"Uketsu" is a completely anonymous writer and YouTuber whose odd books — which blend mystery and horror — have become a smash-hit publishing phenomenon in Japan.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 7, 2025
'Uketsu': The internet phantom haunting Japan's bestseller lists
Anonymous author and YouTuber "Uketsu" deals in a quiet horror that has delighted millions of readers.
Hobonichi's 'techō' notebooks come in both set and customizable formats, and a thriving community of enthusiasts means there are even extensive guides on how to make the journal even more unique to your individual approach to journaling.
LIFE / Style & Design
Jan 10, 2025
American stationery nerds are fueling a Japanese notebook boom
A Japanese-made paper planner from the 1980s has reblossomed in the post-COVID era.
Wealthy foreign nationals picking up ultimate souvenir — a condo in Tokyo
A high-end property in the fashionable Daikanyama district in Tokyo
Bank of Japan to start unloading ETFs in surprise move that rattles market
BOJ Gov. Kazuo Ueda said it would take a century for the bank to sell all its ETFs at the pace proposed.
Over 90% of low-income families in Japan struggling to feed children
Save the Children Japan domestic program chief Sonoko Kawakami speaks at a news conference in Tokyo in July. A survey conducted by the group in June has found that over 90% of low-income households with children face food insecurity.
JAL to punish president and 36 others over pilot drinking scandal
Japan Airlines Managing Executive Officer Yukio Nakagawa (center) and others apologize after one of the airline's pilots was found to have been drinking alcohol, during a news conference in Tokyo on Sept. 4.
After seven decades, is it finally time for the LDP to split up?
Signage atop the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo. Japan’s ruling party faces a tough decision over its future as it searches for a new leader to replace outgoing Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, reverse its waning popularity and reassure investors
Behold the glory of Japan’s fruit boxes
Otherwise common sights in Japan's supermarkets, the country's fruit and veggie boxes can hide surprising symbols of local pride.
World Athletics stars relish Tokyo atmosphere after COVID-hit Olympics
Organizers of the World Athletics Championships said over 500,000 tickets had been sold and that they are expecting to end the event in front of large crowds this weekend.
Japan’s front-line researchers see bright path ahead for dementia treatment
A scientist looks at scans of grains at the Memory Centre at the Department of Readaptation and Geriatrics of the University Hospital (HUG) in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 6, 2023.
Still plenty to fight for, says Japan’s team leader at worlds
Race walker Hayato Katsuki earned bronze for Japan on the opening day of the World Athletics Championships on Saturday.
Wealthy foreign nationals picking up ultimate souvenir — a condo in Tokyo
A high-end property in the fashionable Daikanyama district in Tokyo

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 6th annual Sustainable Japan Award.
We are pleased to announce the winners of the 6th annual Sustainable Japan Award.

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