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BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 7, 2019

Netflix bets on Japanese anime to battle Disney and Apple in streaming wars

As Netflix Inc. prepares for a bruising battle against the Walt Disney Co. and Apple Inc. for streaming subscribers, it's playing a card that may deliver enough of an edge to fend them off in Asia: Japanese anime.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 6, 2019

The power of cultural and economic capital

Compared to exhibitions in which art objects are meant to seduce us into epiphanic transcendence, the works in "Surface and Custom," a group show at Shiseido Gallery organized by Berlin-based artists Jay Chung and Q Takeki Maeda, are more akin to frank expositions about the exchange of cultural and economic...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 23, 2019

Yoji Yamada and Tora-san: The resurrection of a Japanese film institution

The latest installment in Japan's long-running 'Tora-san' series opens the Tokyo International Film Festival as the series marks its 50th installment on its 50th anniversary
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 19, 2019

Bontaro Dokuyama: The art of expression

After the Great East Japan Earthquake, Fukushima native Bontaro Dokuyama began to focus on becoming an artist, explaining that he didn't see much expression from his home area: 'If the audience enjoys having their thoughts provoked, that is enjoyable for me as an artist.'
JAPAN
Aug 15, 2019

Statue of 'comfort women' pulled from Japanese exhibition finds new home in Spain

A Spanish businessman has bought a statue symbolizing women who worked in Japanese military brothels that was removed from an exhibition in Japan after organizers received threats over the piece.
Japan Times
Special Supplements / G20 Osaka Summit Special
Jun 27, 2019

School widens its role in connecting students with the global community

Waseda University's beginnings hark back to 1882, when samurai turned politician-cum-educator Shigenobu Okuma founded Tokyo Senmon Gakko (Tokyo College). The institution acquired university status in 1902 and was renamed Waseda University.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jun 5, 2019

Ron Howard frames Pavarotti story through arias for new documentary

Director Ron Howard did not know much about opera, but he understands drama when he sees it, and Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti's life was packed with it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 4, 2019

Ryuji Miyamoto: Looking back to go forward

'Invisible Land' at the TOP Museum doesn't showcase Ryuji Miyamoto's best-known works. Instead, it offers insight into the photographer's development of a style that led to international recognition.
Japan Times
MORE SPORTS
May 14, 2019

Schumacher documentary to hit market at Cannes Film Festival

Former world champion Formula One driver Michael Schumacher will be the subject of a new documentary by two German filmmakers in a production fully supported by his family, reports said Monday.
Reader Mail
May 2, 2019

Art museum renovation comes up short

Profound disappointment. After a two-year closure and ¥5.5 billion of public funds, upon visiting the newly renovated Fukuoka Art Museum, I was astonished to see little improvement and bad design. While I understand they wanted to preserve the integrity of the original architect's work, Kunio Mayekawa,...
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...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Mar 24, 2019

Japan is ready for Milan Salone 2019

As Salone del Mobile (April 9-14) in Milan, Italy, approaches, some of Japan's top designers are now releasing teasers for their contributions to the world's largest interior and furniture fair. This month On: Design previews a few installations that look set to promote Japan's industries in a show-stopping way.
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
Feb 24, 2019

Japanese fashion taps the potential of digital media platforms

Fashion has had to adapt to social media — its early exposure of new collections, its influencers starting and accelerating trends and its new forms of retailing. But it has caught up, and in exciting ways.
Japan Times
WORLD / Science & Health
Jan 23, 2019

Latest Trump line about global warming makes a chilling mistake

With an Arctic blast chilling the northern states, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted over the weekend that it "Wouldn't be bad to have a little of that good old fashioned Global Warming right now!"
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 26, 2018

Busting myths about Fukushima No. 1

Efforts to decommission the shattered nuclear plant are headed in the right direction.
SUMO
Nov 20, 2018

Sumo 101: Gyōji

Sumo referees are arguably the most elaborately outfitted arbiters in the sporting world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 30, 2018

'Hyslom Temporary Human'

The art performance group Hyslom comprises three contemporary artists — Itaru Kato, Fuminori Hoshino and Yuu Yoshida — and aims to explore two concepts: the lost connection between the Earth and the human body and the search for an unknown no-man's land that isn't affiliated or controlled by the entrapments of modern society.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN?
Oct 13, 2018

In art, there are no rules, only new challenges

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
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / Deep Dive
Oct 5, 2018

Tokyo's famed Tsukiji fish market, opened in the wake of Kanto quake, reaches an end

Old-fashioned and full of nostalgia, the renowned Tsukiji fish market is at its busiest before dawn.
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 25, 2018

Keiichi Tanaami's visually trippy past

Sometimes innocent, sometimes pornographic, influences percolated, exploded and re-formed in multiple and mutant ways during Keiichi Tanaami's career, which took off in the 1960s and is still going strong.
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.
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Aug 5, 2018

The Kanpo: Where everything in Japan goes to happen (officially)

Read all about it in the government's daily gazette, from laws and notices of naughtiness to deaths and even poetry.

Longform

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell