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Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Oct 28, 2022

Notes from Setouchi: The art of loss brings lesser-known islands to life

Honjima, Takamijima, Awashima and Ibukijima open for the fall season of Setouchi Triennale 2022.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC
Jan 15, 2022

Artists put brush to ink at calligraphy show

The Dokuritsu Shojindan Foundation is holding its annual sho (Japanese calligraphy) exhibition, the 70th Dokuritsu Sho Exhibition, in the National Art Center, Tokyo in Minato Ward this month to celebrate the new year. The spacious venue is filled with thousands of expressive works consisting of stark...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Dec 18, 2020

Suntory Museum of Art exhibition focuses on new beauty created by crossing borders

Since relocating to Tokyo Midtown in Tokyo’s Roppongi district in 2007, the Suntory Museum of Art has highlighted the aesthetic connections between old and new, national and local, and East and West. The museum’s latest exhibition, open from Dec. 16 to Feb. 28, focuses on beauty borne from the cross-pollination...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design / ON: DESIGN
Oct 19, 2019

Designart Tokyo 2019 takes art and design to a new level in Japan

Now showcasing an impressive 300 designers and brands in over 100 locations, Designart Tokyo 2019 has branched out to include two new areas to it venues list — Shinjuku and Ginza — and introduces a slew of high-profile participants.
Japan Times
Jul 10, 2019

Manga Kingdom Tottori International Comic Art Contest Now Accepting Submissions

Tottori Prefecture is the "Manga Kingdom" that has produced many great manga artists whose works represent Japan abroad. Gegege no Kitaro, by Shigeru Mizuki, A Distant Neighborhood, by Jiro Taniguchi, and Detective Conan, by Gosho Aoyama are but a few of them. Tottori Prefecture host its own manga contest,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 12, 2019

Crossing 70 years of Katsushika Hokusai

Featuring an astounding 480 prints, spanning the entire 70 years of Katushika Hokusai's career, the new Hokusai exhibition at the Mori Arts Center Gallery is a great overview for ukiyo-e fans.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 26, 2017

Reconnecting with our nature: teamLab's digital revolution

An interactive art collective wants us all to connect and experience a world without boundaries.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 5, 2016

The embellished world of Kozan Miyagawa's ceramics

In 1954-55, three Kyoto ceramists of the Sodeisha group of artists began a revolution by creating objects that fulfilled no practical role.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Science & Health / NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT
Jun 19, 2016

Japanese researchers take artificial intelligence toward the final frontier: creativity

It was a dark, overcast day, with clouds hovering low.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 22, 2015

Jiro Oyamada's dark side exposes his highlights

When it comes to selecting "tortured artists" — those driven to create from the deep wells of their souls by immense suffering — the 20th-century Japanese painter Jiro Oyamada must seem like a shoo-in. The Fuchu Art Museum, in the western suburbs of Tokyo, is now celebrating the 100th anniversary...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 1, 2015

Curtains up on 2015

Innovation adds sparkle to traditional forms
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 27, 2014

The beating art of Ferdinand Hodler

With Japan and Switzerland celebrating the 150th anniversary of diplomatic relations, there have been a few Swiss-themed events in town, such as the exhibition "Masterpieces from the Kunsthaus Zurich" at the National Art Center, Tokyo, reviewed earlier this month. That exhibition contained some paintings...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 9, 2014

The Yamatane Museum presents a brilliant show

Gold and silver have long been used in Japanese painting for their decorative value, on works ranging from intimate handscrolls to large-scale screens. But as the current exhibition at the Yamatane Museum of Art makes amply clear, in the last century or so tradition has been improved upon as modern and...
Japan Times
LIFE / WEEK 3
Mar 18, 2012

Ryunosuke Akutagawa in focus

Though he died by his own hand at the age of 35, novelist Ryunosuke Akutagawa's accomplishments were such that, even after so brief a writing career, Japan's most prestigious literary accolade — the Akutagawa Prize — now bears his name.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 10, 2010

The swinging trends of modern Japanese painting

"Japanese Art 1950-2010" at the National Museum of Art, Osaka is a historical show by virtue of the span of time it covers.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 17, 2010

Show undermined by a surfeit of masters

Save us from the well-rounded exhibition! For museum visitors in Japan, this is a constant danger; something I was reminded of again by the Setagaya Art Museum's latest show: "Masterpieces from the Collection of the Kunstmuseum Winterthur." Like other multi-faceted exhibitions that endeavor to provide...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 9, 2010

Modernism put in perspective

Currently based in Seoul, Lee Bul is one of Korea's leading contemporary artists. She first became known for street performances incorporating provocative soft sculptures of her own design and then went on to create sculptures and installations commenting on contemporary culture and aesthetics.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 12, 2010

The world's most eclectic renter

"When you go out on the street and walk on the sidewalk, someone has decided where the sidewalk is. You take your car and drive the car; someone decided the roadway — you have a red light and a green light. Actually, we are funneled 24-hours around the clock through highly regulated spaces designed...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 5, 2010

G-tokyo: The 'boutique' art fair

Although its contemporary art market is considered small in relation to the country's overall economy, Japan has no shortage of commercial art fairs.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 3, 2009

Deliberately insignificant gestures

While walking through the courtyard of the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art and interviewing critic Midori Matsui, a frog hopped out of the darkness, stopped for a moment in the light and then slipped back into the night. Matsui, who curated the Hara's current exhibition, "Micropop," had just been explaining...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 22, 2009

Collector steps into the void

How a psychiatrist from Yamagata came to possess one of the world's most important collections of Japanese contemporary art — meaning art made in the last 15 years — is almost embarrassingly simple. Ryutaro Takahashi had the savings and liked the art, so he bought it. As far as the 62-year- old is...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 14, 2008

Sculpting the sacred and the profane

Given the boom in all things Edo in recent years — perhaps best exemplified by the explosion of interest in last year's The Price Collection's tour of Japan, featuring the artists Ito Jakuchu, Maruyama Okyo and Nagasawa Rosetsu — it is surprising that there hasn't been equal attention paid to the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 3, 2008

A new challenge to old traditions

Many visitors to Japan would love to buy an ukiyo-e (Japanese genre painting) woodblock print while here, and then put it on their wall. Dr. Lakra, an Oaxaca, Mexico-based tattoo artist, bought his own, and then added his own improvements to them.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 13, 2007

Freed by the war

Nationalism — especially in the Japanese context — routinely gets a bad press.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 26, 2007

The monochrome beauty of Japanese snow

When an important date comes around — like a centenary — and an artist has to be commemorated and celebrated, the problem museums and galleries often have is how to get hold of artworks that best represent him.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 15, 2007

Testing nihonga's limits

Finding their personal voice, something an artist can call their own, is a sublime achievement. The nihonga (Japanese-style) painter Insho Domoto (1891-1975) channeled the voices of at least a dozen others to forge his own unique one and create an exhaustive and encyclopedic body of work.
JAPAN
May 30, 2006

Two painters in battle over plagiarism

The Cultural Affairs Agency is looking into allegations that works by noted Italian artist Alberto Sughi were plagiarized by a Japanese painter who received a government award this spring, agency officials said.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / CERAMIC SCENE
May 18, 2005

Spectacular diversity of clay

As noted in this column last month, Japanese ceramic art is finding a wider audience overseas. Many collectors search out the great potters of the past, such as Shoji Hamada (1894-1978) or Kanjiro Kawai (1890-1966), while more savvy collectors are looking to find out who's hot in Japan today.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 3, 2004

And never the twain shall meet, on canvas

Modernism, which was born in Paris and came of age in New York after World War II, was one of Europe's most successful cultural exports of the 20th century, making it to South Africa, Vietnam, Brazil . . . and Japan.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 18, 2004

We just can't get enough

With Valentine's Day just past, let's pay tribute to one of the most enduring love affairs of our time -- that between Japan's gallery-going public and France's Impressionist artists. It's the Real Thing.

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past