Search - works

 
Menu
Search
 
July 13, 2025
 

Today's print edition

Home Delivery
Subscribe for more access
21,038 results
Sort by: Relevance Newest Oldest
After adjusting your search parameters, press Enter on your keyboard or click on the red magnifying glass to run your query again.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 24, 2013

The Pushkin's masterpieces cannot fail to inspire

There are a lot of people who wish that art had simply stopped around 1911 or so. If it had, we would have been spared many of the monstrosities that modern art then proceeded to unleash — urinals in art galleries, randomly distributed paint, pickled animals, cans of the artist's excrement, etc. Of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 3, 2013

The 'floating world' that drifted to the West

The main pleasure of any extensive ukiyo-e (woodblock print) exhibition, like the "Floating World" show now on at the Mitsubishi Ichigokan Museum, is the evocation of the unique civilization that underlies this particular slab of global modernity.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 30, 2013

Art born from the disingenuous

The most radical force in art is not, as most people assume, genius, inspiration or sheer talent, it is instead a lack of technical ability. Combined with a strong desire to be an artist, this can prove to be a powerful driver of change and innovation, as revealed by "Odilon Redon: The Origins of the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 28, 2013

In New York, the Guggenheim goes Gutai

By now, the looks, character and history of Gutai, the post-World War II Japanese art movement born in 1954 in Ashiya, between Osaka and Kobe, are familiar to regular viewers of modern-art exhibitions in Japan. Last summer's "Gutai: The Spirit of an Era," a survey of the movement's evolution and its...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art / WEEK 3
Feb 17, 2013

Art disaster turns out to have a silver lining

A dozen paintings hang from the white walls of a gallery at the Museum of Modern Art in Hayama, Kanagawa Prefecture. Mostly prewar works by artists involved in the Proletarian movement, who focused on depictions of factory and farm laborers, the paintings are like many others on display at the museum...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 31, 2013

Hidden truths laid bare in the details of realism

With a population of around 35 million, Greater Tokyo is the ultimate "modernist" conurbation; a vast megacity, where something as old-fashioned as realist art might seem out-of-date and out-of-place. Maybe so, but on the metropolis' western and eastern extremities stand two museums that, each in their...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Dec 20, 2012

Show of hands for the National Museum of Western Art

Sometimes it seems that hands have a mind of their own. They remember where the keys are on a keyboard and which brushstroke in a Chinese character comes next, without too much conscious input from the brain. The instinctive way they work can also give a lot of art its style.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives
Oct 20, 2012

American artist takes personal approach to traditional painting

Finding places in Tokyo can be complicated. All too often a simple address is not enough. That's why many people here look like treasure hunters roaming the streets armed with a map or its modern equivalent, the smartphone.
Japan Times
JAPAN / IMF-WORLD BANK IN TOKYO
Oct 12, 2012

Exploring, rediscovering fine arts

While much has changed since Japan last hosted the Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group in 1964 — a year that symbolized the nation's achievement of reconstruction after World War II through the hosting of the meeting and the Summer Olympics — art has always reflected,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 11, 2012

Taking a nostalgic train of thought

Train travel inspires nostalgia. There's no escaping it. It conjures up memories of childhood — playing beside the rail track at the bottom of the garden or with a miniature railway at home. However, politics and societal change have influenced and produced more controversial images of rail travel...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 27, 2012

Tadanori Yokoo prepares to 'move on' in different ways

Tadanori Yokoo, bad boy of the Japanese art scene since the 1960s, is showing nine works, most of which were made within the last couple of years, at Scai The Bathhouse in the Yanaka district of Tokyo. The small exhibition, titled "Destination the Teshima Art House Project" serves to not only showcase...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 13, 2012

Home is always where the heart is

Contemporary artists are a product of a globally minded world. While artists of past ages have had clear goals of making it in London, Paris or New York, artists of the 21st century seek stimulation from any number of locations across the planet. All they need is a passport, a place to stay, and ideally...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 26, 2012

Rembrandt still outshines Vermeer

The first exhibition at the newly renovated Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art (TMMA) was always going to be an important one. After a two-year closure to let the builders in, it wouldn't have sufficed to just have a run-of-the-mill exhibition. Something special was required, and with "Masterpieces from...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 14, 2012

Max Ernst: The artist who raised eyebrows with 'pictorial' texture

Despite several major exhibitions of his work that have been held in Japan since the 1970s, Max Ernst is still widely considered here to be one of the most difficult and obscure of the Surrealists. Constantly exploring new ideas, methods and materials, his art is perhaps less instantly recognizable than...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 5, 2012

Ceramics as a blossoming form of art

In 1981, Etsuko Tashima (b.1959) completed the postgraduate ceramic course of Osaka University of Arts, where she is now professor. Her graduation work, "Censored" (1981), was a series of legs cast from her own body and arranged so that they appeared to grow out of the ground. Attaching breasts to cups...
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Dec 15, 2011

Painting a picture of Yumeji Takehisa

A persistent and lingering myth is that Yumeji Takehisa (1884-1934), who forwent conventional art training at a sanctioned institution and earned widespread popular appeal for all the things the arts were supposedly not, was unimportant to the fine arts.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Nov 5, 2011

Hokkaido roots spur woman to bring folk tales to masses

For Deborah Davidson, Hokkaido is not only home, it is a door to other worlds. As a child, she played with Ainu children and watched them care for the frolicking cubs of the "iomante" (bear ceremony). As a translator, she now focuses on bringing Ainu folk tales to an English-speaking audience.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 30, 2011

The enduring reputation of Shigeru Aoki's brief career

Shigeru Aoki's short life was "beset by all manner of bad luck, and he passed through it like a shooting star" wrote Hanijiro Sakamoto (1882-1969), one of the giants of post-WWII Western-style painting. Shigeru (1882-1911) was only 28 when he passed away, and his active period as a painter was all the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 26, 2011

Knowing Sharaku's art without knowing the artist

One of Japan's greatest mysteries is the true identity of the ukiyo-e (woodblock print) artist Toshusai Sharaku, whose entire career was crammed into a 10-month period from 1794 to 1795, during which he produced 145 separate print sheets.
COMMENTARY / World
Apr 16, 2011

The enemies of a digital universal library

Scholars have long dreamed of a universal library containing everything that has ever been written. Then, in 2004, Google announced that it would begin digitally scanning all the books held by five major research libraries. Suddenly, the library of utopia seemed within reach.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 25, 2011

The high altitudes of airplane aesthetics

Aeronautical science has always been a hotbed of innovative technology. Changes in human society, such as improved global networking and an increase in travelers has meant that aircraft design has always been dynamic, improving to meet passengers' military and others' expectations and demands.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 18, 2011

Japan's celebrated Edo Period painters: Having the good fortune to see all that is Gitter's

The first time I met renowned Japanese art collector Dr. Kurt Gitter was at an Asian art conference in New York in 2001, where he was on a discussion panel on Japanese art. An audience member asked Gitter, "Sir, since you and others have passionately collected antique Japanese works for decades and since...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 11, 2011

Shindo Tsuji: From the trees to the earth

In 1948, the respected Zen elder Ian Kishizawa told the sculptor Shindo Tsuji, "Forget whatever you can and express whatever remains." Despite its enigmatic and paradoxical quality, this typically Zen-like admonition nevertheless manages to sum up the career of Tsuji (1910-1981), an important Japanese...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 9, 2011

Adoor: India's master storyteller of the silver screen

ADOOR GOPALAKRISHNAN: A Life in Cinema. The Authorized Biography, by Gautaman Bhaskaran. Penguin, 2010, 281 pp. (hardcover) Celebrating the centenary of Akira Kurosawa last year, Donald Richie, the noted writer on Japanese films, observed that Kurosawa believed that he existed only through his films....
COMMUNITY
Dec 4, 2010

American artist's creativity never stops in Kyoto

Daniel Kelly's immaculate central Kyoto atelier is empty upon arrival, but soon the artist comes bounding in, extending warm greetings before leading a quick tour of the two-floor studio-living quarters. Then we're off again, dashing around the corner to check out his kura (warehouse)-cum-art storehouse...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Sep 17, 2010

Shedding some light on shadows

What follows you around nearly everywhere but you never notice?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 30, 2010

In the hope that death does not do us part

In "Do Not go Gentle Into That Good Night," the 20th-century Welsh poet Dylan Thomas famously defied death with the words, "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." In a more conceptual art way, the Japanese-born New York-based Shusaku Arakawa (b.1936) is similarly indignant. He wants to make dying...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 9, 2010

'Roppongi Crossing' may be better when crowded

At the opening press conference for "Roppongi Crossing 2010," the U.S-based French artist Jules de Balincourt said that he was impressed how the exhibition revealed to him that the contemporary art being produced in Japan could just as easily have been created anywhere in the world — that trends in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Mar 12, 2010

Regional resonance

In a metropolis the size of Tokyo, it is no surprise that there are several large orchestras and a number of high-quality concert halls. But the number of orchestras performing daily can be hard to keep track of, particularly as some have very similar names: Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Tokyo Metropolitan...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 12, 2010

Cyber Arts Japan: As interactive as they want to be

"What are silk screen prints doing in a show of media art?"
Tokyo hit by torrential rainfall at rush hour
People line up at Shibuya Station in Tokyo as they try to avoid the heavy rain on Thursday.
Foreign drivers in Japan to face tougher license conversion rules from October
According to the National Police Agency, there were 75,905 people who converted their foreign driver’s license to a Japanese one in 2024, up from 48,885 in 2019.
Nissan clinches $4.5 billion bond deal after orders soar
Nissan Motor has raised $4.5 billion through a junk bond sale in U.S. dollars and euros, part of which carries a record-high coupon rate.
Chinese fighters came within 30 meters of Japanese spy aircraft, Tokyo says
A Chinese JH-7 fighter jet makes an near an Air Self-Defense Force YS-11EB surveillance aircraft over the East China Sea this week in this image released Thursday.
What Japanese politics could look like after Upper House election
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who heads the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (center) waves to attendees as he departs after delivering a campaign speech in Yokohama on Sunday.
An emoji used to say it all. Now it might say too much.
Apple’s Craig Federighi shows off a set of emoji at a conference on June 13, 2016. While the small pictures have proved helpful in conveying nuance in our texts, younger people are using them less often.
‘Our ultimate goal is to save every single Japanese video game’
After nearly shuttering earlier this year, the Tokyo-based Game Preservation Society continues its work to save the early history of Japanese gaming.
Rare vintage shots and first-time shows at TOP’s 30th anniversary
The museum's curators selected a wide array of works from the archives for the milestone exhibitions. Among other photos, Nobuyoshi Araki's work from the series "Winter Journey" (1990) was included in the "Continuity and Change" exhibition that concluded in June.
New IG Arena set to dial down temperature at Nagoya Basho, in a good way
With IG Arena getting glowing early reviews as the Nagoya Basho’s replacement venue, it may be a while before fans wax nostalgic about the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium.
Once a niche, anime is now mainstream content for Netflix and other streaming services
Though Netflix remains the dominant choice globally for anime viewers, Amazon Prime Video has also invested heavily in anime, steadily adding titles to their catalogue.

Podcast

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

Longform

Mount Fuji is considered one of Japan's most iconic symbols and is a major draw for tourists. It's still a mountain, though, and potential hikers need to properly prepare for any climb.
What it takes to save lives on Mount Fuji
By Alex K.T. Martin

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy
Ishii Iron Works remakes self for workers, new energy

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS note

Read more

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER