Search - works

 
 
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 20, 2018

Contemporary dance festival puts modern 'Genji' front and center

How do you make a thousand-year-old story resonate with an audience in Osaka today? Tell them that you plan to radically modernize one of the most famous literary works ever to come out of Japan to fit present concerns.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 20, 2018

The best pick and mix of modern art

The current exhibition at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art could be considered a retrospective of Toshio Hara's career as a collector. Surprisingly, given that the museum was founded in 1979, it's the first time that the director and president has personally curated a show there, and the title is...
JAPAN
Jan 22, 2018

Tokyo hit by heaviest snow since 2014

Tokyo saw its heaviest snow in four years on Monday, with authorities urging evening commuters to hurry home and prompting those behind the wheel to brace for traffic disruptions.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jan 17, 2018

Jerome Bel and his amateurs test the limits of contemporary dance in Saitama show

Controversial French choreographer lets the locals loose in 'Gala.'
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN?
Dec 16, 2017

Solitary mosaic artist Takako Hirai chips away at expression

In a cramped studio in Ravenna, Italy, Takako Hirai runs her finger along the cracks in a mosaic artwork depicting dappled light in a park. The spaces between the tiles, she explains, determine the flow and movement of a mosaic, even more than the arrangement of the pieces themselves — as if meaning...
EDITORIALS
Dec 15, 2017

Get to the bottom of the maglev project contracts

Investigators should get to the bottom of the budding bid-rigging scandal to see whether the construction firms have in fact put their shady practices behind them.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 28, 2017

'Kumagai Morikazu: The Joy of Life'

Dec. 1-March. 21
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 21, 2017

The maven of Japanese sword fittings

The special exhibition "Pinnacle of Elegance: Sword Fittings of the Mitsumura Collection" at the Nezu Museum offers a fascinating look at the collection that Toshimo Mitsumura (1877-1955), a wealthy businessman, amassed at the end of the Meiji Era (1868-1912). Mitsumura's passion for swords is reflected...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 13, 2017

Blue Sky Books is a literary treasure trove

Aozora Bunko is an electric internet library that contains works of literature in the public domain.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / TELLING LIVES
Nov 1, 2017

Alex Kerr on Japan: From 'voice in the wind' to vindication

A quarter-century after his first book warned Japan of what it had to lose, Alex Kerr feels the nation is finally on the same page.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 31, 2017

'The Elegant and the Eccentric: Masterpieces of Chinese Painting of the Late Ming and Early Qing Dynasties'

Nov. 3-Dec. 10
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 6, 2017

As more Japanese take up bodybuilding, a veteran chases a championship

Naoki Go carefully positions his feet on the ground, slowly lifts both arms, then shuffles as if preparing to shoulder a huge imaginary weight.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Aug 30, 2017

North Korea: End of the nuclear taboo?

Is the North Korean crisis slowly eroding the postwar taboo against using nuclear weapons?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 15, 2017

Dealing with connectivity and isolation at the Yokohama Triennale

As Akiko Miki, one of the three curators of this year's Yokohama Triennale, tries to wrap up a roundtable discussion titled "The Connecting World and the Isolating World" at the Yokohama Museum of Art, a question is shouted out from the back of the room.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Aug 4, 2017

Hiroshima's past is one of many reasons to pay a visit

The early morning light on this summer day, illuminating the under canopies of trees and sending warm, golden strobes across the oyster cafes over the embankments of the Kyobashi River, is enchanting.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 1, 2017

Belgium's artistic flights of fancy

Diabolic torture inflicted on the ungodly; unspeakable yearnings straight out of the subconscious — the country now known as Belgium has given the world over five centuries' worth of depictions of the unimaginable.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 30, 2017

Southeast Asian art gets its biggest showing in Japan

A few years ago, at the press conference for Taiwanese artist Lee Mingwei's solo show at the Mori Art Museum (MAM), Fumio Nanjo, the museum director, talked about the direction the museum would be taking from then on; they were no longer so interested in "the West" and were aiming to focus more on Asia....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 11, 2017

Painting between the lines

The pairing of Hideki Kimura's prints with the seemingly sculptural assemblages of Sadaharu Horio is perhaps unexpected. What draws them together, however, are conceptions of their practices as painting. Both veterans of Japan's contemporary art scene, they pursue painting by other means, working within...
CULTURE / Art
Jul 11, 2017

'Yoshitomo Nara: For Better or Worse'

July 15-Sept. 24
Japan Times
JAPAN / Society
Jul 2, 2017

'No foreign tenants' — and not much you can do about it

Landlords in Japan are within their rights to refuse to rent to foreign residents, but some services are stepping in to bridge the gap.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jun 30, 2017

Foreign IT workers seen as solution to industry shortage

There is a rising demand for IT engineers in Japan as many point out there is a shortage of such professionals domestically. An estimate shows that Japan will face a shortage of close to 600,000 IT-related professionals by 2030.
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Jun 16, 2017

Pirate Bay's content treasure trove in peril after EU ruling

The Pirate Bay, one of the last surviving file-sharing websites, is in peril after judges at the European Union's top court warned that giving users free access to a trove of Hollywood movies, TV shows and music risks breaking the law.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 13, 2017

Ryan Gander looks back with humor

British artist Ryan Gander does the spread of contemporary art polysemy through objects, installations, paintings, photography and video. All is brought under the rubric of "conceptual" art, for which the catalog of "These wings aren't for flying" at The National Museum of Art, Osaka, names him the new...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 6, 2017

Alternative realities of realism

"Realism" can be a frustratingly indeterminate term. It can be used to refer to individual paintings, and it can be a conceptual placeholder that seemingly encapsulates the entire history of the Western Renaissance, and other, fine arts through to modernism.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Crime & Legal
May 16, 2017

Music schools to sue Japan's largest copyright collection group over plan to collect fees

The school operators said they would file a lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court as early as July, a representative told The Japan Times.
Japan Times
BASKETBALL / B. League
May 12, 2017

Brave Thunders' Fazekas reaping rewards of shooting practice

Nick Fazekas is a big fella, and it certainly gives him an advantage playing basketball.
Japan Times
WORLD / Politics
May 3, 2017

May vows to be 'bloody difficult woman' in Brexit talks

British Prime Minister Theresa May promised EU officials on Tuesday that she would be "a bloody difficult woman" in divorce talks, after being criticized for underestimating the complexity of Brexit talks and having "illusions" over a deal.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 4, 2017

Kusama and her infinite appeal

Yayoi Kusama's work has a direct and immediate visual impact. Her obsessions with dots, pumpkins and floppy phalluses have become big crowd pleasers after a spotty career of avant-garde agitation and mental-health issues. The auction house Christie's says she is "now the highest-selling living female...

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan