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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 19, 2011

"Summer De Museum"

To enhance the exciting and fun-filled atmosphere of the summer, Menard Art Museum presents some 45 works on themes such as summer scenery and summer clothing.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 18, 2011

Yokohama Triennale rewards leisurely visit

Yokohama Triennale 2011, the fourth installment of this large-scale art event, differs from its predecessors in that it is being held primarily in a venue designed for showing art — the Yokohama Museum of Art. This has allowed the curators — the director general, Eriko Osaka, and the artistic director,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 18, 2011

Passing through Kohei Nawa's tactile rooms of the senses

The lecture theatre is brimful of bright-eyed people listening to a lecture by Kohei Nawa — an artist considered by many to be at the forefront of contemporary art in Japan. The public lecture offers insight into the design and production process of the often complex and intricate work on display in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 12, 2011

"Summer Museum For Kids and Grown-ups: Traversing the Times, Places and Attributes Of People Described in Art"

One of the most intriguing themes or motifs in art throughout the ages has been "human beings." In the collection of the Osaka City Museum of Modern Art, there are many works covering this familiar, and universal subject.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 5, 2011

"Glass Admired By The Russian Tsars"

Some of the most ornate and refined pieces of glassware from St. Petersburg's State Hermitage Museum — home to the former Russian royal residence, the Winter Palace — are currently on display in Tokyo.
CULTURE / Books
Jul 24, 2011

March 11: nation transformation?

REIMAGINING JAPAN: The Quest for a Future that Works. Edited by McKinsey & Company; executive editors Clay Chandler, Heang Chhor and Brian Salsberg. VIZ Media, 2011, 464 pp., $38.99 (hardcover) Read any business report on Japan of recent times and there is a familiar theme: economically eclipsed by China,...
BUSINESS
Jul 20, 2011

Toyota to build engines, small hybrids in Tohoku

Toyota Motor Corp. plans to build engines and small hybrid cars in the Tohoku region as the company strengthens its production hub in the area.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE ZEIT GIST
Jul 19, 2011

Japan's Nigerians pay price for prosperity

The Nigerian Union in Japan is the central civic organization for immigrants from Africa's most populous nation. It has foundered twice in 21 years and its current incarnation is less than a year old. Its mixed history is a reflection of the social and economic turmoil Japan's Nigerian community has...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 17, 2011

Erasing the bloody wounds of war

IMAG(IN)ING THE WAR IN JAPAN: Representing and Responding to Trauma in Postwar Literature and Film, edited by David Stahl and Mark Williams. Brill, 2010, 375 pp., $179 (hardcover) This anthology is as incisive and demanding of consideration as any that I have read. The central question reframed again...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jul 14, 2011

For the Greeks, the human body laid bare the divinity of beauty

How many of the artworks being made today will stand the test of time and still be appreciated more than 2,000 years in the future — as the sculptures in "The Body Beautiful in Ancient Greece" exhibition are today? I would say almost none, because, rather than seeking beauty, modern artists are more...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 28, 2011

"Hello, It's We: New Paintings by Rob Judges and Mike Ness"

Moscow, Nakameguro Closes Aug. 25
EDITORIALS
Jun 12, 2011

A life in the coal mines

This May brought unexpected news of the selection by UNESCO of annotated paintings and diaries by Sakubei Yamamoto of life in the Japanese coal mines for entry in its Memory of the World Register.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 9, 2011

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy: ahead of his time

The profound influence of the Bauhaus School, which included training in crafts and fine arts, is inestimable. Over a 14-year period, its innovative methods, utilitarian philosophy and utopian social vision transformed art, architecture and design for the modern age.
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jun 5, 2011

Doomed self-obsessive remains iconic to some in the Japan of today

"It's not that I'm weak, it's that the suffering weighs down on me too heavily."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 2, 2011

Chasing dreams in gold and silver

You've probably heard of Japan's quaint custom of designating some people as Living National Treasures. Usually it's applied to exponents of a traditional art, craft or performing art in their twilight years. Luckily, nobody has ever come up with the idea of "stealing" these national treasures. While...
EDITORIALS
May 29, 2011

Postdisaster reading

Unsurprisingly, Japanese readers are seeking books about the March 11 disaster and about how to overcome it spiritually. In bookstores now can be found many works of reportage — for example, volumes in which major newspapers have reproduced their pages devoted to the disaster.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 27, 2011

"The Face Is The Universe"

Taro Okamoto's avant-garde works have recently received a lot of attention. There have been a number of exhibitions celebrating the centenary of the artist's birth, and just after the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake, his famous mural "Myth of Tomorrow," displayed at Shibuya Station, received an addition...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHO'S WHO
May 24, 2011

Polyglot comfortable between cultures

Alessandro Gerevini, an Italian writer and translator who has lived and worked in Japan for 16 years, believes that Japanese and Italian cultures have a lot in common.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
May 20, 2011

"Kuniyoshi: Spectacular Ukiyo-e Imagination"

Ukiyo-e (Japanese woodblock print) artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861) is famous for works combining innovative design with fantastic ideas. Such works are highly acclaimed by dedicated fans and have inspired many of today's designers and younger generations of artists. In 2009, "Kuniyoshi," an exhibition...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
May 13, 2011

Photo show spotlights amateurs

An exhibition coming soon to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography provides a rare chance to see how contemporary Japan looks from the perspective of hundreds of the nation's best professional and amateur photographers.
CULTURE / Art
Apr 29, 2011

ArtGig offers 'Dirty, dirty! Sex, sex!' — for free

When curator Shai Ohayon says he's organizing 12 hours of "dirty, dirty, sex, sex" in Shinjuku, he's not making a sordid offer.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 22, 2011

'Artist File 2011'

The National Art Center, Tokyo
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Apr 15, 2011

Silent bids for Tohoku

The Kiyosumi art gallery complex of prominent commercial galleries, including Taka Ishii Gallery, ShugoArts, Kido Press, Hiromi Yoshii Gallery, Ai Kodawa Gallery, Miyake Fine Art, SPROUT Curation and Tomio Koyama Gallery, is holding a charity silent auction to raise money for the Great Eastern Japan...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 8, 2011

'Mama Bush' puts black women in a powerful light

Based in New York, Mickalene Thomas is known for mixed-media paintings, photographic collages and videos that explore representations of beauty in art history and pop culture through images of African-American women.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 1, 2011

Conceptualizing old ideas into 'new' art

A persisting fear with conceptual art is that you are being made a fool of. Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook's 2008 video works are ostensibly about cultural preconceptions and the difficulties of interpretation, but her participants are often left looking ignorant and unsophisticated. For the videos, she placed...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 18, 2011

Images from students of resistance

Prospective students to the photography school Resist need to be searching for a way to find themselves, says its founder, Masayuki Yoshinaga, agreeing with his friend and mentor Daido Moriyama, both established photographers.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 11, 2011

The Centre Pompidou brings the surreal to Tokyo

In its passage from the art world into everyday speech, the word "surreal" has ended up as mere shorthand for the bizarre and the unusual. But it originally referred to something deeper.
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Mar 9, 2011

Taro Okamoto towers above 2011

An NHK drama rekindled interest in Sakamoto Ryoma in 2010; will a new series do the same for artist Taro Okamoto in 2011?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 4, 2011

It takes innovation, imagination and perseverence to challenge contemporary theater

Recently, while looking through a handful of upcoming production flyers displayed in a cozy, small-scale theater, I noticed to my surprise that one name kept reappearing: Norihito Nakayashiki.

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