Search - works

 
 
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jun 21, 2007

Japanese look to international market

BASEL, Switzerland — Each June, the Swiss city of Basel gives itself over to Art Basel, the world's biggest and most influential contemporary art fair, where established galleries make deals with some of the biggest spenders in the global market.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jun 15, 2007

Losing his head on Rachmaninov

Russian piano virtuoso Boris Berezovsky is on the phone and he's very excited, though not as excited as he should be when he plays the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo this summer. There, Berezovsky will be performing Rachmaninov's Concerto No. 3 in D minor Op. 30, a work he considers "infamous" because...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 19, 2007

In memory of 'The Blue-Eyed Japanese'

When the American-born artist Clifton Karhu developed an interest in Finland, his parents' homeland, a large-scale exhibition of his art was held at the Retretti Museum in Punkarhajo. The late Prince Takamado, who with Princess Takamado enjoyed Karhu's work so much that a short, scheduled visit to one...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 12, 2007

Within the art of darkness

Fashion, like a magnet, has been seasonally repelled and attracted to black since the 1980s, and, with the exception of photography, every art form at one point in time has been in love with the mysterious "color" (Scientifically, black is not a color as it absorbs light rather than reflects it.). Not...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 5, 2007

"Obey Giant Versus WK Interact"

Tokyo Wonder Site, Shibuya Closes in 18 days
EDITORIALS
Mar 25, 2007

Ambassadors manga and anime

Walk into any bookstore around the world and you will find a new, large section for one of Japan's best-known representatives -- manga. Likewise, in DVD stores, drama, comedy and action have been pushed aside for Japanese anime. All around the world, people of all ages are pouring over translations of...
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Mar 23, 2007

Atelier Bow-Wow have fun with urban spaces

Tokyo-based architectural practice Atelier Bow-Wow is currently holding an exhibition of its works at Tokyo's Gallery MA through May 12, titled "Practice of Lively Space -- detached house and micro public space."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 8, 2007

Free from schools with Zen's help

In a society where group dynamics, deferred gratification, and sticking to the plan have always been paramount, the occasional cross current that tells you to live in the moment, do the unexpected, and seek truth directly, blows like a real breath of fresh air. This explains the appeal of Zen, and the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 8, 2007

Rejecting kawaii culture

Momoyo Torimitsu (b. 1967) is a little tired of being remembered for Jiro Miyata, a life-size robot she created based on a middle-aged salaryman in 1994. But who could forget? Miyata, which Torimitsu had crawl around the streets of Tokyo, Paris, New York and other cities, so brilliantly embodied the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 18, 2007

"Boroboro Dorodoro -- The Return of Japanese Subculture"

Watari-umCloses in 11 days
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink / TOKYO FOOD FILE
Jan 5, 2007

Kamakura: slow food on the coast

We spent this new year, as is our custom, in Kamakura. We helped to toll the joya-no-kane bell at our favorite hillside temple. At a little shrine under a steep, wooded cliff, we made our ritual hatsumode obeisances. And then, needless to say, we feasted in auspicious style.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 23, 2006

Japan Folk Crafts Museum celebrates 70th anniversary

On first encountering Korean folk paintings, the avid collector Soetsu Yanagi (1889-1961) was so intrigued that he wrote, "The beauty of this Korean painting is beyond compare."
CULTURE / Books
Nov 19, 2006

Intrigues and conflicts, a millennium apart

BLACK ARROW by I.J. Parker. New York: Penguin Books, 2006, 354 pp., $13 (paper). A WOMAN IN JERUSALEM by A.B. Yehoshua, translated from the Hebrew by Hillel Halkin. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 2006, 237 pp., $25 (cloth).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 16, 2006

Leon Golub

Wako Works of Art Closes in 36 days
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 9, 2006

Tokyo National Museum shows Buddhist masterpieces

Living in a land still largely covered with forest, it is not surprising that Japanese have a special reverence toward wood. We see this particularly in traditional architecture, where wood is not only chosen to reveal its best qualities, but is largely left unpainted so that its beauty improves with...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Nov 2, 2006

Make the most of this year's celebration of practical art

Once again, Tokyo welcomes the design world with open arms into its streets, shops, cafes and galleries -- all under the umbrella of Tokyo Design Week, which encompasses four different yet complementary events: Tokyo Designer's Week, 100% Design Tokyo, Design Tide and Swedish Style.
COMMENTARY
Oct 12, 2006

Koizumi vs. Abe economics

A popular pun in Japanese is to take the word kaikaku (reform, or change for the better) and turn it into kaiaku (to change for the worse.)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Oct 5, 2006

A daughter's conversation

At last year's Venice Biennale, photographer Miyako Ishiuchi (b. 1947) represented Japan with her "mother's" photography series. Featuring mostly black-and-white prints of her late mother's possessions -- lingerie, shoes and cosmetics -- it was one of the biennale's highlights.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 6, 2006

Question of next prime minister still taxing issue

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi succeeded in shrinking the political pork barrel by privatizing the powerful post office monopoly and weaning politicians from their heavy reliance on public works to boost the economy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Aug 17, 2006

Exploring her selves

Modern culture is deeply interested in constructed and changing identities. The mutability of the individual is an obsession that stretches from stories about Leonardo Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" being a portrait of the artist in drag to Oprah Winfrey's very public weight-loss programs; from Japanese artist...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Aug 10, 2006

Kyogen meets contemporary theater

For the past 20 years, Kazuhiro Morisaki has promoted the comical performing art form of kyogen, but that doesn't make him a purist.

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