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Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 23, 2012

Hiroji Noda's works have to be experienced

Viewed as mere pictures in a catalogue or newspaper, the works of Hiroji Noda may not impress. With their often vaguely organic shapes, they may even seem like pseudo naive fabric designs. But the blocks of often smudgy-looking color and the rough-edged simplistic shapes that you see in the print media...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 23, 2012

Hiroji Noda's works have to be experienced

Viewed as mere pictures in a catalogue or newspaper, the works of Hiroji Noda may not impress. With their often vaguely organic shapes, they may even seem like pseudo naive fabric designs. But the blocks of often smudgy-looking color and the rough-edged simplistic shapes that you see in the print media...
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Feb 19, 2012

A voyage of discovery from Tokyo to Naha

On the Autumnal Equinox of 2011 I finished teaching a monthlong summer intensive course at a university in Tokyo, and had six days before I had to be back in my new hometown of Naha, Okinawa, for a meeting at my new university in the nearby town of Nishihara. Since I was in no particular hurry to return,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 17, 2012

'TeZukA' animates the stage

Choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is nutty about anime and manga. Speaking to him at a cafe in his native Antwerp, Cherkaoui drops all the right names into his conversation and gets as giddy as an otaku (obsessive) discussing Japanese pop culture.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 9, 2012

Finding a piece of mind in contemporary art

"Yayoi Kusama: Eternity of Eternal Eternity" at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, presents the "late" style of the internationally renowned artist.
CULTURE / Art
Feb 9, 2012

Finding a piece of mind in contemporary art

"Yayoi Kusama: Eternity of Eternal Eternity" at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, presents the "late" style of the internationally renowned artist.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / HAVE YOUR SAY
Feb 7, 2012

Questions raised about account of Tokyo cop assault

Some readers' responses to the Jan. 24 Zeit Gist column by Simon Scott, headlined "American claims Tokyo cop assaulted son, 8":
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 2, 2012

A contemporary mix of nihonga and manga

Nobuya Hoki's work oscillates between two of the major trends in Japanese contemporary art since the 1990s: manga-inspired themes and the revival of nihonga (Japanese-style painting). His own painting practice is termed "double-line painting" — which in Japanese also reads as "ni-hon ga" — owing...
CULTURE / Art
Feb 2, 2012

A contemporary mix of nihonga and manga

Nobuya Hoki's work oscillates between two of the major trends in Japanese contemporary art since the 1990s: manga-inspired themes and the revival of nihonga (Japanese-style painting). His own painting practice is termed "double-line painting" — which in Japanese also reads as "ni-hon ga" — owing...
Japan Times
JAPAN
Jan 31, 2012

Upgraded Quince robots ready for second foray

New robots for gathering data inside the radiation-contaminated Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant are ready to go into action, the Chiba Institute of Technology said Monday, three months after an older version got stuck inside the No. 2 reactor building.
Japan Times
Events / Events Outside Tokyo
Jan 20, 2012

Drawing up a performance without talk

Language can sometimes be an obstacle for non-Japanese wanting to enjoy arts performances in Japan. In South Korea, however, artists are getting around this problem with theater programs that don't use verbal elements.
EDITORIALS
Jan 9, 2012

Prepare for decontamination

Decontamination — financed with government money — of areas contaminated with radioactive substances released by Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant will start this year. As a preparatory step, the government has designated 102 municipalities in Fukushima and seven...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 8, 2012

Akira 'Harry' Mimura: A life uniquely focused on both sides of the Pacific

"Iwas put in charge of this unbearably painful filming job. Even if you consider a war between two countries to be unavoidable, why, you wonder, must innocent civilians be forced to go through such suffering?
CULTURE / Books
Jan 8, 2012

Holding court on warped ideas of sex and love

LOVESICK JAPAN: Sex, Marriage, Romance and Law, by Mark D. West. Cornell University Press, 2011, 272 pp., $29.95 (hardcover) Nobody else explores the law in Japan quite like Mark West, bringing it to life and close to home. "Lovesick Japan" is an entertaining and insightful examination of the courts,...
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 23, 2011

Even to his people, Kim Jong Il was a mystery

In an age of connection, it's both refreshing and sobering to think that most North Koreans have probably heard Kim Jong Il's voice only once. In 1992 he stood next to his father, then-President Kim Il Sung, and shouted the words "Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army!"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 16, 2011

Iran's Naderi explains why he shot 'Cut' in Japan

A founding member of Iranian cinema's 1970s New Wave, Amir Naderi made his directorial debut with his 1971 film "Goodbye Friend." Since the 1980s he has been screening his film at festivals around the world, including Venice, Cannes and Sundance.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Dec 11, 2011

Chilling out in a warm Kume Island way

The first thing a good beach does is immediately make you want to take your watch off. But what makes a really great beach is when you do that — and then kick off your shoes as well. That's exactly what I did when I arrived at Eef Beach on Kume Island, Okinawa.
Japan Times
LIFE / Food & Drink
Dec 9, 2011

Using your noodle

On entering the minimalist five-story cube opposite the Yokohama Cosmoworld ferris wheel in Minato Mirai, it's hard to believe that the huge white-walled atrium, with its monumental wooden staircase and beech floors, is not the entrance to a modern-art museum. The blurb in the museum's guide, too, seems...
Japan Times
MULTIMEDIA
Dec 8, 2011

A look into Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

It is hard to think of fin de siecle Paris without recalling the dancing girls and dandies of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's colorful prints. It is equally difficult to imagine work by the artist not centered on the city's hedonistic and decadent nightlife.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / MIXED MATCHES
Dec 6, 2011

Pair's engagement blossomed in China

Kazunobu Seto and his wife, Robin, met in his hometown of Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, in 2004.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Dec 1, 2011

The New Mastersounds hone a jazz-funk style at gigs

The New Mastersounds have many old friends in Japan. The British four-piece was first noticed on these shores by fans of Scottish Northern Soul and funk DJ Keb Darge's "Deep Funk" series of compilations in the early 2000s, and an impressive live resume has followed.
COMMENTARY
Nov 22, 2011

Beijing girds for universal suffrage elections

In 1994, the last British Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, quoted a former colonial official as saying: "The Chinese style is not to rig elections, but they do like to know the result before they're held."
JAPAN
Nov 22, 2011

Aum may be gone in name but guru still has following

Judicial proceedings for Aum Shinrikyo figures effectively came to an end Monday as Seiichi Endo became the 13th member of the doomsday cult to have his death sentence finalized by the Supreme Court.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 18, 2011

Volunteer-led Tohoku cinema provides welcome escapism

Following the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11 in the Tohoku region, survivors received nearly every type of aid imaginable from thousands of volunteers, ranging from hot meals to haircuts. But they also faced long, soul-deadening hours in shelters and temporary housing, with little in the way...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 18, 2011

'Henry's Crime'

There's such a thing in this world as aging gracefully (see Brad Pitt), and then there's Keanu Reeves, which is another thing altogether. The average cinephile may not describe Reeves as a "thing," but take it from one who knows: At this point in time he may be the only one in his weight class who could...

Longform

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