Search - in-pictures

 
 
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 8, 2012

"Usami Keiji BRAKE: BIG FLOOD"

Keiji Usami's signature works tackle the subject of floods, a topic the artist has been working on for the past 10 years. Since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami last year, the idea of the flood has taken on new meanings and associations, leading to more varied artistic interpretations.
JAPAN
Mar 6, 2012

Photos of hope adorn prime minister's door

The heartbreaking images of hopelessness and despair from the devastation the megaquake and tsunami brought last March 11 remain fresh in the memory of not only Japan but the rest of the world.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices / VIEWS FROM THE STREET
Mar 6, 2012

Shinchi, Fukushima: Why did you volunteer to come to Fukushima with Photohoku?

Kana Suzuki
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Mar 4, 2012

Winter kept us warm in Kamikochi's silence

Emerging from the 1.3-km darkness of the Kama Tunnel, our footsteps echoing eerily, we step into the white silence of Kamikochi's upland basin at the heart of the Chubusangaku National Park, which itself marks the center of the Hida Mountains, long ago dubbed the "Japan Alps."
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Mar 4, 2012

In the realms of true love and devotion, few could fault Akiko Koyama

On Feb. 21, 1996, Akiko Koyama, the actress wife of renowned film director Nagisa Oshima, received a phone call at her home in Kugenuma Kaigan, Kanagawa Prefecture. It was from an official at the Japanese Embassy in London.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY
Mar 3, 2012

'Alternative labor' helps Ishinomaki rebuild

Jamie El-Banna, 27, is a self-professed "cynical Londoner" who says he's "not a nice guy" and admits he is known to many as something of a party animal interested mostly in getting drunk. But a look at his recent track record reveals he's now spent over nine months volunteering in tsunami-ravaged Ishinomaki,...
Japan Times
ENVIRONMENT / BACKSTREET STORIES
Feb 26, 2012

Venturing into the zone on Showajima

In his "Meditation XVII," the English Metaphysical poet John Donne wrote in 1623 that "no man is an island, entire of itself." Well, yes — but some islands are entirely more manly than others.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Japan Pulse
Feb 24, 2012

Tech for keeping pace with the marathon trendsetters

Technology in the form of everything from to e-cash to purpose-built apps is coming to the aid of runners in the annual Tokyo Marathon.
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.

Longform

Once smoky, male-dominated spaces, today's net cafes, like Kaikatsu Club, are working to make their operations more attractive to women customers.
The second life of Japan's net cafes