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May 01, 2024
 

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JAPANESE ART

Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 25, 2017
Kaiho Yusho: painting privilege
The Momoyama Period (1573-1615) artist Kaiho Yusho (1533-1615) was renowned among the elite painters of his time, and still is. More remarkable, however, is that fame came when he was in his 60s during what is called his "early" period. Over the following two decades, he went from painting for priests to creating works for nobility, then for Japan-Korea diplomacy and then the Emperor.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 16, 2017
Ken Domon and the artistry of real life
By 1957, photographer Ken Domon had reached the peak of his creative powers. A picture taken that year in Hiroshima, which he was visiting for the first time to chronicle the lingering effect of the bomb, shows him supremely confident: ram-rod straight on a stool, tripod in one hand, he casts a sideway glance at the viewer. His brow is lightly furrowed; his lips display a slight pout reminiscent of a kabuki actor adopting a mie pose. What we see is an intense, tenacious and uncompromising mind.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 11, 2017
Kakiemon: Generations of beauty
There's still time to enjoy cherry blossoms. Through May 14, the Toguri Museum of Art in Tokyo is exhibiting a stunning new work by Sakaida Kakiemon XV, the current inheritor of one of the most famous names in Japanese porcelain. The very large lidded jar, commissioned by the museum to commemorate its 30th anniversary, is decorated with a cherry-blossom design that is at once bold and delicately refined. Together with the exhibition in which it stands as centerpiece, it beautifully demonstrates the ongoing mastery of the Kakiemon family.
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 artist." Her solo show, "My Eternal Soul," is part of The National Art Center, Tokyo's celebration of its 10th anniversary, so expect queues and crowds for this frenetic extravaganza of color and confessional declarations.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 28, 2017
The tortured artist is not just a cliche
Sai Hashizume's latest exhibition of precision realist painting, "This Isn't Happiness," is about updating some of the masters of Western art history. In her five new works, she deals prominently with the surrealist Rene Magritte and Vincent Van Gogh. She also adopts the ominous chiaroscuro of 17th-century Baroque painting, as well as some often darkly symbolic references from 17th-century Dutch still-life painting. Her themes are known, but remain enigmatic. As the title of the exhibition indicates, they are not altogether rosy.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 14, 2017
Masaaki Yamada: A painter of all stripes and colors
Masaaki Yamada (1929-2010) is like a mystery man of modernism. He apparently had no specialist art training of note and is known only by a skeleton biography that is mostly blank before 1943, and patchy thereafter. Said to have begun painting from the so-called tabula rasa of bombed out World War II Tokyo, his unforgettable memories of conflict forced him into a covenant with painting in which he sought meaning and direction in a world he could control.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 14, 2017
Borders in question for Chim↑Pom's new art show
Ballsy art collective Chim↑Pom have taken on Donald Trump's America in their solo exhibition "The other side." One of the most well-known contemporary iconoclasts in Japan, Chim↑Pom have previously caught rats before dyeing them yellow and red to resemble Pikachu and installing them on a Tokyo street, added depictions of the stricken Fukushima nuclear reactors to the lower-right corner of artist Taro Okamoto’s public mural in Shibuya and contributed work to an inaccessible group show within the Fukushima exclusion zone as part of their ongoing mission to be in the wrong place at the right time.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 14, 2017
'Soseki, Kyoto and the Oyamazaki Villa: Commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Novelist's Birth'
March 18-May 28
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 7, 2017
'Physicatopia': Boys being boys
Being only a part-time art historian, but full-time gossip, I spend more time commiserating with my single female friends on the problem of "Why are there no great men?" than I ponder the rhetorical "Why have there been no great women artists?", as feminist art historian Linda Nochlin asked in 1971 (hint: who writes the art history?).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 7, 2017
'Air-Real'
March 11-May 14
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Mar 7, 2017
'Tohoku — Kumamoto Exhibition Linked by Art, Architecture and Design'
March 1-April 30
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 28, 2017
'The Israel Goldman Collection: This is Kyosai!'
Feb. 23 -April 16
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 28, 2017
'Human: Ideal Expression of People in Japanese Painting'
March 1 -May 31
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 14, 2017
'Edo and Beijing: Cities and Urban Life in the 18th Century'
Feb. 18-April 9
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 14, 2017
'Parody and Intertextuality: Visual Culture in Japan Around the 1970s'
Feb. 18-April 16
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 14, 2017
'The Exhibition of The Sengoku Period: A Century of Dreams'
Feb. 25-April 16
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 7, 2017
Yasuyuki Namikawa: A master of cloisonne color and design
There are two ways that the skill of craftsmanship can be emphasized: by showing it off through masses of meticulous decorative details, or by stripping everything to the bare minimum and bringing into focus just a few perfectly executed qualities. Think of it as maximalism vs. minimalism — Gucci vs. Kinfolk.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 7, 2017
'The Works of Yasuji Hanamori: A Designer's Hand, an Editor's Eye'
Feb. 11-April 9
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Feb 7, 2017
'The Collection of Matsumoto City Museum of Art: Connections, Nature and Yayoi Kusama'
Feb. 11-March 12
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Jan 31, 2017
Naoki Ishikawa: the full picture
Naoki Ishikawa does not seem to want to take fantastically dramatic photographs. He has travelled from the North to South Pole, climbed "The Seven Summits," the highest mountains of every continent, and traveled the length of the Japan, but his images are remarkable for their restraint and subtlety. In his solo show at Art Tower Mito, there are awe-inspiring views to be seen — the huge slab-sided wall of a glacier jutting into the sea under an overcast sky, for example, or the peak of Mount Fuji floating on a sea of clouds — but pictorial extravagance may not be the main point.
'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines
A pedestrian cools himself with a folding hand fan as he waits for a ride along a road in Manila on Wednesday, as extreme heat hit the Philippines.
Yen rebounds strongly after first slide past ¥160 since 1990
The yen dropped to ¥160.245 per dollar on Monday before heading into the other direction to ¥155.01 amid speculation of an intervention by Japanese currency authorities.
Did Japan intervene to prop up the yen? Analysts think it did.
A man walks past an electronic board displaying the exchange rate for the yen against the U.S. dollar (right) in Tokyo on Tuesday.
JAL cancels international flight after captain gets drunk at Dallas hotel
A Japan Airlines' flight from Dallas to Tokyo was canceled last week after its captain got drunk at a local hotel.
Golden Week crowds greeted with high temperatures as holiday period kicks off
The departure lobby for domestic flights is crowded with travelers at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on Saturday, the first day of this year's Golden Week holidays.
Climate change, chalky grains and the risks for Japan’s rice farmers
A farmer plants seedlings in Satsumasendai, Kagoshima Prefecture. Japan’s self sufficiency rate for rice is nearly 100%, compared with 38% for food overall, on a calorie basis.
Japan wants you to spend more with ‘luxury tourism’
Performers play a traditional drum unique to Wajima, Ishikawa Prefecture, in the prefectural capital of Kanazawa on March 16 to mark the extension of the Hokuriku Shinkansen line to Tsuruga Station in Fukui Prefecture.
Theaster Gates’ ambitious ‘Afro-Mingei’ brings Black Chicago to Tokyo
Theaster Gates' “A Heavenly Chord” lines up church pews before seven speakers and a Hammond B3 organ, a type of electric organ prevalent in Black American churches.
Casa del Cibo: A thriving jewel born from Tohoku’s harsh past
When chef Ryohei Ikemi moved to Hachinohe, Aomori Prefecture, and opened Casa del Cibo in 2011, it was the first proper Italian restaurant in the city.
Town to block view of Mount Fuji in response to overtourism
The town government of Fujikawaguchiko, Yamanashi Prefecture, decided to set up a 2.5-meter-high screen to prevent tourists from taking pictures of Mount Fuji looming behind a convenience store.

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