Tag - kafka

 
 

KAFKA

Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 8, 2019
'Dr. Hoffmann's Sanatorium': Delving deep into the weird world of Kafka
Playwright Kazumi Kobayashi, better known as Keralino Sandorovich, unveils his latest play, in which a fictional discovery of a lost Franz Kafka novel is made
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
May 18, 2019
TBS drama misses an opportunity to shine a light on genuine workplace issues
The most common gripe I hear from white-collar employees at Japanese companies is about the fluid meaning of "quitting time." The feeling is that even if a worker has finished their tasks for the day, it is considered bad form to leave the office before their colleagues or supervisors do. There are, of course, no established rules that dictate such conduct, and I hesitate to call it a custom but even after three decades of debate over the question of unnecessary overtime and lost productivity in the Japanese workplace, there is still great hesitancy on the part of employees to go home "on time."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Dec 8, 2018
Kobo Abe's 'The Ark Sakura': A surreal narrative worth reading twice
'The Ark Sakura,' Kobo Abe's puzzling, dream-like narrative about an obese recluse living in a vast underground bunker, is a dense interlacing of punning wordplay, psychological excavation and surreal imagery.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 4, 2018
John Williams presents a made-in-Japan take on one of Kafka's classics
Written at the start of World War I and published in 1925 after its author's untimely death, Franz Kafka's "The Trial" is one of those novels everyone knows by reputation (or, in my case, from a fevered reading in high school).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Dec 9, 2017
'Secret Rendezvous' reveals primeval urge for knowledge and sexual satisfaction
"Secret Rendezvous" opens with an ambulance in the dead of night: The narrator's wife is taken to an underground hospital from which she vanishes. The connections to Franz Kafka's "The Trial" in the absurdist, comical and sinister world of Kobo Abe are unmissable, but Abe characteristically takes his narrative in directions that establish this milieu as uniquely his own.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 26, 2014
French idol reflects on her Japanese droid son
As a playwright, stage director, Osaka University professor, manager of the Komaba Agora Theater in Tokyo and leader of the city's Seinendan theater company he formed in 1983, Oriza Hirata — whose "contemporary colloquial theater" set the scene for much of Japan's new drama over the last 20 years — has long been in the forefront of Japan's theater world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Oct 1, 2014
Kafka's worm takes a high-tech turn
"I work a lot in France, where manga and anime are enormously popular, although many theater producers think they are basically for children and are often too violent. However, they regard my robot theater as being an essentially Japanese art form," the pioneering dramatist Oriza Hirata said recently during a break in rehearsals for his upcoming version of Franz Kafka's absurdist gem, "The Metamorphosis."

Longform

Historically, kabuki was considered the entertainment of the merchant and peasant classes, a far cry from how it is regarded today.
For Japan's oldest kabuki theater, the show must go on