Narashige Koide: Loving the Alien

Nude Lying  (1930) White rappers used to be a joke until the recent advent of Eminem, whose rapping skills are now widely respected a...

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Photo: Junior High School Girls by Umekayo

Umekayo is a female Japanese photographer who takes warm-hearted and often funny shots of everyday life and ordinary people.

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Exhibition: Voodoo Child

Mother Breast Feeding   by Kitagawa Utamaro The 'Little Treasures' of Japanese Art Nowadays it is quite common to hear ...

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Exhibition: Japanese Posters of the 1930s

Ideas from left, right and center For those of us living today, the 1930s seem a rather scary period. Following the Wall Street cras...

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Interview: Shigi Goh

Any color just so long as it's yellow "Although yellow often has negative connotations in the West, here in the East it is ...

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Exhibition: Sumida River

Aftermath of the Disaster (1924) by Yoson Ikeda A century down along the Sumida In most of the great European capitals, wide, impressive r...

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The Chrysanthemum and the Rose: Japan Year 2001

This crossculutral affair is blooming lovely LONDON -- Anybody turning up at London's Hyde Park to walk their dog on the morning of Sa...

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Exhibition: Akira Kurosawa

The Storyteller's Storyboards Film director Akira Kurosawa (1910-1998) is perhaps more famous outside Japan than any other of...

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Takanori Oguiss: The Japanese Utrillo

When I first saw the oil paintings of Paris by the Japanese artist, Takanori Oguiss (1901-1986), I was strangely reminded of the neutron...

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Exhibition: Ryusei Kishida

Road Cut through a Hill (1915) by Ryusei Kishida Innovation and Exploration: Kishida's short but brilliant career When Japan opened up...

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Exhibition: Tokimune Hōjō

Leaves left by the divine wind When England was conquered by the Normans in 1066, it was profoundly changed. We might expect the same to h...

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Exhibition: Ukiyo-e at the Turn of the 20th Century

Sight at Ochanomizu (1880) by Kiyochika Kobayashi Ukiyo-e reflects turn of century mood changes across Japan The Meiji period is considere...

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Exhibition: Samurai Swords

The heart of the samurai and the soul of the swordsmith Modern warfare is increasingly being depersonalized by long range missiles, so-cal...

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Interview: Katsura Funakoshi

Two Heads are Better than One. What distinguishes an artist from a craftsman? Well, an obvious difference is the pricing of their ...

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Exhibition: Baur Collection

Ukiyo-e treasures make brief return The Baur Collection of ukiyo-e by several of Japan's top masters is this country's own version ...

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EXHIBITION: SHINSUI ITO

A passionate embrace of Nihon Shinsui Ito (1898-1972) was a central figure in Japan's artistic identity crisis during the 20th ...

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Exhibition: Yumeji Takehisa

Icons of a Forgotten Femininity Western culture is replete with empowering images of women, from the warrior Amazons of Greek mythol...

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Interview: Hitomi Uchikura

Mirroring the Fundamental Life Force Nothing is more elemental or common than light. Although taken for granted, it is the life-giving forc...

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Interview: Satoru Watanabe

Few of us can understand why the Taleban in Afghanistan are destroying the awe-inspiring giant Buddhist statues at Bamiyan instead of...

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Koga's Travels in Hyper-Reality

Innocent Moonlit Night, 1929 One of my favorite clichés about art is the one that says great art comes from great suffering, somethin...

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