Book Review: "Urayasu Tekkin Kazuko" by Kenji Hamaoka

Japan gets a lot of praise around the World for its manga, but the stark truth is that most of this is turgid drivel. You know the sort of ...

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Sympathy for the Devil

In this age of cheap sentimentality and easy excuses, everything has its apologists, defenders, and even fans. I’ve heard crows and na...

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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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Exhibition: Yukio Fujimoto

What do you do when you love playing with sound, but you're not quite good enough to be a professional musician? The answer is simple ...

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Exhibition: Shinto Gods and Buddhist Deities

One aspect of the Orient that Occidentals often find baffling is the ability of most Orientals to believe in several gods and religions at...

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Exhibition: Hiroshi Sugimoto

Photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto made his name photographing stuffed animals and waxworks. OK, this sounds like a dumb thing to do, but th...

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Exhibition: Iwami Furusawa

The Awakening, 1968 We've been hearing all the hype about the new Roppongi Art Triangle. What a load of b*ll*cks! While the ...

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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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Designed to dazzle: a lacquerware celebration

The quintessential Japanese aesthetic is that of wabi sabi, a beauty associated with things that are simple, rustic, unpolished or even pla...

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Kennin-ji: Zen and the Roundabout Road to Enlightenment

Tawaraya Sotatsu's Wind God and Thunder God In his classic book Yen in the Art of Archery , Eugen Herrigel makes it clear that trying...

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Exhibition: Tomatsu Shomei

No doubt, you're all familiar with the monochrome look of early 60s Japan that is rolled out with TV clips or magazine photos every time...

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