Modern Japanese Architecture

After introducing sites about traditional Japanese architecture last week, hereby a list of sites about modern architecture in Japan. Although there are many excellent Japanese architects, it is surprisingly difficult to find good sites in English. For example, even though Tadao Ando is one of Japan’s best known architects at this point in history, his most obvious domains are all taken by cybersquatters.

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Kjeld Duits • Thursday June 18, 2009 • Art and Design • Add Comment

2003 Interview with Barry Eisler

The movie Rein Foru: Ame no Kiba (Rain Fall: Fangs of the Rain), based on the Rain mystery series by author Barry Eisler opens tomorrow. The movie is getting a lot of attention in Japan as the story is placed in this country. In September 2003, some six years ago when Eisler was barely known, I interviewed him about his books. At that time there were only two and he was working on the third, travelling to Macau, Rio de Janeiro, Hong Kong and Tokyo.

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Kjeld Duits • Friday April 24, 2009 • Art and Design • Add Comment

The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo

From Dec. 2, The Japan Times is serializing one of Japan’s early detective novels, The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi: Detective Stories of Old Edo, in which author Kido Okamoto (1872-1939), offers entertaining and thrilling stories set in Edo Period Japan.

Consecutive installations from the book appear in The Japan Times every week, from Tuesday to Saturday. For context and background of the book’s setting, as well as the time in which Kido wrote his work, it offers the introduction of The Curious Casebook of Inspector Hanshichi, written by the book’s translator Ian McDonald.

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The Japan Times • Sunday December 21, 2008 • Art and Design • Add Comment

Japan Cracking US Pop Culture Hegemony

Just two decades ago, Japan’s image in the world was of an economic juggernaut, challenging America and other industrialized nations with its push for dominance in everything from microchips to supercomputers. Discussion of Japanese culture typically referenced the traditional and offbeat worlds of, say, Kabuki or sumo.

Today, Japan sets the trends in what’s cool. Sarah Palin’s famous glasses came from a Japanese designer. Tokyo has the most Michelin-starred restaurants in the world, with eight of them earning three stars. Even America’s favorite food show, “Iron Chef,” is a Japanese import. Japanese women are pushing the limits of literary pop culture with blogs and cellphone novels. Japanese comics occupy ever-greater shelf space in bookstores, and animé-influenced movies like the “The Dark Knight” and “Spider-Man 3” find huge audiences in the West.

What all these media share is a nuanced Japanese aesthetic that has infiltrated global sensibilities – a sort of new “soft power” for Japan. In the process, they’re challenging delineations of good and evil from the world’s main purveyor of pop culture, Hollywood, as well as American ideals of the lone action-hero.

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The Christian Science Monitor • Monday December 15, 2008 • Art and Design • Add Comment

Dark Fantasies

Japanese photographer Miya Kishimura pulls you into a dark world of fantasy from which it is difficult to escape. A school girl in uniform with desperate eyes. The same girl with grotesque make-up. In another shot she lies on the street, seemingly dead. This is Kishimura’s world.

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Kjeld Duits • Friday March 21, 2008 • Art and Design • Add Comment

"I am Not an Artist..."

I discovered Sayaka Adachi (1977), or Chitchi, while I was taking Street Fashion photos in Osaka’s very trendy Horie district. Walking out of a park my eye got a glimpse of a huge painting hanging in a second floor gallery. The work pulled me into the building and up a gaudy staircase until I arrived in a large space with paintings showing faces of young Japanese that were very colorful and very ‘now’.

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Kjeld Duits • Thursday January 2, 2003 • Art and Design • Add Comment

The Cute Pink Bear with Blood on its Claws

The character Gloomy the Bear at first sight looks like a possible friend of Hello Kitty. Cute face, pink skin, simply drawn in basic colors. And then, suddenly, you notice the blood on its claws. Japanese illustrator Mori Chack’s creation is the most horrible nightmare you can ever fall in love with.

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Kjeld Duits • Friday November 1, 2002 • Art and Design • Add Comment