The Japan Times: Features feed

"Kobe: Beautiful Colors"

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:10:00 PST

Printmaker Kazuo Totsutotsu (b. 1929) studied nihonga (Japanese-style painting) at Kyoto Prefectural School of Painting (today's Kyoto City University of Arts) before becoming a teacher in Ako and Kakogawa in Hyogo Prefecture.
When he moved again to teach at a high school in Kobe, he also started making woodblock prints.

Finding a piece of mind in contemporary art

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:11:00 PST

"Yayoi Kusama: Eternity of Eternal Eternity" at the National Museum of Art, Osaka, presents the "late" style of the internationally renowned artist.
The works are nearly all new — the product of a surge of activity from 2004 that resulted in two series: "Love Forever" and "My Eternal Soul." They are far tamer than her early works from the late 1950s, when she covered furniture in protruding soft phalluses and staged nude happenings, such as that of 1969 at the Rockefeller Garden at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Back then, as the artist explained, "I did body painting while my models f-cked a bronze sculpture by Maillol."

Galileo Galilei "Portal"

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:12:00 PST

Galileo Galilei's sophomore album, "Portal," manages to both document everything that's wrong with contemporary mainstream Japanese rock music and offer a better way for guitar-centric pop in this county. This Hokkaido group falls through many of the same trapdoors as artists dotting the Oricon Charts, highlighted by a bloated runtime and emotional clichÃ©s worthy of a Hallmark card. Yet it also adds enough interesting sonic wrinkles and delivers those clichÃ©s with Brando-like sincerity to make "Portal" a step ahead of bands who suffer the same flaws.
The biggest difference between "Portal" and last year's debut LP, "Parade," is the increase in electronic elements. The quintet adds more digital touches alongside the chugging guitar. It hasn't turned into a rock-dance cyborg like fellow Hokkaido group Sakanaction, though. Galileo Galilei uses the technics as bright additions to color its otherwise straightforward rock, a style not lacking in Japan today. Opener "Imaginary Friends" utilizes whirring synth as a pillow for the intimate boy-girl vocals to fall on, while songs such as "Freud" and "Good Shoes" get buffed out via prominent keyboard lines.

The emotional cadence of Nambata's abstract score

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:13:00 PST

When you visit Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery (TOCAG), you half expect to get a concert, simply because of its name. But such conflation is not as crazy as it sounds. The aural and visual arts have many affinities, and the language of painting and music even share some terms in common, such as tone, rhythm and composition.
This, and the fact that the gallery is located in a multimedia arts complex, which includes concert halls, may have inclined the gallery's curators to favor shows with lyrical or musical qualities. This was certainly the case with one of the earliest exhibitions held here, "Tatsuoki Nambata: Symphony of Life — Creation and Development of Japanese Abstraction," which looked at the art of an abstract painter whose work has been noted for its musical resonances.

"World of Kato Kunio"

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:14:00 PST

Goth-Trad hatches postdisaster pop

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:15:00 PST

Talking with Takeaki Maruyama in a Tokyo cafe, I'm caught off guard when the dubstep artist better known as Goth-Trad suggests that his fourth and latest album is pop. When I let it sink in, though, I realize that "New Epoch" could in fact be the perfect postdisaster-pop album.
Don't get him wrong: The 33-year-old isn't talking about the kind of pop-dubstep, or "brostep," that has grabbed hold of U.S. clubs in the six years since he released his third album, "Mad Raver's Dance Floor." That form of the genre (so-called for its popularity among U.S. frat boys) has crashed commercial charts via songs such as pop princess Britney Spears' "Hold it Against Me" and Japanese R&B singer Daichi Miura's "Black Hole"; it's the defining sound of British producer Rusko and the hugely successful U.S. export Skrillex, who is nominated for five Grammys at this weekend's awards show in Los Angeles.

"Okumura Akio and Works"

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:16:00 PST

This show looks into the 40-year career of Akio Okumura, the graphic designer behind the typography of some of Japan's most famous logos. His familiar work includes the cursive font for the confectioner Ezaki Glico, the curved letters of Rohto Pharmaceutical and recently, his work for the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application at Kyoto University.
To allow visitors to get a feel of what it is like to work in graphic design, part of the ddd gallery has also been set up as an office for Okumura, who will be available from time to time to talk to visitors; till March 8.

"Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions: How Physical"

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 12:17:00 PST

From Feb. 10, the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography will be, once again, hosting the annual "Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions."
The show, which this year is 15 days long, takes over the entire museum and explores the nature and potential of film through numerous visual works and installations by international artists. Events include film screenings, live performances and symposiums; Feb. 10-26.