By the time the lunch gong had sounded in the great hall of the Heng Yang monastery, I had already placed generous votive offerings at a shrine in the Temple of the Goddess of Mercy, watched a flour doll and knot-maker at work, witnessed minor grievances being aired at the Ancient Courthouse and met a…

©︎2020 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All Rights Reserved Grand Hyatt Tokyo is pleased to introduce a new afternoon tea menu in collaboration with Takashi Murakami, one of six artists currently featured in the “STARS: Six Contemporary Artists from Japan to the World” exhibition showing at Mori Art Museum until January 3, 2021. Fiorentina Pastry…

Brett Bull speaks to an American gentleman who has spent more than 26 years sharpening his knowledge of the art of traditional sword polishing. When Jon Bowhay picks up a Japanese sword, samurai fantasies of hacking at armor and crushing bone – probably standard visions for most – are not what come to mind. Rather,…

Dr Mamoru Mohri, director of the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, captured the imagination of an entire generation with his exploits in space in the early 1990s. Rather than rest on his laurels, however, the man who has spent 19 days looking down on the earth from on high is working tirelessly to…

Eri Yaegashi draws inspiration from the creative freedom that exists in Tokyo, writes, Laura Fitch. TOKYO IS A CITY THAT’S KNOWN FOR its style. The metropolis has spawned artists and designers of international fame and boasts some of the most architecturally creative buildings in the world. But for every Hanae Mori or Hiroshi Sugimoto, there…

Drum troupe Kodo has been putting on supersonic taiko performances around the world for more than 30 years. Judit Kawaguchi heads backstage to find out what makes its members tick. It is all but impossible to describe in words the sheer power and intensity generated by traditional drum troupe Kodo during a performance.  A typical…

“Where are you from,” she asked. I thought about where I was from and lit a cigarette. That place colored by associations with tattoos, the jabisen, and ways as strange as ornamental designs. “Very far away,” I answered. A Conversation, Yamanokuchi Baku.  Once a place natives of these islands were reluctant to claim as their…

Entertainer Natsuki Mari injects a touch of je ne sais quoi into the kitsch world of modern Japanese showbiz, writes Judit Kawaguchi. Portraits by David Stetson. On a stage overwhelmed by a giant mountain of hay, Natsuki Mari sits on a steel can, her wavy hair messy and full of straw. She looks both lovely…

Rob Gilhooly explores a 14-billion-ton block of salt in the middle of South America. Had it been part of some bizarre dream, it might have been more credible. After hours of driving along unsealed tracks that snaked through windswept villages straight out of a Sergio Leone movie, we entered what looked like a vast, open-air…

Almost every Westerner who has ever read anything about Japan has probably come across Professor Donald Keene’s name at some point in time.  The 83-year-old professor has published around 40 books in English on Japanese topics, including both studies of Japanese literature and culture and translations of Japanese classical and modern literature. His award-winning title,…