Category: CULTURE

Although many bemoan the state of the Japanese music industry, at least the talented people tasked with making the music videos seem to be keen on pushing boundaries. "Ponpara Pecorna Papiyotta" ...

We first wrote back in 2014 about Babymetal's quest to conquer the world after they were covered by the online edition of UK fashion magazine i-D. At the time, the part gothic Lolita idols, part ...

Maker culture sites, fab labs and hackerspaces have been springing up all over Tokyo in recent years, offering designers (both established professionals and aspiring amateurs) the chance to share ...

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. LP Hartley wrote those words as the opening of The Go-Between, a very English novel about very English themes. But the message ...

The ludic Japanese Twittersphere strikes again. Japanese Twitter users like to play tag games where they post a picture of someone (typically someone famous or currently in the news spotlight) and ...

If you want to see art in Tokyo, you can check out the city's near endless supply of events and spaces, such as the upcoming art fair to be held at Park Hotel Tokyo. Or you can go ...

Tokyo has a new art fair opening next month and its first hotel-based one since the demise of Art@Agnes in 2009. Art in Park Hotel Tokyo runs for two days from March 12th to March 13th, ...

NHK Symphony Orchestra is teaming up with music artists from across different styles and genres for a special concert on March 22nd at NHK Hall, Tokyo. As part of the celebrations of 90 years ...

Yanagawa City in Fukuoka Prefecture has created Sagemon Girls, its new promotional video featuring over 1,000 performers. The formidable number of extras is the highest ever for such a marketing ...

A new film has been released in Japan challenging the anti-whaling and dolphin-hunting attitudes of foreign activists and filmmakers. Directed by Keiko Yagi, Behind the Cove purports to show the ...

Are we about to witness a revival of the J-horror film genre? Local horror films experienced a boom in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Starting with the 1998 release of Ringu, a raft of small but ...

Later this year, the Rio de Janeiro Olympic and Paralympic Games kick off. After they are finished, the handover event during the Rio closing ceremony will then see the clock really start ticking ...

Woman Act is a slightly awkwardly named Kanagawa Prefecture initiative aimed at bringing "women more and more into the main role". A worthy cause, we would all agree, in Japan's acutely ...

Okay, Wacky Japan alert... but this is quite fun, in a very cheeky way, and also might just be worthy of closer investigation. After all, here is a product that will not only turn heads, it might ...

The surprise smash hit event of 2015 in Tokyo was the Shunga Exhibition, the first such large-scale public showing of erotic prints in Japan. 200,000 people packed the tiny Eisei Bunko Museum over ...