Category: CULTURE

Biwako Biennale 2014 kicks off on September 13th, running until November 9th in a small city along the edge of Japan's largest lake in Shiga Prefecture. This sixth edition of the festival ...

It seems that you can't claim to be famous these days unless you take part in the Ice Bucket Challenge to promote awareness of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). In Japan there have been a fair ...

Sometimes it can seem that Hello Kitty, Sanrio's popular cat character, is everywhere. Her cute iconic image adorns a nearly Mt Fuji-sized mountain of merchandise, from clothes to books, pens, ...

Local police in Nagoya have demanded that the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art remove 12 artworks by Ryudai Takano that depicted male genitalia. As first reported by Art Info, the action came after ...

Remember the intriguing Japan Twin Tail Association that we reported on back in May? That was when the organization launched its own pigtail hair idol group called drop. While this may all sound ...

Spiral Garden in Omotesando will be celebrating the stage design work of protean Japanese comedian, actor, writer, director and artist Kentaro Kobayashi. The "Art Made by Kentaro Kobayshi for ...

Japan has been reeling the last few days in the wake of the Sasebo schoolgirl murder in which 15-year-old Aiwa Matsuo was killed by an unnamed classmate, possibly helped by a friend. The victim was ...

It garnered headlines worldwide and made a fringe figure the talk of the town. The arrest of Megumi Igarashi (Rokudenshi-ko) on July 12th ostensibly for "distributing obscene materials" after she ...

It got quite a bit of attention when Japan's largest crime syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi, launched its own website (with theme song and videos) earlier this year, not least because the design is less ...

The sad truth is that sometimes Japanese consumers are a simple bunch, at least in the eyes of the ad men. Forget complex marketing strategies or clever stunts. The way to their hearts is just to put ...

Intergalactic bonsai! Just when you thought there couldn't be any more innovations on past traditions, along comes something that makes your jaw drop. Makoto Azuma, known for his eye-catching ...

The website for UK fashion magazine i-D currently features Japanese idol group Babymetal. Online you can find an interview with the three young Japanese ladies, "bringing kawaii-metal to the ...

While the latest Michael Bay Transformers movie is shooting up the box office around the world (though not yet in Japan), it's worth taking a look at a pretty spectacular local Japanese version. A ...

We remember the good ol' days when every tech blog was keen-eyed for the latest development from Japan, when mainstream newspapers at least partly seemed to take Japanese fashion seriously, and... ...

An exhibition based on the massively popular manga "One Piece" scheduled to take place at the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul from July 12th has been canceled, it was announced on July ...