Junya Ishigami: 'I want to make the sky'
Imagine a world where buildings don’t exist. A place with no rustic cottages nor gleaming skyscrapers, no classicism nor modernism, no preconceived idea of what a house or an office block should be. …
The archive
Art & Culture — page 7
Browse art & culture in the Akihabara archive.
The Quiet then Makes a Sound: KAWS Opens New Show @ Perrotin, Tokyo
In Tokyo, KAWS presented 6 new works, with one large work taking up the entirety of the front gallery. At first, the work appears to be large swaths of abstraction, with beautiful color arrangements …
Igor Oleynikov and Japanese author Eiko Kadono have won the 2018 Hans Christian Andersen Award
Japanese author Eiko Kadono has written picture books and novels. Her best-known book is Kiki’s Delivery Service, first published in 1985 in Japan. According to IBBY, she has published some 250 …
Meet COLOURFUUUL, Japan’s “first all foreign male idol group"
Idol groups come and go in J-pop at a quick clip. A new one debuting isn’t particularly newsworthy unless they hail from one of the huge talent agencies in the country (think Johnny &…
Tokyo Just Got A New Godzilla Statue
While this statue isn’t life-sized, this is a fitting tribute to a giant of Japanese cinema. The Shin Godzilla statue went up in Tokyo’s Hibiya, where Toho Studios was born. The plaza was p…
Naoto Fukasawa inserts Issey Miyake store into 132-year-old Kyoto townhouse
Machiya are a type of townhouse that were once common in Kyoto but are now becoming scarce, as owners often shy away from conducting expensive repairs, and instead choose to build contemporary replac…
Tower of the Sun reopens
The iconic tower of the 1970 Osaka World Expo has reopened to the public for the first time in almost 50 years, following reinforcement work. The 70-meter-tall "Tower of the Sun…
Anti-Decluttering House in Miyamotocho
Marie Kondo (or Konmari, if you prefer) and her decluttering empire has taken the West by storm. And it’s given Japan an image of ultra-minimalism where people live a simple lifestyle, free of a…
The Mechanical Bonsai Paintings of Mai Inoue
At the age of 24, Mai Inoue creates paintings that look like they could have been painted by her great grandparents. Her subject matter are bonsai: the Japanese art form of pruning and cultivating sm…
Danchi: A Photographic Journey Into Japan’s Public Housing Projects
“I’m standing alone before a complex of danchi. Row upon row of identical numbered buildings extend into the distance. Fluorescent lights flicker to life illuminating the stark concrete.” That’s Toky…