Art and design
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‘I go too far, too deep’: the Swiss wanderer who found the soul of Japan
In 1951, Werner Bischof was sent to cover the war in Korea. The photographer instead found himself captivated …
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UK royals’ Japanese artefacts to go on display at Buckingham Palace
Exhibition will include items amounting to ‘one of finest’ holdings of Japanese art in the westJapanese treasu…
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Haunting monotones: inside the strange world of Eikoh Hosoe
A survey of the work of the Japanese photographer, best known for his controversial collaboration with writer …
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Decaying but beloved, Tokyo’s Capsule Tower faces uncertain future
When it was built in 1972, it was the capital’s only example of the metabolism architectural movement – but ti…
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‘People arrived for work and got vaporised’: how Kikuji Kawada captured the trauma of Hiroshima
The holy grail of Japanese photobooks, Kawada’s Chizu was five years in the making and changes hands for £25,0…
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The photography of Hiro – in pictures
A selection of the work of the celebrated fashion photographer Hiro (Yasuhiro Wakabayashi), who died earlier t…
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Hiro obituary
Photographer whose experimental images transformed fashion and beauty advertisingThe biggest surprise in pictu…
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Tokyo review – lust and loneliness in Japan’s pleasure quarters
Ashmolean Museum, OxfordA seductive encounter with past and present at the Olympic city shows that Tokyo pract…
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‘Boundless invention’: British Museum to show more than 100 unseen Hokusai works
Drawings were for a planned work by The Great Wave’s creator called The Great Picture Book of EverythingMore t…
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Tokyo’s Olympic architecture: look, no Bird’s Nest…
Eye-catching new buildings will be in short supply when the Tokyo Olympics open next week. Instead, most venue…
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To infinity and beyond: the spectacular sensory overload of Ryoji Ikeda’s art
Incandescent light, the thud of Kyoto nightclubs, particle physics … it all goes into Ryoji Ikeda’s extraordin…
- Japan, Travel & leisure, Sex, Relationships, Life and style, Business, World news, Asia Pacific, Art and design
An uncertain future for Japan’s love hotels – in pictures
With Japan’s rules on movement less restrictive than many other countries, its love hotels have fared relative…
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Enter the void: photographs that find beauty in emptiness – in pictures
Paul Cupido’s Japan series is inspired by a saying of the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi: ‘An empty room will be…
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Neon nights: the living art of fireflies – in pictures
Photographer Kei Nomiyama captured dreamy, long-exposure images of fireflies in the mountains of Shikoku Islan…
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Japan’s taboo-breaking tattoo fans – in pictures
A growing tribe in Japan are defying deeply held prejudices linking tattoos with crime, turning their bodies i…
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Damon Albarn in a facemask: Kevin Cummins’ best photograph
‘He wanted to get on a train in Tokyo to see what they were like. He put on a facemask and did a shiver as a j…
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Fashion designer Kenzo Takada’s catwalk – in pictures
The late fashion designer was the first from Japan to break into Paris’s exclusive fashion milieu in the 1970s…
- Japan, Life and style, Craft, US news, World news, Documentary films, Design, Art and design, Culture, Film
Wood life: the soulful craft of George Nakashima
A new family-led documentary reveals the story of the US woodworker who, influenced by the philosophy of Japan…
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Kyotographie 2020: Vision
The Kyoto international photography festival’s theme this year is Vision, asking, in these unprecedented times…
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The big picture: a giraffe in Tokyo
This arresting image reflects Japanese street photographer Shin Noguchi’s impulse to capture cultures thrown t…