Born in 1991 on a small island in Japan’s Seto Inland Sea, Honami Yano is an animator and filmmaker based in Kyoto and Tokyo. Having always loved to draw and paint, it wasn’t until her years in college, and a chance opportunity to study at RISD in the U.S., when she discovered animation. And it quickly became on obsession that merged her love for drawing, with moving images.
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all photos courtesy Mari Ando
Even for native speakers of Japanese, the kanji characters for all the different types of sushi is not a subject anyone would want to be tested on. They have numerous strokes, are fairly complex and all look similar, owing to the fact that they all use the radical for fish, which is 魚. There’s 鱸 and 鱈 and 鯛 but what do they all mean? That’s where the Sushi Yunomi could come in handy.
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“Blue Smile” 530×455mm Oil and acrylic on canvas 2021
Numerous panels, much like the ones that appear in comic books, come together to form incongruous yet multi-dimensional portraits. From realism and surrealism to cubism and pop, each panel is painted by the artist himself in a multitude of styles. It’s a process typically frowned upon in the art world, which encourages consistency and singularity in artistic styles. But for Kotaro Hoshiyama, the breaking of these rules allowed him to cultivate his own unique style of art.
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The global pandemic has forced many of us to spend more time in our rooms than we ever expected. And for those living in dense cities, that also means we’ve been using our curtains more. So Tokyo-based designer Oto Kawamata came up with an idea that would allow us to make that indoor time subtly more enjoyable, even with closed curtains.
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How do you teach the concept of mass? Our ability to sense weight and mass just by lifting things is a skill that’s atrophied over time, particularly in the age of video games and smartphones. But a group of designers and manufacturers have weighed in, creating Tsumi-gram: a new type of toy that helps build on the concept of mass from an early age.
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The ukiyoe artist Kawase Hasui (1883-1957) lived through tumultuous times, but you wouldn’t know it from his woodblock prints. Sometimes referred to as a poet with the spirit of a traveler, Hasui traveled Japan in search of nostalgic and everyday landscapes that struck a chord in his own heart. Often depicting the quiet and forlorn, Hasui’s art was perhaps his way of coping with the dramatic shift that was occurring in Japan: a rapid and widespread drive to modernize and engage with the rest of the world.
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all photos by Keizo Kioku | courtesy Anomaly
Japanese artist Kei Imazu, who is based in Indonesia, is currently wrapping up a large-scale exhibition at the Anomaly gallery in Tokyo. Along with numerous large-scale paintings is a time-based work that depicts the devastating impact that industry is having on earth’s ecosystem.
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all photos courtesy Setagaya Literary Museum
The prolific Japanese manga artist Jiro Taniguchi, who passed away in 2017, left behind an immense body of work that continues to be admired both in his home country but also abroad. In Japan, he is perhaps best known for his illustrations in Kodoku no Gourmet (“Solitary Gourmet”), a cuisine manga written by Masayuki Qusumi. But his solo works like Aruku hito (“The Walking Man”) and Haruka na machi e (“A Distant Neighborhood”) had to travel overseas to really shine. A large-scale exhibition in Tokyo reflects on the craftsmanship, details and compositions that went into Taniguchi’s work using over 300 original drawings.
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Each year we look forward to Halloween, not for the ghosts and ghouls but for Japan’s jimi (mundane) halloween costumes: outfits so ordinary that they have to be explained.
The tradition was started in 2014 by a group of adults at Daily Portal Z who “kind of wanted to participate in the festivities of Halloween, but were too embarrassed to go all out in witch or zombie costumes.” So instead of the flashy and flamboyant costumes they had been seeing gain popularity in Japan, they decided to dress up in mundane, everyday costumes.
You can comb through social media using the hashtag #地味ハロウィン but below we present to you some of our favorites from this year’s festivities.
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Kohaku Uta Gassen, commonly referred to simply as Kohaku, is a year-end music festival that has aired on Japanese television since 1951. Practically a national pastime, close to 40% of the population tune in as they reflect on the past year. This year, for the first time in almost 15 years, the program announced a new logo that signifies a small yet significant change.
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OrySnack: The Bar Where Bartenders Work From Home
Winners of Japan’s 2027 Packaging Design Awards
Tokyo is Gearing Up for an Art-Filled Fall. And the Entire City is Here for It
Japanese Aquarium Drops 2026 Version of Flowchart Illustrating Their Penguin Relationships. This Year There’s an English Version.
Kirie Artist Carves Playful Narratives Into Tree Leaves
