Yasujiro Ozu was a film director who consistently depicted the evolvement of Japanese families. His movies are grounded in his own aesthetic sense regarded as “Ozu-cho” (Ozu tone), and are characterized by compositions shot from low camera angles and quiet dialog. This column will discuss this filmmaker who had many uncompromising particularities.

The Edo-Tokyo Museum, located in Tokyo’s Ryogoku, reopened in the summer of 2019 following the renovation its two performance halls. The halls have been redesigned to give all audiences, regardless of age, gender, or disability, the opportunity to enjoy traditional Japanese performing arts. To commemorate the reopening, the museum staged the Edohaku-Yose Special, an extra-special version of the Edo-Tokyo Museum Vaudeville regularly held in the museum’s Permanent Exhibition Room, in the renovated Large Hall. We were on hand to experience the inaugural performance, Rakugo and Noryo Sumiyoshi Odori.

For today’s interview, we will focus on crowdfunding as a topic “on money for creating and presenting work.” We talked with Takeshi Otaka, the head of MOTION GALLERY, a crowdfunding platform geared toward supporting creative endeavors.

Shopping Street connects the Kiyosumi-shirakawa Station to the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo. It was in this location that the Fukagawa Shiryokan-dori Shopping Street Cooperative Association began the Scarecrow Contest in 1998. Why did this take place in Kiyosumi-shirakawa, an area that has no connections to farming? We asked Toshihiro Wakebe, the man who started it all, about the event’s history.

Known for works such as A Wanderer’s Notebook and Floating Clouds, Fumiko Hayashi (1903-1951) was a writer who lived from the Meiji to Showa periods. Today, the house where she spent the later years of her life hosts the Hayashi Fumiko Memorial Hall. In order to preserve the building, only a part of the atelier wing and the garden are usually open to the public, but three times a year, guided tours are organized to provide visitors with an opportunity to explore the interior of the house.

A conspicuous force in yoga (Western-style Japanese painting) during the Meiji, Taisho, and Showa eras, Ryusei Kishida was a solitary figure, greatly influenced by modern French painting and focused on developing his own style of yoga painting. Following a path that was anything but straight, Kishida gradually found his unique style as he moved closer to the secrets of the world of painting.

Each year in July and August, the Tobacco & Salt Museum in Sumida-ku holds its interactive exhibition, Summer Holiday Exhibition for Children. The exhibition’s theme this year was “gifts from the sea,” a popular exhibit visited by crowds of children. We report on the fun and educational displays regarding salt, as well as the daily hands-on workshops conducted throughout exhibition.

Now, it’s time to play, a 2019 exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, features works by six artists that combine to create a fun and exciting experience for adults and children alike. Immerse yourself in art that plays like a game; get lost in a piece designed like a maze. It may just be the curiosity and ideas born from the act of play that delivers the creativity to pull us out of this era.

A leading German composer of operas in the 19th century, Richard Wagner sought to elevate the drama in opera over the music, in contrast to Italian operas, which highlight the skills of the female opera singer. Toward this end, Wagner composed theatrical works and constructed his own theater to stage his dramas. Here we present a few episodes that reveal Wagner’s passion for music and drama, earning him a loyal base of enthusiastic fans in his own day and to the present.

The Artists’ Survival Methods column introduces facilities and initiatives that are useful to young artists. This segment begins a series exploring the struggles that students who want to be artists face, featuring a round-table discussion among art university students and alumni. The discussion was moderated by Akinori Kishi, who in researching the paths taken by students after graduating from art programs has interviewed nearly 100 art and music university students, graduates, and faculty members. The main opinions shared at the round-table follow.

The National Theatre is the place to see such traditional Japanese performing arts as Kabuki and Bunraku puppet theatre. It is here that each year in June and July the Japan Arts Council hosts a program to help viewers appreciate Kabuki, featuring performances with supplementary explanations that are easy to understand even for first time audience members. On June 17, 2019, as part of this year’s program, the council hosted Discover KABUKI—How to Appreciate Kabuki in English, as well as its first Kabuki Workshop for Foreigners.

Giacomo Puccini was one of the most prominent composers of Italian opera active in the late 19th century through early 20th century. His depictions of ill-fated heroines through sweet, enchanting melodies have to this day continued to captivate opera fans around the world. In this section, we look at the fascinating aspects of Puccini who brought many enduring masterpieces into the world.

The Tokyo Contemporary Art Award (TCAA) was established by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Tokyo Arts and Space (Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo Metropolitan Foundation for History and Culture) in 2018 as a new prize for contemporary art. The two winners of the first ever TCAA were decided in mid-March, and the Award Ceremony and Commemorative Symposium were held on April 21, 2019, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

Le Corbusier is one of the best known architects of the 20th century. With 17 of his structures scattered throughout the world, including the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno, Tokyo, designated World Cultural Heritage sites in 2016, his work has been subject to a great deal of attention. Here, we look at Le Corbusier as an artist who reflected the spirit of the times in his architecture, painting, and multiple writings.

Yanaka. This Tokyo neighborhood brings in the new, while restoring and updating the traditional. It is here that HAGISO, a cultural complex with a café and gallery on the first floor and a salon space on the second floor, opened in 2011. We spoke with HAGI STUDIO’s Mitsuyoshi Miyazaki, who designed and operates HAGISO, about the appeal of working in this area.

Launched in 2006, the free magazine Osanpo Jimbocho boasts a circulation of 40,000 copies per issue, with 26 issues published to date. Content includes interviews with antiquarian bookshop owners and columns featuring places to dine or drink locally as well as themed walks exploring local curry houses, literary figures, architecture and more. With paid advertising covering production costs, the staff of about 15 people is all-volunteer. We spoke with chief editor Keiko Ishikawa.

For an artist, a record of received awards is an important indicator when measuring abilities and building a career. Among the numerous such challenging opportunities, the Campus Genius (CG) Contest is a student-only competition that invites aspirational works from a variety of genres ranging from animation, games, and installations to performances. In this interview, we asked two young CG Contest award winners what prompted them to enter the contest, and discussed their future prospects.

Georges Rouault was a French artist recognized as the greatest and last religious painter of the 20th century. Distinguished by the heavy contouring and glowing colors typical for stained glass art and thick layers of paint, his works were received with critical acclaim by contemporary fellow artists and art lovers, and made their way to Japan quite early. This article presents the human figures depicted in Rouault’s works that cut deeply into our inner world.

An exhibition inspired by the 2016 nationwide long-run hit animation film “In This Corner of the World” is held at the Museum of Life in the Showa Era from November 2, 2018 through May 6, 2019. A talk event with the participation of the director of the museum Kazuko Koizumi, and the film’s director Sunao Katabuchi and assistant director Chie Uratani, was also held at the Ota City Citizen Plaza on December 24, 2018.