Thu-Huong Ha - The Japan Times

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November 28, 2024

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Thu-Huong Ha

Thu-Huong Ha is the culture critic at The Japan Times, focusing on contemporary art and fiction. Previously she was a reporter for Quartz, an editor for TED.com and an executive producer of TEDxNewYork. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, The Believer, and ArtReview, among others. Her debut novel, "Hail Caesar," was published by Scholastic/PUSH in 2007. Get in touch: [email protected] or instagram.com/whatthusee.

For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.

CULTURE / Books

Nov 19, 2024

Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu

“The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” newly translated into English, is an explicit rerun of the author’s older works with an alternate ending.

Izumi Suzuki’s autobiographical novel “Set My Heart on Fire” is the first novel by the author and actor to appear in English.

CULTURE / Books

Nov 12, 2024

‘Set My Heart on Fire’: Izumi Suzuki captures the heady cravings of youth

The cult writer’s autobiographical novel follows its unapologetic groupie narrator as she romps through Yokohama’s underground music scene in the 1970s.

Yuko Mohri uses “invisible forces” — gravity, weather, air, magnetic fields — to create jazzy kinetic sculptures.

CULTURE / Art

Nov 1, 2024

Yuko Mohri is a maestro of unstable elements

After a banner year at the Venice Biennale, the creator of jazzy kinetic sculptures opens her first large-scale exhibition in Japan.

Sanzo K. Matsunaga’s Akutagawa Prize-winning novel “Bari Sanko” centers on two men involved in an office hiking club. One is into dangerous off-path trekking, the other is more of a by-the-book conformist.

CULTURE / Books

Oct 19, 2024

Akutagawa winner ‘Bari Sanko’ takes office politics to the mountains

Though the plot takes time to get going, Sanzo K. Matsunaga’s novel takes a nuanced look at the implications of being an independent thinker in Japan’s corporate culture.

Han Kang is the first South Korean author to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.

CULTURE / Books

Oct 10, 2024

South Korean author Han Kang wins Nobel Prize in literature

Han is the first Asian woman and the first writer from South Korea to receive the award.

Bourgeois is perhaps best known among the general public for her giant steel spider sculptures, particularly in Tokyo, where a nearly 10-meter tall bronze cast of the original spider has loomed over the walkway in Roppongi Hills since 2003.

CULTURE / Art

Oct 4, 2024

Japan’s biggest Louise Bourgeois exhibit yet leans into ambivalence

At Tokyo’s Mori Art Museum, a large-scale retrospective of the visionary artist emphasizes her complex feelings toward femininity, memory, parenthood and the human body.

“A Whisper in the Eye of the Storm,” by Canadian artists Caitlind R. C. Brown and Wayne Garrett is an outdoor installation of around 14,000 recycled lenses of varied prescriptions.

CULTURE / Art

Sep 27, 2024

Weather makes for an unpredictable artist at Nagano art festival

Fram Kitagawa’s Northern Alps Art Festival embraces its inconvenient location and the natural elements.

Hiroyuki Sanada and the cast and crew of "Shogun" accept the award for best drama series at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, California.

CULTURE / TV & Streaming

Sep 16, 2024

‘Shogun’ and the painstaking art of ‘getting it right’

The Emmys-sweeping period drama went to great lengths to achieve historical accuracy — but that's just one piece of a bigger puzzle.

Hiromi Kawakami’s “Under the Eye of the Big Bird” takes place in a future where humans have developed genetic mutations that allow them to read minds and have powers of prescience.

CULTURE / Books

Sep 3, 2024

'Under the Eye of the Big Bird': Hiromi Kawakami's speculative future sets civilization adrift

The author reimagines sexual reproduction, family ties and societal roles in a passionless world that is neither a dystopia nor an improvement on reality.

Keiichi Tanaami died on Aug. 9 after a 60-year career as a Pop Art pioneer. He was 88.

CULTURE / Art

Aug 24, 2024

Remembering Keiichi Tanaami's surreal grotesqueries

The Pop Art pioneer passed away at age 88 on Aug. 9. His posthumous retrospective, “Adventures in Memory,” turns nightmare into fantasy.

Earthquakes are a fact of life in Japan, but there are strategies to keep yourself from spiraling into stress and despair over future catastrophes.

LIFE / Lifestyle

Aug 17, 2024

Dreading the Big One? How to manage pre-disaster anxiety.

Anxiety about potential natural disasters can take its toll, but mental health experts say there are practical solutions.

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.

COMMUNITY / Issues / Longform

Aug 9, 2024

In search of the ‘Japanese dream’

You've likely heard of the American dream. In Japan, where no such concept exists, immigrants forge their own ideals.

Ukrainian artist Nikita Kadan’s “The Objects from Another Place,” erected at a former power station, was created in the likeness of structures that appeared in children’s playgrounds all over the former Soviet Union.

CULTURE / Art

Jul 27, 2024

Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale's quiet expansion of hyper-local art

The event’s ninth edition doesn’t offer new bangers, but its detailed installations in the verdant mountains of Niigata Prefecture still present a unique experience.

Summer in Japan is now consistently brutal enough to drive you indoors and keep you there until autumn.

COMMUNITY / Voices / FOREIGN AGENDA

Jul 27, 2024

When did summer in Japan stop being fun?

Summer in Japan used to be something to enjoy. Now, it’s something to endure.

Naoki Prize winner Michi Ichiho (left), and Akutagawa Prize winners Sanzo K. Matsunaga (center) and Aki Asahina pose with their award-winning books at a news conference in Tokyo on Wednesday.

CULTURE / Books

Jul 17, 2024

Three novelists named for Akutagawa and Naoki awards

Authors Sanzo K. Matsunaga and Aki Asahina won the Akutagawa Prize for literary writers, while the Naoki Prize for genre fiction went to Michi Ichiho.

Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.

ENVIRONMENT / Sustainability / OUR PLANET

Jul 14, 2024

How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet

As summers get hotter across the world we’re met with a paradox: To stay cool, it seems we’re compelled to consume more.

Toshiko Takaezu made vases and bowls in all shapes and sizes, some that could fit in your palm and some towering over your head.

CULTURE / Art

Jun 23, 2024

The Japanese-American ceramicist who made pots as big as her

The exhibit “Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within,” on view at the Isamu Noguchi Museum, is part of a resurgence of interest in the Hawaiian artist of Okinawan descent.

Natsuko Imamura’s new short story collection "Asa: The Girl Who Turned into a Pair of Chopsticks" explores the worlds of three alienated girls whose problems are anything but typical.

CULTURE / Books

Jun 16, 2024

‘Asa: The Girl Who Turned into a Pair of Chopsticks’: Uncanny tales of troubled young women

Natsuko Imamura's narrators are young women with dogged resolve, few scruples and a naivete that borders on delusion.

Eschewing the comfort of Tokyo’s air-conditioned museums, the inconvenient art movement draws viewers into the countryside to see artworks such as Christian Boltanski’s “Les Regards.”

CULTURE / Art

Jun 7, 2024

A list of Japan’s remote art sites

Get off the beaten path this summer and discover art tucked away in the farthest reaches of Japan.

Yayoi Kusama’s “Pumpkin,” once the victim of high waves that dragged it into the sea, sits at the end of a pier on the south side of Naoshima.

PODCAST / deep dive

Jun 6, 2024

The sweaty pleasure of Japan’s inconvenient art

This week, writer Thu-Huong Ha is our tour guide into the world of Japan’s inconvenient art movement.

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Totopa in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward was picked by consultants TTNE as the best sauna of the year.

Japan’s sauna movement: Relax, refresh, repeat

By Greg Dvorak

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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