If like me you have an appetite for exploring all things related to Japanese design and crafts, Irwin Wong’s introduction to Handmade in Japan will surely prompt you to investigate further. Wong is a well-known commercial photographer based in Tokyo, so on the book’s announcement I knew it would be filled with evocative images of Japan and…

Marty Gross is a filmmaker and producer based in Toronto. He also founded and runs the Mingei Film Archive Project. Established in the 1920s in Japan , the Mingei Movement championed the beauty of everyday, homemade objects. Over the past few years, Marty Gross has overseen the restoration and remastering of a vast collection of…

Food cultures around the world employ various aromatic herbs and spices to stimulate the appetite and promote healthful eating. Japan has a long history of using yakumi, best translated as “condiments,” that enhance flavor while providing a benefit to the body in some manner. Indeed, the Japanese word yakumi is written with calligraphy for “medicine” and “flavor,” suggesting…

Textiles artist Maki Aizawa’s original line of kimono-inspired jackets are featured in the prestigious Santa Fe International Folk Arts festival this month. She’s humbled to be sharing kimono-making techniques which she applies to the modern-designed jackets, her way of giving visibility to what she describes as “a dying art form.” But despite designing and sewing…

The long-awaited lifting of the ban on foreign tourists coincides with the launch of striking new works — and a new hotel — on Naoshima Island. Just in front of the Park building of Benesse House, the sleek and art-filled hotel-cum-museum at the heart of Japan’s Naoshima Art Site, I spot something new. A transparent…

“Kimono Style: The John C. Weber Collection,” opening today in the Metropolitan Museum’s Japanese Wing, is an immersive, must-see exhibition that considers the evolution of this foundational garment within Japan and its relation to the West. There are many ways to explain the cross-cultural appeal of the kimono. One of the most persuasive is the…

Takashi Kobayashi, founder of Japanese company TreeHouse Creations, is fascinated by the vitality and aura of trees. It was while admiring the beauty of a Himalayan cedar that he felt this spark, one that would never leave him and that would inspire him to build his first treehouse. This was in 1994, somewhere in a little…

With their pink hue, sakura mochi instantly evoke the colour of cherry blossom, and indeed this is the origin of their name, as sakura is the term for cherry trees and their flowers in Japan. Mathilda Motte, founder of La Maison du Mochi, shares the recipe to make them in her book Mochis. In it, she groups the recipes according to the…

The World’s Best Rice comes in a sturdy, gold-embossed box containing six slender packages. Sold for ¥10,800 for 840 grams (that’s $95 for less than 2 pounds), it’s nearly 30 times more expensive than what you’d pay at a supermarket in Japan. The Guinness World Records named it the priciest rice on the planet in…

One of the most important artists in the history of tokusatsu (video productions using special effects) was Tohl Narita, who was the creator of some of the genre’s iconic characters. Artist, sculptor, artistic director and author, he worked on various productions by Toho during the Showa era, and also on several  television series by Tsuburaya Productions, like Ultra…