When the real-estate firm Tokyo Tatemono Co., Ltd. and architecture giant Taisei Corporation first announced detailed development plans for Otemachi Tower in the heart of Tokyo's financial district, their greening proposal seemed almost utopian: a biodiverse forest of some 200 deciduous and evergreen trees and a ground cover of ferns, grasses, and wildflowers? more...
It's No Game: The Manga * Anime * Games from Japan Exhibition
Christopher Stephens
Osamu Tezuka's influence on Japanese anime and manga has proven to be enduring and pervasive. So much that the Astro Boy creator's death in 1989 is now viewed as the dividing line between two distinct historical periods, just as Emperor Hirohito's death, one month before Tezuka's, marks the end of the Showa era and the beginning of Heisei. In the intervening 25 years or so, manga, anime, and games have continued to evolve both technically and artistically, increasingly informing and overlapping with each other. more...
Still Lifes on the Funky Side: Daisuke Fukunaga at the Tomio Koyama Gallery
Alan Gleason
Old mops, old tires, discarded electric fans, bits of plastic street detritus, all quivering with life like tropical underwater plants and painted with a lush, psychedelic palette . . . At first glance these appear to be gritty urban snapshots channeled through Salvador Dali. But Daisuke Fukunaga is no surrealist. His subjects are real and inanimate, but he skillfully and enthusiastically imbues -- or maybe a better word is "infects" -- them with life. more...
