Toshio Okada is an anime producer, author, and lecturer. He is a co-founder and former president of the production company Gainax. He is portrayed by actor Gaku Hamada in the 2014 TV Drama Aoi Honō based on the autobiographical manga by his fellow Kazuhiko Shimamoto. He is representative director of Otaking Inc. and Cloud City Inc., as well as the founder of FREEex Inc. He also served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Tokyo's college of art and sciences and as a visiting scholar at Osaka University of Arts' character creative arts department.
Kenzo Okada was a Japanese-born American painter and the first Japanese-American artist to work in the Abstract Expressionist style and receive international acclaim. At the 29th Venice Biennale in 1958, Okada’s work was exhibited in the Japan Pavilion alongside that of five other Japanese artists, and Okada won the Astorre Meyer Prize and UNESCO Prize. According to artist Michelle Stuart, "when Okada came to the United States he was already a mature painter, well considered in his native Japan. To American abstraction Okada brought civilized restraint, an elegance of device and an unusual gift for poetic transmutation of natural forms."
The Zepp music halls are a group of Japanese music venues covering every area of the country. They play host to many international tours and are a popular stop among Japanese musicians. Each venue takes the Zepp name, along with the city in which it is located. The Zepp company is a subsidiary of Sony Music Entertainment Japan. Starting from 2017, Zepp locations also opened in other countries like Singapore (formerly), Taiwan, and Malaysia. In 2022, it opened its very first location in Malaysia at Bukit Bintang City Centre, Kuala Lumpur.
Ikko Tanaka was a Japanese graphic designer. Tanaka is widely recognized for his prolific body of interdisciplinary work, which includes graphic identity and visual matter for brands and corporations including Seibu Department Stores, Mazda, Issey Miyake, Hanae Mori, and Expo 85. He is credited with developing the foundational graphic identity for lifestyle brand Muji, emphasizing the "no brand" quality of their products through unadorned, charming line drawings paired with straightforward slogans. His use of bold, polychromatic geometries and his harnessing of the dynamic visual potential of typography are undergirded by a sensitivity towards traditional Japanese aesthetics. Though keenly sensitive to historical precedents and established conventions, Tanaka nevertheless maintained a degree of playfulness in his work, manipulating color, scale, and form to reconfigure familiar iconographies into fresh and accessible visual representations.
Tokyo Zokei University is a private university in Hachioji, Tokyo, Japan, founded in 1966 by Japanese art educator, fashion designer and design journalist, Yoko Kuwasawa (1910-1977). It is a four-year art college offering both bachelor's and master's degrees in studio arts. In 2016 a Doctoral (Ph.D.) program was established in Design Education and Research. The campus is situated in woodland within walking distance of Aihara Station on the JR Yokohama Line, but a university bus runs between station and campus.
Masato Hatanaka is a Japanese musician, composer, sound artist, sound designer and producer.
The 89th Emperor's Cup began on September 19, 2009 and ended on January 1, 2010 with the final at National Stadium in Tokyo, Japan. Gamba Osaka won the title for two years in a row. Since Gamba already confirmed 2010 AFC Champions League berth, the last spot of ACL for J.League club is awarded to Sanfrecce Hiroshima, which finished as 4th place of 2009 J.League Division 1.
The 90th Emperor's Cup (第90回天皇杯) began on 4 September 2010 and ended on 1 January 2011 with the final at National Stadium in Tokyo, Japan. Gamba Osaka were the two-time defending champions, having won two previous tournaments.
Ryota Kuwakubo is a Japanese multimedia artist. Kuwakubo was born in Tochigi Prefecture. In 1998 he co-produced the project BITMAN with the art unit Maywa Denki. Kuwakubo works with varying mediums, most commonly utilizing digital or electronic aspects, and a typical theme his works center on is contrasting matter.
Sachiko Kodama is a Japanese artist. She is best known for her artwork using ferrofluid, a dark colloidal suspension of magnetic nano-particles dispersed in solution which remains strongly magnetic in its fluid. By controlling the fluid with a magnetic field, it is formed to create complex 3-dimensional shapes as a "liquid sculpture".
Hiromi Marissa Ozaki, better known by her pseudonym Sputniko!, is a British/Japanese artist, designer and entrepreneur. She specializes in the field of speculative and critical design. She is known for her films and multimedia installation works inspired by emerging technologies’ possible impact on society and values – with a focus on gender issues.
Aiko Miyawaki was a Japanese sculptor and painter. She was best known for her sculpture series titled Utsurohi, installed at public spaces worldwide.
Shiro Takatani is a Japanese artist. He currently lives and works in Kyoto. Co-founder and visual creator of the group Dumb Type since 1984, he also became artistic director of the group from 1995 and also started an active solo career in 1998.
Video Hiroba was a Japanese video art collective founded as a result of the first Japanese Video Art symposium and exhibition, Video Communication/Do it Yourself Kit, organized by Michael Goldberg, Nakaya Fujiko, and Yamaguchi Katsuhiro. Members of Video Hiroba were interested in exploring the possibilities and production of video as a form of mutual communication technology in the public sphere.
Katsuhiro Yamaguchi was a Japanese artist and art theorist based in Tokyo and Yokohama. Through his collaborations, writings, and teaching, he promoted an interdisciplinary avant-garde in postwar Japan that served as the foundation for the emergence of Japanese media art in the early 1980s, a field in which he remained active until his death. He represented Japan at the 1968 Venice Biennale and the 1975 Bienal de São Paulo, and served as producer for the Mitsui Pavilion at Expo '70 in Osaka.
Hakudō Kobayashi is a Tokyo-based artist working in video and sculpture. He is best known for his work as a promoter of citizen video work. Kobayashi is also Representative Director of the NPO Shimin ga Tsukuru TVF which runs the annual Tokyo Video Festival. He taught at Seian University of Art and Design from 1992-2010.
Video Gallery SCAN was the first Japanese art gallery exclusively dedicated to the exhibition, preservation, and promotion of video art. Founded in 1980 by the female performance artist and fog sculptor Fujiko Nakaya, SCAN was an independent, artist-run organization situated in Tokyo's Harajuku neighborhood. While small in scale, the Gallery was a multifunctional space whose services included a video distribution service, video archive & library, screening studio, and exhibition area.
The 2022 J.League Cup, known as the 2022 J.League YBC Levain Cup for sponsorship reasons, was the 30th edition of J.League Cup, a Japanese association football cup competition. It began on 23 February 2022 and ended on 22 October that year.
Aki Inomata is a Japanese multidisciplinary contemporary artist and designer based in Tokyo. Her work addresses identity and displacement, and questions societal boundaries between humans versus animals and the natural versus man-made worlds. Much of her artistic practice aims at creating collaborative interspecies relationships through such contemporary modeling technologies as 3-D scanning and printing techniques. Inomata's cross-disciplinary Bio Art projects complicate the notion of production while proposing a new awareness of human and nonhuman ecologies, as she states: "The concept of my works is to get people to perceive the modes of life of various living creatures by experience a kind of empathy toward them."
