The "modern girls" ("moga") who populate some of the works in the Japan Society's new exhibition, "Deco Japan," inhabit a world of contradiction: frivolity and militarism, bright colors and dark ...

But I had one more item on my personal agenda that I couldn’t possibly leave Japan without — or at least, without looking for it. That desideratum, of course, was the fountain pen, and there ...

That’s the significance of “Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945,” a major show now at the Society of Four Arts in Palm Beach. In addition to hundreds of paintings, brochures and ...

If Japan isn’t the country that springs to mind when you think of Art Deco, it’s hardly surprising. The Japanese version of the international style of the 1920s and 1930s has been rediscovered ...

I’m sorry to see the shift because there always has been confusion about what properly constitutes Art Deco, and a formal approach to its Japanese variants might have brought some clarity overall.

But when conjuring up mental images of this modern style, your mind might not automatically leap to Japan. “Deco Japan,” which just opened at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, flaunts nearly 200 ...