author

 
Menu
Search
 
November 22, 2024
 

Today's print edition

Home Delivery
Subscribe for more access

Meta

Kaori Shoji
Kaori Shoji writes about movies and movie-makers for the Film Page, plus takes a turn at the Bilingual Column. Biggest mistake of her career: taking the very dignified Nagisa Oshima to McDonald's for an iced coffee.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Oct 21, 2008
Confessions of a not so eco-friendly woman
Contrary to the national effort to increase eco-awareness, encourage environmentally friendly behavior and promote domestically grown vegetables; contrary to the general trend to alienate smokers and lovers of nitrite-drenched hot-dogs — here I stand, alone, a veritable black smudge on the environmental...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 17, 2008
'Every Little Step'
Cameras go behind the scenes of a Broadway audition for the first time in "Every Little Step" (released in Japan as "Broadway Broadway"), a documentary about dancers auditioning for a part in the revival of "A Chorus Line," itself a musical about dancers auditioning.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 10, 2008
'Get Smart'
After viewing "Get Smart," I understand why 80 percent of women in the developed world cite the following as the top problem in their personal lives: they'd like to change their jobs and start over, but they don't exactly know what to do. Call off the dogs: What most of us want to do, in the innermost...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 3, 2008
'Goya's Ghosts'
Milos Foreman's "Goya's Ghosts" significantly lowers the bar of the creative biography, a bar that Foreman himself had raised to unprecedented loftiness in "Amadeus." It's still the one film whose robe most aspire to touch, even fleetingly, before falling to the knees in abject worship.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 26, 2008
'Be Kind Rewind'
How much cute can a straight man generate (and we're not talking about his looks here) without getting thwacked on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper? If the man happens to be French filmmaker Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," "The Science of Sleep") the answer is: TONS. During...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 19, 2008
'Lou Reed's Berlin'
During my youth I decided that one day in decrepit middle age I would aim to become one of three people: Mother Teresa, Fyodor Dostoevski or Lou Reed. Then I grew up and got real — the first two were impossibly lofty, but Reed was a goal to strive for. With his public moods that fluctuated between...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 12, 2008
'Married Life'
One of the mildly perverted joys of "Married Life" comes from confirming that the Hollywood cinematic marriage was just as problematic in 1949 as it is today — and for much the same reasons. And then the film runs out of mileage. Based on the 1959 novel, "Five Roundabouts to Heaven," by John Bingham...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 9, 2008
The withered middle-aged guy becomes a hot item in Japan's dating market
If you happen to be an over-45 male, looking a little tired, inclined to decline party invitations because you can't stand the hassle, comfortable in your own company and not really caring what other people think — so, the news is ALL good, at least in urban Japan. You are, or are extremely close...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 5, 2008
Taking Hitler by the horns
As the son of a Jewish mother who escaped the Holocaust by moving to Switzerland ("at the very last moment!"), Dani Levy has had a lifelong fascination with the Third Reich.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 5, 2008
'The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler'
Since "The Downfall" (2004), stories about Hitler or German life under the Third Reich have been rapidly emerging from Germany created by a new generation of directors born long after World War II. "Sophie Scholl: The Final Days" from 2005 is the standout, a heavily introspective work about a girl who...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 29, 2008
'Je m'appelle Elisabeth'
One of the outstanding things about the life of Elisabeth (age 10), aka "Betty" in "Je m'appelle Elisabeth" (International Title: "Call Me Elizabeth") is the vast amount of time she has to go for long, solitary bike rides, discover and investigate the ruins of an old house, and tell herself stories at...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2008
Grappling with Japan
They met in a cafe in Manhattan. She was working on a comic strip for her book, which was about a young artist and her quest for an apartment and a day job in Brooklyn. He was a successful French film director (although she didn't know this at the time) having coffee with his two small sons. The boys...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2008
'Tokyo!'
Like any other big city, Tokyo does things to you. The three directors in the omnibus movie "Tokyo!" however, inflict their penetrating stare upon the city and don't flinch when the city gazes right back — they all give as good as they get. They know that what happens here is both unique and ubiquitous...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 15, 2008
'Sex and the City'
Hmmm. This is tough. Trashing "Sex and the City" is like saying you don't own one pair of great strap-on heels or a little black dress. It's like admitting to years of celibacy. Immediately, you're seen as less than a woman (the modern definition of one anyway), one with no sense, no taste, weird and...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 12, 2008
It ain't too bad being a joshi or a danshi
For a long time I couldn't pronounce the word otoko (男, man) without slightly blushing; I didn't much like the word in English either, but in Japanese it sounded a little vulgar and what women of my grandmother's generation would call hashitanai (はしたない, crude and ill-mannered).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 8, 2008
'It's a Free World'
In the world of U.K. filmmaker Ken Loach ("Raining Stones," "Sweet Sixteen," "The Wind That Shakes the Barley") the working class have dignity; they speak and act with principle, even when these happen to be misguided. They may be bogged down by poverty, lack of schooling, recessions and unemployment,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 1, 2008
'Love in the Time of Cholera'
It's easy to fall in love with a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but certain obstacles stand in the way of loving his characters. As time goes by and one becomes increasingly mired in the concerns of the 21st century — "Should I buy an iPhone?" "How many minutes do I have left on this exercise machine?"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 25, 2008
'Kung Fu Panda'
He's fat, he's lazy, he's an underachieving slob. But Po the Panda could just be the answer to the prayers of a martial-arts master in "Kung Fu Panda," this summer's animation blockbuster from Dreamworks, opening in Japan to precede the Beijing Olympics.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 18, 2008
'Manufactured Landscapes'
It takes director Jennifer Baichwal close to 10 minutes to move from one end to the other of the electronic-parts factory in Fujian, China — the fast-moving camera glides along the floor showing aisles and aisles of yellow-jacketed workers bent over their tasks.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 18, 2008
The photographer who snaps it as it is
In his teens, photographer Edward Burtynsky worked in the factory of General Motors in his native Ontario. The experience gave him a taste for "seeing large things in a big perspective," as he describes it. He built his career on stark, amazingly beautiful images of the effects of industry on the environment...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

The celebrated artist ‘updating’ the kimono
The celebrated artist ‘updating’ the kimono

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS note

Read more

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER