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April 08, 2025
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 10, 2014
Aku no Kyoten (Lesson of Evil)
Director: Takashi Miike Language: Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 3, 2014
A quarter century of Japanese films in review
In 25 years of reviewing Japanese films and interviewing Japanese filmmakers for this newspaper, I've written 1 million words, give or take a few. This is clearly something no normal person would do, but for me it beats working.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 3, 2014
Sake-Bomb
Director: Junya Sakino Language: English, Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 27, 2014
Bloody hip-hop war set in technicolored Tokyo
A Japanese hip-hop musical? How about a samurai swashbuckler set on the streets of Compton, California? But Sion Sono makes his new film, "Tokyo Tribe," more than an oddity of cultural appropriation. Truth be told, I felt queasy as the story, based on a manga by Santa Inoue, began to unfold in a crime-ridden...
CULTURE / Film
Aug 27, 2014
Bokura ga ita Zenpen and Kohen (We Were There First Love & True Love)
Director: Takahiro MikiLanguage: Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2014
No leader of the pack, but still a heartthrob
What is it with women and bad boys on motorcycles — including college boys with pretensions to being bad? A conundrum of my youth. Yes, I understood the appeal of a Marlon Brando or James Dean with a big thrumming machine between his legs, but why did the women I knew prefer riding on a Honda with...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 13, 2014
The long, bone-chilling gaze of new director Ayumi Sakamoto
Directors have various ways of communicating in interviews — beyond the usual talking points, that is. Koji Fukada drew me geometrical diagrams to explain the intertwining relationships in his coming-of-age drama "Hotori no Sakuko (Au Revoir l'Ete)." Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki sketched me...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 13, 2014
Female anxiety shot from every angle
The Japanese film industry used to be like much of the rest of Japanese society: male-centered and male-run. It made plenty of movies about women and for women, but their directors were all men. That began to change when Naomi Kawase won a Cannes Camera d'Or prize in 1997 for her first feature, "Moe...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 13, 2014
Bushi no Kondate (A Tale Of Samurai Cooking: A True Love Story)
Director: Yuzo AsaharaLanguage: Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 6, 2014
Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Taika-hen (Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno)
The jidaigeki (samurai period drama) is dying, we have been told again and again. Topknots and swords have become rare sights on television, while Japanese studios, which once devoted nearly half their production to the genre, now essay only the occasional chanbara (swordplay) film, with mixed box-office...
CULTURE / Film
Aug 6, 2014
Danshi Kokosei no Nichijo (Daily Lives of High School Boys)
In Daigo Matsui's 2013 comedy, a gang of horny students at an all-boys high school are confronted by a mass invasion of plaid-skirted lovelies from a nearby girls high school for a joint festival. The sharp, absurdist sense of humor of his 2012 breakout hit "Afro Tanaka" is also present in this film,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 2, 2014
The Inland Sea
In his lifetime, Donald Richie was best known as a pioneering expert on Japanese cinema; he famously first brought the films of Yasujiro Ozu to the attention of the West, as well as writing the trailblazing "The Japanese Film: Art and Industry" with fellow cinema scholar Joseph L. Anderson. But among...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 30, 2014
Lost in a dingy maze of booze, sex and crime
Golden-gai, a warren of tiny bars near Shinjuku's Kabukicho entertainment district, has long been a refuge for writers, musicians, filmmakers and other artistic types, who congregate at drinking establishments with like-minded patrons. The area also has a seedier, less reputable side, which is graphically...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 30, 2014
Yurusarezarumono (Unforgiven)
Director: Lee Sang-ilLanguage: Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 30, 2014
R-18 to G: Are pink films losing their potency?
Yuji Tajiri and Shinji Imaoka were two of the “Seven Lucky Gods of Pink” — a group of young pinku eiga (erotic film) directors who were hailed as the genre’s hope after they rose to prominence in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 23, 2014
Love beyond the realms of erotic cinema
The varieties of love are many: From the chaste and platonic, to the sexually uninhibited and emotionally obsessed. In a long career as a pinku eiga (pink film) director Yuji Tajiri has concentrated on the latter end of the scale, but in his latest film, "Koppamijin (Broken Pieces)," he makes a successful,...
CULTURE / Film
Jul 23, 2014
New Directors From Japan
Directors: Nagisa Isogai, Hirobumi Watanabe, Kosuke TakayaLanguage: Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 16, 2014
The man who lives for the art of dying
Interviewing Seizo Fukumoto, the star of Ken Ochiai's backstage drama "Uzumasa Limelight," I wished I had brought a video camera, instead of my voice recorder and notepad. As he talks, this veteran kirare-yaku — an actor whose forte is being cut down with a sword in jidaigeki (samurai period dramas)...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 16, 2014
Reflections on the dark side of a tropical island
Naomi Kawase was once Japan's best-known female director abroad; now she is one of its most internationally prominent directors, regardless of gender.
CULTURE / Film
Jul 16, 2014
Judge!
Director: Akira Nagai
Nissan says it will not take new U.S. orders for Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs
A Nissan manufacturing complex in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Nissan says it will not take new orders from the United States for two Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs following new auto tariffs levied by the U.S.
Why Japan is running out of rice — and farmers to grow it
An ongoing shortage of rice has resulted in rising prices for Japan's main food staple.
Nikkei plunges in third-biggest daily loss ever amid Trump tariff concerns
Pedestrians stand in front of an electronic board showing the numbers of the Nikkei Stock Average on the Tokyo Stock Exchange along a street in the Japanese capital on Monday.
Ride-hailing services spreading in Japan
Vehicles used for ride-hailing services in the city of Kiryu, in Gunma Prefecture
Taiwan eyes zero tariffs with U.S., pledges more investment
Kids view the area from a lookout point over cranes and containers at the Port of Keelung, Taiwan, on Thursday.
‘Let’s make it practical’: NATO chief eyes greater defense-industrial ties with Japan
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte plans to visit Japan on Tuesday and Wednesday — his first to the Indo-Pacific region since taking office in October, as he seeks to implement lessons from the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Tottori takes a bold leap forward in the arts
The city of Kurayoshi in Tottori Prefecture celebrated the opening of its public art museum with festivities such as a parade that drew 1,000 revelers.
Haruki Murakami TV adaptation revisits 30 years of watershed moments
Though Haruki Murakami's trademark whiff of offbeat existentialism is threaded throughout NHK's "After the Quake," the final episode — conceived as a sequel to the story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" — is the most stylized, featuring an anthropomorphic talking frog (voiced by Non) and his erstwhile associate Katagiri (Koichi Sato).
Nintendo to launch the Switch 2 on June 5
The controllers for the Switch 2 will attach to the console magnetically rather than sliding on rails as with the original device.
A new human trafficking trend emerges from Myanmar scam centers
Victims of scam centers who were tricked or trafficked into working in Myanmar gather at a compound inside KK Park, a fraud center on the country's border with Thailand, after a multinational crackdown in February.

Podcast

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

Longform

An ongoing shortage of rice has resulted in rising prices for Japan's main food staple.
Why Japan is running out of rice — and farmers to grow it
By Alex K.T. Martin

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