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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 3, 2013
'Bakumatsu Taiyo-den (The Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate)'
Director: Yuzo Kawashima
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Apr 28, 2013
Re-creating the life of a 17th-century concubine
As G.G. Rowley notes in the preface to her lovingly researched, elegantly written study of Imperial concubine Nakanoin Nakako, the history of her subject's period, the late 16th and early 17th centuries, 'has traditionally been written as the history of men.'
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 26, 2013
'Wara no Tate (Shield of Straw)'
Takashi Miike has hit the director career sweet spot, being both feted at major festivals abroad and scoring at the box office at home, often with the same film.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 26, 2013
'Masaki Kobayashi Against the System'
Director: Masaki Kobayashi
Japan Times
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Apr 24, 2013
Yoshimoto seeks laughs and profit beyond Japan
Osaka-based Yoshimoto Kogyo, the giant talent agency that celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, has made an enduring business out of that fleeting phenomenon: laughter.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 19, 2013
Ishikawa knows when to throw away the script
Japanese directors of TV dramas often make films that are basically big-screen versions of small-screen shows. No surprise, since their TV-network backers want product that will work equally well with multiplex audiences and home viewers.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 19, 2013
'Petaru Dansu (Petal Dance)'
Friends come and go, don't they? Years pass, lives change and people we regularly hung out with or were actually close to become no more than memories or, today, updates on Facebook. But as Hiroshi Ishikawa's "Petaru Dansu (Petal Dance)" shows simply, but rightly and poetically, we may still care more...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 19, 2013
'Tsuki to Cheri (Electric Button)'
Director: Yuki Tanada
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 12, 2013
Funahashi: 'Good stories don't need happy endings'
A graduate of the University of Tokyo's cinema studies course, Atsushi Funahashi studied directing at the School of Visual Arts in New York and shot his first two films, “Echoes” (2002) and “Big River” (2005), in the United States.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 12, 2013
'Sakura Namiki no Mankai no Shita ni (Cold Bloom)'
Grief doesn't have a sell-by date, not really. Decades after a loss, the absence is still felt, the memories remain.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 12, 2013
'Ahiru to Kamo no Koinrokka (The Foreign Duck, the Native Duck and God in a Coin Locker)'
Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 5, 2013
'Sakura, Futatabi no Kanako (Orpheus' Lyre)'
I used to think that religion in Japan was for most a matter of custom, not belief. You clap your hands at the shrine because that's what people do, not because you think the resident gods are actually listening.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 5, 2013
'Rentaneko (Rent-a-Cat)'
Director: Naoko Ogigami
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 29, 2013
'Daijobu 3kumi (Nobody's Perfect)'
Teaching kids is usually not thought of as a physically taxing job, but take it from one who has done it: It is, especially in Japanese schools, where one teacher may have to deal with 40 bundles of not-always-well-behaved energy. I spent much of my class time at a Tokyo boys' high school in the 1980s...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 29, 2013
'Outrage Beyond'
Director: Takeshi Kitano Language: Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 22, 2013
Kids with guns on film, blasting at the culture gap
Contemporary Japanese films are often extremely violent; the lives of ordinary Japanese, much less so. According to a multinational study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Japan's homicide rate in 2009 was 0.4 per 100,000 population, for a total of 506 deaths. Similar figures for...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 22, 2013
Tokyo Teyandei: The Story Teller's Apprentice
Rakugo, the ancient Japanese art of sit-down comedy, has inspired movies including Shinpei Hayashiya's "Rakugo Monogatari (Rakugo Story)" (2010) and Hideyuki Hirayama's "Shaberedomo Shaberedomo (Talk, Talk, Talk)" (2007), but Yuji Kanda's "Tokyo Teyandei: The Story Teller's Apprentice" (simply called...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 22, 2013
Tetsuo series
Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 15, 2013
'Purachina Deta (Platinum Data)'
Why are so many Japanese sci-fi thrillers so sure our near-future rulers will try to tyrannize us, dehumanize us or, as in "Batoru Rowaiaru (Battle Royale)," make us slaughter each other, even when our only crime is possessing raging adolescent hormones? Given what I've seen of Tokyo's Kabutocho financial...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 15, 2013
Yume Uru Futari (Dreams for Sale)
Miwa Nishikawa's "Yume Uru Futari," a blackly comic, unsparingly sharp drama about a couple who scam lonely single women with fake marriage offers to fund the building of their new izakaya pub — and how their deception comes back to bite them in unexpected ways — has just been released on DVD with...

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