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Mark Schilling
CULTURE / Film
Mar 27, 2009
Masterpiece maker
The Japan Times interviewed Yoshihiro Nakamura at the Ebisu headquarters of the Amuse talent agency, where Nakamura was holding forth all day for the press. Despite the PR grind, he was relaxed, with a ready laugh, and spoke in a distinctive low, rumbling voice.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 20, 2009
'Drop'
Punks, in their various post-Elvis incarnations, have been a feature of Japanese society — and films — for almost half a century. More recent, though, is the vogue for what might be called punks-brawl-for-fun films, which celebrate the joy and glory of smashing heads together with your four or 40...
CULTURE / Film
Mar 20, 2009
'Drop'
Punks, in their various post-Elvis incarnations, have been a feature of Japanese society — and films — for almost half a century. More recent, though, is the vogue for what might be called punks-brawl-for-fun films, which celebrate the joy and glory of smashing heads together with your four or 40...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 13, 2009
'Baobab no Kioku'
Seiichi Motohashi's documentaries often take environmental destruction as their theme, starting with his first, "Nadja no Mura" ("Nadja's Village"), in 1998 and continuing with "Alexei to Izumi" ("Alexei's Spring," 2002) and his new film "Baobab no Kioku" ("A Thousand Year Song of Baobab").
CULTURE / Books
Mar 8, 2009
Japanese directors in detail
Reviewed by Mark Schilling What used to be an obscure publishing niche — filmographies in English of Japanese filmmakers — is now a task to which a small army — OK, platoon — of volunteers is now dedicated on Wikipedia, the Internet Movie Database and elsewhere on the Web.
CULTURE / Film
Mar 6, 2009
'Yattaman'
Hollywood superhero movies are often not only thrill rides with flights and fights designed to elicit a collective "wow" but comments on the rotten state of society, metaphors for the fallen nature of humankind, and so on. Heath Ledger's portrayal of the Joker as a psychotic in "The Dark Knight" won...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 27, 2009
'Tsumi toka Batsu toka'
Contemporary Japanese comedies generally come in two varieties: wacky and noisy (most films written or directed by Kankuro Kudo), or quirky and dry (Satoshi Miki's "Ten Ten" ["Adrift in Tokyo"] and Yosuke Fujita's "Zen Zen Daijobu" ["Fine, Totally, Fine"]).
CULTURE / Film
Feb 20, 2009
'Halfway'
"Halfway" ("Harufuwei") has one of those katakana titles that is supposed to sound vaguely exotic and mysterious to its intended audience — Japanese of about the same age as its teenage protagonists — but may strike native speakers as prosaic, even boring.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 20, 2009
Funereal flick out to reap Japan an Oscar
The Japanese film industry now turns out about 400 titles annually, but in a given decade only a few Japanese filmmakers win major international awards — including the biggest of all: the Oscars.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 13, 2009
'Heaven's Door'/'Lost Girl'
Youth, illness and love are the basic ingredients of many a movie, especially in Japan, where romantic dramas about dying teenagers are about as common as convenience stores.
CULTURE / Books
Feb 8, 2009
Revealing artistic shades of pink in Japanese cinema
Porno gets little respect as a film genre in the West, with its makers relegated to a ghetto that few escape. How many A-list directors in Hollywood, past or present, started by making even the milder sort of sex stuff seen on cable?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 6, 2009
Telling a lengthy tale of lust and religion
Films that are extremely long (say, three hours plus) tend to be extreme in other ways as well — including the megalomania of their director.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 6, 2009
'20-seiki Shonen Dai-2-sho: Saigo no Kibo'
Movies based on popular long-running manga commonly cram in too much, from story lines to characters. This confuses nonfans, while often failing to satisfy fans, who complain about omissions — though the original comic may have run for thousands of pages in dozens of volumes.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 30, 2009
'Dare mo Mamotte Kurenai'
The popular media maw, from the Brit tabloids to the Hollywood paparazzi, chews up its subjects, from celebs to criminals, everywhere, anytime. If you're at the receiving end, it's probably an awful experience. Nonetheless, there's something special about the voracity of the Japanese media, with its...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 23, 2009
'Kansen Retto'
Disaster movies became big in both Hollywood and Japan in the 1970s — an era of soaring gas prices, volatile exchange rates and a failed Republican presidency. Now, with history repeating itself (in spades), this much-derided genre is booming again.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 16, 2009
'Zen'
I was one of those hippies who got into things Japanese via Zen back in the 1970s. I spent two years practicing zazen in Michigan and I had a first-row seat when Alan Watts — that early explainer of Zen to the West — spoke on campus. I even taped a photo of Shunryu Suzuki, the author of "Zen Mind,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 9, 2009
'Kanna-san Daiseiko Desu!'/'Pride'
Female ambition, friendship and rivalry can, mixed together, make for a potent cinematic brew. "All About Eve" is one well-known example, though the relationship between Bette Davis' insecure middle-aged actress and Anne Baxter's worshipful, secretly scheming acolyte can hardly be called "friendship."...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 1, 2009
The battle for 2009's box office starts here
The Japanese film industry — particularly at the top, where Toho and the TV networks dwell — had a terrific 2008. Boosted by Hayao Miyazaki's animation "Gake no Ue no Ponyo" ("Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea"), which earned a splendiferous ¥15 billion, Toho passed the ¥70-billion box-office mark...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 26, 2008
'Tokyo Joe: Mafia o Utta Otoko'
The yakuza, Japan's homegrown mobsters, are favorites of local filmmakers but not documentarians, for reasons entirely understandable. A documentary that seeks to delve into the inner workings of the Yamaguchi-gumi might find an audience, but the hurdles to making it, such as scouting subjects willing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 26, 2008
Top movies of 2008
In carefully ordered rankings for Japanese films and no particular order for the rest, we bring you the best films of a year that is steadily drawing its curtains closed.
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.
Tokyo Metro’s overseas efforts begin in earnest with London deal
Tokyo Metro will soon have a role in the running of London's Elizabeth Line, a major train route serving the U.K.’s capital city and environs.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ex-yokozuna Kitanofuji dies at 82
Yokozuna Kitanofuji enters the ring during the May 1970 grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.
Man charged with murder allegedly made victim date other men for money
A car carrying suspect Ryotaro Masuda, who was indicted for allegedly beating his 25-year-old girlfriend to death, leaves the Shibuya Police Station in Tokyo on Thursday.
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.

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