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September 17, 2024
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2008
One man, two worlds
Ryosuke Hashiguchi is one of the few gay filmmakers in Japan to have had a measure of popular success making films with gay themes. His third film, "Hush" (2002), about a gay couple whose life changes when one of them is drafted into becoming a father by a desperate woman, was an indie hit, as well as...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2008
Lily Franky's first starring role plunges him into a 'dark place'
L ily Franky is a true multitalent, having found success as an illustrator, designer, essayist, lyricist, photographer, novelist and band vocalist. His 2005 autobiographical novel "Tokyo Tower: Okan to Boku to Tokidoki Oton (Tokyo Tower: Mom and Me and Sometimes Dad)," in which he described his relationship...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 6, 2008
'Johnen — Sada no Ai'
Rokuro Mochizuki was a leader of the Japanese New Wave of the 1990s, making films such as "Shin Kanashiki Hitman (Another Lonely Hitman)" and "Onibi (The Fire Within)" that redefined the yakuza genre. His tough guy heroes may have had a lonely nobility as they fought for their own vision of happiness,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 30, 2008
'Bakemono Moyo'/'Mukidashi Nippon'
Still only 24, Yuya Ishii has not only made four feature films in a blazingly short time, but had them screened in his own section (hard to call it a retrospective) at the 2008 Rotterdam Film Festival. Also, at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival, he received the first Edward Yang New Talent...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 23, 2008
'After School'
In 2005, Kenji Uchida, then an unknown young director, won four prizes at the Cannes Film Festival for his second feature, "Unmei Ja Nai Hito (A Stranger of Mine)."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 16, 2008
'Yama no Anata'
Film remakes are usually reinterpretations. Gore Verbinski's "The Ring" (2002) has not only a different location (Pacific Northwest) but a different story line and mythology from Hideo Nakata's original "Ring (Ringu)" (1998).
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 9, 2008
'Kakushi Toride no San Akunin'
Just as Hollywood loves to remake J-Horror and, now, anime ("Speed Racer" being the latest, but unlikely to be the last), the Japanese film industry has taken to remaking classics by Akira Kurosawa. Last year's "Tsubaki Sanjuro" was Yoshimitsu Morita's shot-by-shot recreation of the 1962 original, though...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 2, 2008
'Suna Dokei'
Japanese films based on manga (Japanese comics) are so common now that if I were a young Japanese writer ambitious for a big movie payday, I'd skip the scriptwriting classes and learn how to draw.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 25, 2008
'Park and Love Hotel'
A movie set in a love hotel, but without a single sex scene? A 59-year-old woman as the heroine? It's hard to imagine that particular pitch loosening purse strings at major Japanese media companies. A fatally ill teenager? That's more like it.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 18, 2008
'Shaolin Girl'
Chihiro Kameyama, Japan's most successful film producer, is not a man to miss an opportunity. When Stephen Chow's comedy "Shaolin Soccer" became a smash in Japan in 2002, Kameyama had the idea of joining with Chow to make a Japanese spinoff. Now, six years later, we have "Shaolin Shojo (Shaolin Girl),"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 11, 2008
'Chesuto'
Japanese live-action films about teenagers are many, but about children, few. This is largely a box-office calculation — teenagers pay higher ticket prices than children. Also, children usually go to the theater for a feature-length version of a cartoon they know from television, though there are hugely...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 4, 2008
'Uta Tama'
The maxim from Ecclesiastes that "There is nothing new under the sun" applies especially to the movie business. "Swing Girls," a 2004 smash about a high-school girls swing band, begat "Hula Girls," a 2006 hit about a hula dance troupe in a 1960s mining town, which begat "Kanki no Uta (Ode to Joy)," a...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 28, 2008
'Kung Fu Kun'
A "kids movie" in the current Japanese film business almost always means anime. It wasn't always thus — kids were the biggest fans of the Godzilla series and dozens of other nonanimated homegrown monster movies now vanished from the screens. They've also flocked to the "Spy Kids" films and similar...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 21, 2008
'Memo'
Some directors put their own neuroses on the screen, with attitudes ranging from the dramatically self-lacerating (Ingmar Bergman) to the comically self-deprecating (Woody Allen). Where actor-turned-director Jiro Sato departs from the messed-up norm in "Memo," his first feature film, is in the rawness...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 20, 2008
The final days of revolutionary struggle in Japan
The West sees the turbulent era of the late 1960s and early '70s principally through the lens of its own protesters and radicals, with America's war in Vietnam the focal point of activist anger. If it thinks about East Asia in this period at all, it is usually the China of Mao and the Red Guards, who...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 14, 2008
'Yurei vs. Uchujin'
Even film directors need a break from the routine, don't they? Especially Takashi Shimizu, who has spent much of this decade making seven installments of his hit "Grudge (Ju-on)" J-Horror franchise, including two films for Hollywood, about vengeful ghosts who move from victim to victim like viruses.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 7, 2008
'Gachi Boy'
Pro wrestling gets no respect, save from the fans who love watching it, and, as schoolboys, practice its moves. I was once one of those boys, trying out head butts (learned from Bobo Brazil) and karate chops (acquired from Rikidozan) on various victims, including my little brother.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 7, 2008
Lord of the ring Norihiro Koizumi
All of 27, Norihiro Koizumi began making films while in high school. On graduation from college in 2003, he joined the Robot production company in Tokyo and in 2006 directed his first theatrical feature, "Taiyo no Uta (Song of the Sun)" about a girl with a rare skin disease that makes exposure to the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 29, 2008
'Doko ni Iku no'
Japanese indie directors who made their reputations in the 1970s and '80s often have big gaps in their feature-film resumes. Sogo Ishii didn't make a feature for 10 years following 1984's "Gyakufunsha Kazoku (Crazy Family),"a groundbreaking black comedy. Mitsuo Yanagimachi, who burst onto the scene in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 29, 2008
Yoshihiko Matsui: The return of the underground king
Born in 1956, Yoshihiko Matsui worked with indie icon Sogo Ishii on his early films, including the seminal 1980 biker pic "Kuruizaki Thunder Road (Crazy Thunder Road)."
Japan's elderly population grows to record 36.25 million
The proportion of people aged 65 and over has risen since the 1950s and is expected to hit 34.8% by 2040, when the second baby boomers (born 1971-1974) will join that group.
'Shogun' becomes first non-English-language winner of best drama Emmy
Japanese actress Anna Sawai, winner of the outstanding lead actress in a drama series award for "Shogun," and Japanese actor Hiroyuki Sanada, winner of the outstanding lead actor in a drama series award for the show, pose in the press room during the 76th Emmy Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Japan jumps to No. 2, from sixth place, in Best Countries index
Pedestrians cross an intersection in the Shibuya district of Tokyo. Japan has experienced a postpandemic travel boom, with tourists pouring back in after restrictions closed the country’s borders to travelers.
South Korea is facing deepfake porn crisis
Activists hold up symbolic eye masks during a protest against deepfake porn in Seoul on Aug. 30.
Second assassination attempt on Trump is latest jolt in chaotic campaign
U.S. Secret Service and Homeland Security agents check a former home of a Ryan Routh, a suspect in an alleged assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Greensboro, North Carolina, on Sunday.
‘Shogun’ and the painstaking art of ‘getting it right’
Hiroyuki Sanada and the cast and crew of "Shogun" accept the award for best drama series at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, California.
Japan’s schools battle to keep kids cool, with or without AC
Students sit under a misting system during recess at Hikarigaoka Haru no Kaze Elementary School in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, on Sept. 6.
Chris Broad's new bar puts cocktails first, YouTube second
A self-proclaimed lover of great cocktails, YouTuber Chris Broad says his new Shibuya watering hole is more a place to get yourself a solid drink than it is anything related to his social media career.
In LDP presidential poll, three kingmakers hold all the cards
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks at the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo in January as former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (left) looks on.
How China’s dominance of solar and batteries is impacting Japan’s energy transition
Solar panels and wind turbines at a power plant in Hami in China's Xinjiang region. The U.S. and other countries have described China’s actions against Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region, a key cog in the cleantech supply chain, as a genocidal campaign aimed at erasing an entire culture.

Podcast

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

Longform

A store clerk tries to cool things down in front of their shop by spraying a hose.
Is extreme weather changing the way Japan shops?
By Alex K.T. Martin

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