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September 17, 2024
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 22, 2008
'Naoko'
Ekiden — marathon relay races — may not be unique to Japan, but the sport has become uniquely popular here, with the biggest races, such as the Hakone Ekiden for university teams, garnering Olympic-like media attention and TV ratings.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2008
'Tasogare'
Pinku eiga (pink films) — hourlong soft-porn flicks with simulated sex and real, fleshed-out stories — aren't what they used to be in the 1970s and 1980s. Back then, they served as the training grounds for many of the top directors in Japan today, as well as often being more interesting and boundary-pushing...
CULTURE / Books
Feb 10, 2008
Risk-taking 'Cure' for J-Horror
THE FILMS OF KIYOSHI KUROSAWA: Master of Fear, by Jerry White. Berkeley, CA: Stonebridge Press, 2007, $19.95 (paper) Kiyoshi Kurosawa has been an international cult favorite since the release of "Cure," his breakthrough film, in 1997. Telling the strange tale of a blanked-out young man who hypnotizes...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 8, 2008
'L Change the World'/'Team Batista no Eiko'
Movies, as an astute producer once told me, are news. Much of the medical news recently, from Japan and elsewhere, has been scary, including stories about out-of-control viruses and out-of-their-minds doctors and nurses who kill instead of cure their patients. So why make yet another dull J-Horror pic...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2008
'Tokyo Shonen'
Ever watch BS-i, the satellite channel owned and operated by the TBS network? I thought not. Or maybe you did, flipping through the 100 or so channels on J-COM, giving it only a glance. Too bad, because under producer Tamon Andrew Niwa, BS-i has become a lab for interesting experiments in TV and film...
CULTURE / Film
Jan 31, 2008
Humanist harks back to cinema's golden age
How many directors make great movies after turning 70? John Huston did it with "The Dead," likewise Akira Kurosawa with "Ran" and Clint Eastwood with "Letters from Iwo Jima," but the numbers are few.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 31, 2008
Voice of dissent revives forgotten war memories
Yoji Yamada had just finished greeting the audience at the premiere of "Kaabee (Kabei: Our Mother)" at Tokyo's Marunouchi Piccadilly Theater when he sat down with The Japan Times.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 25, 2008
'Zenzen Daijobu'
Japanese comedies today come in two broad categories: frantic, surreal ones of the Kankuro Kudo ("Maiko Haaaan!!!") sort and ironic, realistic ones from the Nobuhiro Yamashita ("Linda, Linda, Linda") corner.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 24, 2008
Ex-janitor cleans up with comic gem
Winner of the Grand Prize in the short film section at the 1987 Torino Film Festival in Italy, Yosuke Fujita may have been making films for more than two decades, but it's only now that audiences have the chance to see the director's first full-length feature. "Zenzen Daijobu (Fine, Totally Fine)" is...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 18, 2008
'Hito no Sex o Warau na'
The romantic combination of an older woman and a younger man is common now in Hollywood films, which have come a long way since the day when a young (actually 30-year-old) Dustin Hoffman threw over a middle-age (actually 36-year-old) Anne Bancroft in "The Graduate." As film critic Roger Ebert astutely...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 11, 2008
'Giniro no Season'
Japan tries to sell itself as the land of cherry blossoms and Mount Fuji, but some of its best natural highs can be found on its ski slopes, as the world discovered at the 1972 Hokkaido and 1996 Nagano Winter Olympics.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 4, 2008
'Hokushin Naname ni Sasu Tokoro'
The old school tie is strong for many Japanese, especially members of the dwindling prewar generation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 21, 2007
'Kazoku no Hiketsu'
The Kansai region, which includes the cities of Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe, is Japan's comedy center. The biggest comedy talent agency, Yoshimoto Kogyo, is based in Osaka and its comics mostly deliver their quips in the Kansai dialect.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 14, 2007
'Little DJ'
What is the hottest genre right now in Japanese film? J-Horror is pretty much dead, though horror as a genre is about as likely to die as Dracula. Anime is still mostly for kiddies and otaku (obsessives), with the massive exception of Studio Ghibli offerings. Blurring the line between animation and live...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 7, 2007
'Tsubaki Sanjuro'
The films of Akira Kurosawa have generated far more remakes than those of any other Japanese director, beginning with the John Sturges 1960 Western "The Magnificent Seven," a reworking of Kurosawa's "Shichinin no Samurai (Seven Samurai)."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 30, 2007
'Hannari — Geisha Modern'
Over the years, many people have asked me why I bother to review Japanese films, when so few non-Japanese-speaking foreigners can fully appreciate them.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 23, 2007
'Midnight Eagle'
Why do national cinemas excel in some genres but not in others? Whatever its many sins, Hollywood makes thrillers that for sheer visceral kicks — car chases! explosions! Matt Damon leaping across a chasm through a tiny open window! — are the global standard.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 16, 2007
'Sundome'
Straight-to-video films, locally called "V Cinema," launched the careers of some of the most important directors of the New Wave of the 1990s, including Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Rokuro Mochizuki.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 9, 2007
'Ten Ten'
Some directors are like fashion brands, churning out immediately identifiable product the same way again and again. Others are more like a hot stock: a spectacular rise, followed by an equally spectacular fall. There are also those who are like an underperforming athlete who suddenly changes into a worldbeater....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 2, 2007
'Always Zoku 3-chome no Yuhi'
Are the Japanese more nostalgic than the rest of us? It's hard to say, but here cinematic look-backs tend to be more bittersweet than in the West, especially films set in Tokyo, which was obliterated in World War II and has undergone several reincarnations in the six decades since.
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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