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November 22, 2024
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 9, 2007
'Freesia'
Back in the 1990s there was a spate of Japanese movies about alienated young guys who roamed the streets or countryside with a gun, a girl and an attitude. But "Nihonsei Shonen (The Boy Made in Japan)" (1995), "Secret Waltz" (1996) and other films inspired by Hollywood criminal-couples-on-the-road movies...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 2, 2007
'Dororo'
Big-budget period dramas, often set a millennium or more ago and based on a famous legend or historical incident, are the coin of the Asian coproduction realm.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2007
Tokyo's dark side
Welshman John Williams first came to Japan in 1988, intending to stay two years, write a script and return to Britain to make a movie. He ended up making eight shorts, a documentary and finally a feature film -- the drama "Firefly Dreams" -- all in Japan and with Japanese casts and crews. Released in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2007
'Starfish Hotel'
Many foreigners, from visitors to longtime expats, have made films in Japan, but nearly all of them have ended up distinctly non-Japanese. That's not to say they were bad: Josef von Sternberg's erotic fable "Anatahan" (1953) was unlike anything Japan's film industry was making at the time, but it still...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 26, 2007
'Ai no Rukeichi'
Japan, it has often been noted, has traditionally been a paradise for men. Boys could once look forward to a life of being waited on by self-sacrificing women -- first mothers, then wives and, at the enfeebled end, daughters-in-law, while enjoying the varied erotic pleasures of the mizushobai (water...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 19, 2007
'Tamamoe'
"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive," wrote Sir Walter Scott -- words of wisdom for married cheaters, who rarely turn out to be as clever in their sexual games as they first imagined. Too often passion overcomes prudence as hard-to-explain credit card bills and "business...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 18, 2007
An unflinching account of a cinema legend
Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies With Akira Kurosawa, by Teruyo Nogami. Stone Bridge Press: Berkeley, University of California Press, 2006, 296pp, $25 (cloth) Great directors, once dead, inevitably attract biographers, memoirists and critics in large numbers who chronicle and critique every aspect...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 18, 2007
In the presence of 'Emperor' Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa's assistant for almost four decades, Teruyo Nogami discusses the master filmmaker's genius, and his weaknesses
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 12, 2007
'Akumu Tantei'
Shinya Tsukamoto has long labored on the fringes of the Japanese film industry, not always by choice. The original cyberpunk bad boy of Japanese movies, Tsukamoto burst onto the scene in 1989 with "Tetsuo," a film so extreme in its violence, sex and general insanity, including an interlude with a whirling...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 5, 2007
'Soredemo Boku wa Yattenai'
Like many other foreigners here, I have had my brushes with the Japanese justice system, from ID checks by cops wanting to practice their English to one memorable appearance on a witness stand. I have also seen it in action as a moviegoer, from prison comedies (Yoichi Sai's "Keimusho no Naka [Doing Time]"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 4, 2007
NHK to unveil next-generation 3-D technology by next year
NHK, Japan's giant public broadcaster, has become a world leader in 3-D technology, in partnership with the private sector. NHK researchers have been developing 3-D systems since 1990 and NHK Technical Services, an NHK group company, has made more than 300 3-D programs to date, from live sports shows...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 19, 2006
Akebono: Yokozuna to K-1
GAIJIN YOKOZUNA: A Biography of Chad Rowan, by Mark Panek. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006, 301 pp., $24.95 (paper). Biographers of living celebrities must make a fundamental choice: write from the inside or the outside. At one extreme are the insiders -- friends, relations or paid hacks --...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 12, 2006
Ultraman . . . forever
The "Ultraman" live-action science-fiction series has been a rite of passage for Japanese boys (and a few girls) and their families for four decades now, since the first show was aired in 1966.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 20, 2006
An intro to Tokyo's film fest
The Tokyo International Film Festival, Japan's biggest, glitziest film fest, opens Saturday, Oct. 21, and runs for nine days at Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills in Roppongi, Bunkamura in Shibuya and other venues around the city. The selection is huge, beginning with the four main sections: the Competition,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 6, 2006
She wanted to die, but war saved her life
Many recent Iranian films are about the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, claimed a million lives and, as journalist Robert Fisk noted, "touched every family in both countries."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 23, 2006
Takashi Miike makes his mark
Whatever the place or occasion -- including a hurried press interview in the middle of a film festival, as happened at April's Udine Far East Film Festival for the screening of his first English-language film "Imprint" -- Takashi Miike is always gracious, patient, thoughtful and well spoken. In other...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 16, 2006
Having a laugh with Ryuichi Hiroki
A veteran director of "pink" movies, Ryuichi Hiroki won critical acclaim for the 1994 youth drama "800 (800 -- Two Lap Runner)," his breakthrough into straight films. He first collaborated with Shinobu Terajima -- star of his new movie "Yawarakai Seikatsu -- in "Vibrator," a romantic road movie that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2006
A lifetime in search of Japan's true self
Shohei Imamura, who died on May 30, had one of the great careers of postwar Japanese film, winning the Cannes Palme d'Or twice, as well as many other awards and honors. But he spent much of that career on the fringes of the industry, like a bull elephant who separates himself from the herd and goes his...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 2, 2006
Adding color to darkness
Tall, bearded, bald and craggily handsome, Tetsuya Nakashima stands out in a crowd.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 17, 2006
Girls make their mark
Should women directors make films that are identifiably, even explicitly, female -- or should they invade traditional male preserves in gender neutral ways? Make action, horror and gross-out comedies for teenage boys? My own feeling is they should make whatever they want to make. My own observation,...
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.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
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.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

Podcast

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

Longform

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

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