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July 17, 2024
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 15, 2015
Successor to Hayao Miyazaki's throne turns Shibuya into a realm of beasts
Mamoru Hosoda ranks first among the Japanese animation directors seen as successors to now-retired industry giant Hayao Miyazaki — and for good reason.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 8, 2015
Mass murder and Sion Sono
A disturbed individual kills, and the media searches for reasons why. Sometimes, the killer obligingly cites a pop culture phenomenon as inspiration. Mark David Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon, saw himself as the living embodiment of Holden Caulfield, the hero of J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 8, 2015
Rural migration, shaved ice and no easy endings in 'Umi no Futa'
Why not abandon your stressed urban existence, move to a picturesque part of the world and live the simple life? An old dream, but still powerful, as shown by the recent spate of Japanese movies about women getting back their grooves by relocating to a beautiful middle-of-nowhere. Usually their dream...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 1, 2015
Sion Sono is back with buckets of blood and a three-faced heroine in 'Tag'
Sion Sono is a director of extremes — including an extreme dislike of being categorized. Just when you thought you had him pegged as a maker of violent black comedies with classical music scores, such as "Ai no Mukidashi"("Love Exposure"), he turns out heartfelt, albeit still violent, dramas with nuclear...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 24, 2015
Slowing a spiral of negativity in Mipo Oh's 'Being Good'
When I was a student teacher at an elementary school in Livonia, Michigan, I saw some things that shocked me. Once I watched a male teacher grabbing a disruptive fourth-grader by the neck and forcing his head toward the floor, while pouring out a stream of sarcastic abuse upon him.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 17, 2015
Hirokazu Koreeda on his new drama about women with 'shadows'
When Hirokazu Koreeda's gently offbeat family drama "Umimachi Diary" ("Our Little Sister") was screened in competition at this year's Cannes Film Festival, both audiences and the media were enthusiastic — a story for the Reuters news agency described it as "Palme d'Or material." But instead of being...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 17, 2015
John Junkerman documentary 'Okinawa: The Afterburn' sheds light on the ferocious anger against U.S. bases
The issue of the large U.S. military presence in Okinawa is divisive, deeply rooted and, frankly, one I have never completely understood. Anti-base protests have been going on for decades, and while locals elsewhere in the developed world may have been unhappy with the bases in their vicinity, the Okinawans...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 10, 2015
Japan's toxic prophets are revealed in 'Yokokuhan' adaptation
Directors of the better Japanese commercial films typically carve out thematic or stylistic niches for themselves, so that even if they do a manga adaptation for the masses, it's their kind of manga filmed in their kind of way. One is Yoshihiro Nakamura, a master of mysteries and thrillers with brainteaser...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Jun 10, 2015
Where to find Japanese films screening in Tokyo with English subtitles
When I first started watching Japanese films at cinemas in Tokyo nearly three decades ago, screenings with English subtitles were nonexistent. I spent a month with my Japanese teacher at the time studying the script of Akira Kurosawa's "Kagemusha"("The Shadow Warrior") so I could puzzle out its feudal-era...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 3, 2015
Director Kawase disregards criticism of her sentimental leprosy drama 'An'
When I first interviewed Naomi Kawase in 1998, after she won the Cannes Film Festival's Camera d'Or award for her first feature, "Moe no Suzaku" ("Suzaku"), I remarked on her "quietly stubborn determination" to persist in the face of various detractors. If anything, criticism has increased in the intervening...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 3, 2015
Director Naomi Kawase has finally made a 'real Japanese film'
Sooner or later, many Japanese directors — be they internationally acclaimed auteurs or industry outsiders — end up making what Sion Sono (a noted auteur/outsider himself) once described to me as "a real Japanese film." To put it simply, this sort of film is aimed squarely at the domestic audience,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 27, 2015
Widower haunted by his burger-eating comedian wife in 'Till Death Do Us Part?'
Japanese audiences love to cry — hence the decades-long stream of films featuring the terminally ill. The current outpouring, however, seems to be a byproduct of Japan's aging society and improved standards of medical care.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
May 27, 2015
Could Kiyoshi Kurosawa's win at Cannes change Japan's luck?
Kiyoshi Kurosawa won the best director prize in the Cannes Film Festival's Un Certain Regard section on Sunday, but he also deserves a prize from the Japanese film industry for single-handedly turning its presence at the world's most prestigious film festival from a vague embarrassment to a cause for...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 21, 2015
Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia searches for that 1-in-5,000 movie
Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia director Seigo Tono has been with the event since its second edition in 2000, when it was called the American Short Shorts Film Festival and showed only U.S. films. Since then it has evolved into what Tono describes as "a global event, featuring cutting-edge shorts...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 20, 2015
Keiichi Hara's new animation honors Hokusai's daughter
Ukiyo-e master Katsushika Hokusai is one of Japan's best-known artists. His print "The Great Wave off Kanagawa," with its giant blue wave curling over a tiny Mount Fuji, is seen on T-shirts and coffee mugs around the world. Given his multifarious talent, vast energy and long life — Hokusai died in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 20, 2015
Aikawa's brainless fun in 'Deadman Inferno'
Sho Aikawa was once the tough-guy muse of Takashi Miike, appearing in films such as "Gokudo Kuroshakai" ("Rainy Dog"), "Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha" ("Dead or Alive") and "Gokudo Kyofu Dai-gekijo: Gozu" ("Gozu") that made the director the international "King of Cult." The sandpapery voice, the sideways...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 13, 2015
All about AV, but no sex in 'Makeup Room'
Films that take the audience inside Japan's huge and diverse porn industry have been appearing for decades. In the 1991 "Skinless Night," Rokuro Mochizuki told a semi-autobiographical story about a porn director's desperation to escape the business (an aim that the widely praised film helped Mochizuki...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
May 13, 2015
Sign of the times as yakuza classic gets kudos at Cannes
In the early 2000s, when I was writing a book about yakuza movies, veterans of the genre's 1960s and '70s heyday I met had a fierce pride in their work but no illusions about its low ranking in the film-world hierarchy. In particular, the Toei studio's films about sword-swinging or gun-toting gangsters...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 29, 2015
Is there life after death for Japan's aging women?
When Katsumi Sakaguchi quit working as a documentary filmmaker in the spring 2008 to look after his mother Suchie, he thought he was doing the right thing. Then 78, Suchie was suffering from what Sakaguchi describes as "mental confusion" following the death of her daughter from cancer two years earlier...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 29, 2015
Takeshi Kitano's gang of nursing-home yakuza
Takeshi Kitano has had some of his biggest critical and commercial successes with gangster films, beginning with his 1993 international breakthrough "Sonatine" and continuing through to his 2012 hit "Outrage Beyond" ("Beyond Outrage"), which screened in competition at the 2012 Venice Film Festival.
Who needs AI when you have Hatsune Miku?
Over the first six months of 2024, a handful of songs using Vocaloid singer Hatsune Miku’s voice have enjoyed widespread attention, underlining a global interest in the character and the technology she represents.
Yen’s woes seem too big for even a BOJ hike this month to solve
The Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo
China’s economic growth comes in worse than expected
Pedestrians in the Wangfujing shopping area in Beijing on July 11, 2024. China's economic growth in the second quarter was lower than forecast, adding pressure on Chinese leaders to lift confidence at the Chinese Communist Party's third plenum this week.
Kansai airports to increase takeoff and landing slots ahead of Osaka Expo
Kansai International Airport in Izumisano, Osaka Prefecture. The upper limit on the number of takeoff and landing slots at the airport as well as Kobe Airport in Hyogo Prefecture will be raised in spring next year ahead of the 2025 World Exposition in Osaka.
Shooter came within inches of killing Trump, but left few clues as to why
An aerial view shows the stage where Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump had been standing during an assassination attempt the day before, and the roof of a nearby building where a gunman was shot dead by law enforcement, in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
After Trump shooting, U.S. presidential race might take a violent turn
United States Secret Service Counter Snipers stand guard on a rooftop during a campaign rally for U.S. President Donald Trump in Avoca, Pennsylvania, in 2020.
No AC this summer? No problem (for me).
Think air conditioning is a requirement for a Tokyo summer? Think again.
She’s paying ¥1 million to help behind the scenes at the Paris Olympics
Mai Tarumi, who previously volunteered at the postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, has a travel budget of ¥1 million for her trip to volunteer at the Paris Games.

Podcast

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.
Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Longform

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
By Tomoko Otake

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