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November 23, 2024
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 22, 2015
War in the jungle and war in Japan
Actor and director Shinya Tsukamoto often takes violence to strange extremes. In his first film, the 1989 horror "Tetsuo" ("Tetsuo: The Iron Man"), a businessman accidentally kills a crazed metal fetishist (played by Tsukamoto himself) with his car and, becoming "infected" by his victim, horrifically...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 22, 2015
A second look at bloody WWII novel 'Fires on the Plain'
Japanese war films typically frame themselves as anti-war, even when they glorify the sacrifices made by brave Japanese boys in defense of the homeland, as in the 2013 hit "Eien no Zero" ("The Eternal Zero").
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Jul 15, 2015
Hayao Miyazaki cleans up Japan
Rich, famous, semi-retired people commonly take up good causes (based on whatever they define as "good"), but animation maestro Hayao Miyazaki does things differently.
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 from...
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.”
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
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.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
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By Kathryn Wortley

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