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April 06, 2025
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 10, 2013
TIFF is your chance to catch up with Japanese film
The Tokyo International Film Festival, now in its 26th edition, has had its share of detractors, dissing it for everything from competition lineups of major festival castoffs (no longer true since TIFF stopped insisting on world premieres) to a Special Screening section that is essentially a PR showcase...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 10, 2013
'Kids Return: Saikai no Toki (Kids Return: The Reunion)'
Released in 1996, "Kids Return" was a change of pace for director Takeshi Kitano, whose films to date had usually starred Kitano himself as a cop or a gangster, meting out violence with a brutal efficiency and a wry black humor. Critics mostly admired them and moviegoers mostly shunned them, despite...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 10, 2013
'Tokyo Fist'
Director: Shinya Tsukamoto
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 3, 2013
'R100'
The world premiere of Hitoshi Matsumoto's "R100" in the Toronto International Film Festival's Midnight Madness section must be frustrating for all those Japanese auteurs out there who got rejection letters from North America's most important festival.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 3, 2013
'E no Naka no Boku no Mura (Village of Dreams)'
Director: Yoichi Higashi
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 26, 2013
Actor-director Okuda revisits wreckage of 3/11
Actors see how directors do their job — and not a few imagine they can do it better. But the number of Japanese actors who move successfully into the director's chair is small.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 26, 2013
'Jigoku de Naze Warui (Why Don't You Play in Hell?)'
Even great directors can make turkeys, sometimes without much obvious change in their style or obsessions.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 26, 2013
'Kokuriko-zaka Kara (From Up on Poppy Hill)'
Director: Goro Miyazaki
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 19, 2013
'Soshite Chichi ni Naru (Like Father, Like Son)'
The English and Japanese titles of Hirokazu Koreeda's dual-family drama "Soshite Chichi ni Naru (Like Father, Like Son)" are quite different in meaning, but both express something important about this extraordinary film, winner of the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 19, 2013
'Casshern'
Director: Kazuaki Kiriya
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 12, 2013
Aoyama looks to the 1980s without nostalgia
Shinji Aoyama is the director as cinephile. That is, while winning awards for his own films, including two prizes at Cannes for his 2000 drama "Eureka," he has long been a serious student of films by others, beginning with his days at Rikkyo University as a disciple of eminent film scholar Shigehiko...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 12, 2013
'Tomogui (Backwater)'
In 1971 the Nikkatsu studio, desperate to stave off bankruptcy, switched production to the then-burgeoning genre of softcore pornography. Made mostly by young directors promoted after their elders fled, the films were hardly intended as high art. Instead their main selling point was simulated sex, often...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 12, 2013
'Minnasan, Sayonara! (See You Tomorrow, Everyone)'
Director: Yoshihiro Nakamura
CULTURE / Film
Sep 5, 2013
'The Wolverine' draws from other Hollywood hits set in Japan
Director James Mangold has claimed Japanese film influences on his Marvel comic adaptation "The Wolverine," including Akira Kurosawa's 1957 film "Kumonosu-jo (The Throne of Blood)." But the film, in which Hugh Jackman's immortal Wolverine character comes to Japan, falls in love with a local beauty and...
CULTURE / Film
Sep 5, 2013
Kobayashi film explores Japan's suicide problem
A folk-singer-turned-filmmaker who went to France in 1981 to apprentice under his idol François Truffaut, Masahiro Kobayashi may have failed in his quest (he couldn't work up the courage to press Truffaut's doorbell), but after returning to Japan became a prolific scriptwriter for pinku (softcore...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 5, 2013
'Nihon no Higeki (Japan's Tragedy)'
What is a good death? For certain Japanese Buddhist priests it was sokushinbutsu — self-mummification. As practiced by members of the Shingon sect, it was a decade-long process that culminated with the priest's descent into a stone tomb to meditate in darkness, without food or water, until the final...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 5, 2013
'Kibo no Kuni (The Land of Hope)'
Director: Sion Sono
CULTURE / Film
Aug 29, 2013
'Soul Flower Train'
Dads, in Japan and elsewhere, never quite believe that their daughters are grown up and gone, do they? On a corner of their desk or in a corner of their mind is a picture of their princess at the school play or the piano recital or just making a goofy 8-year-old face. Yes, there are sternly realistic...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 29, 2013
'Zatoichi: The Blind Swordsman'
Director: Various
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2013
'Natsu no Owari (The End of Summer)'
First published in 1963, Jakucho Setouchi's "Natsu no Owari (The End of Summer)" was the "Fifty Shades of Grey" of its day: a best-selling novel written by a woman that viewed the unconventional love life of its 38-year-old heroine with the sort of matter-of-factness then considered daring. But the story,...
3D printer used to construct train station building in Japan
A train station building (front) is assembled from parts printed using 3D printer technology, in Arida, Wakayama Prefecture, on Wednesday.
Nissan says it will not take new U.S. orders for Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs
A Nissan manufacturing complex in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Nissan says it will not take new orders from the United States for two Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs following new auto tariffs levied by the U.S.
Japan digs deep to address 'national crisis' caused by Trump tariffs
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba speaks during a news conference at the Prime Minister's Office on April 1. He has said that Japan is facing a "national crisis" following the introduction of new tariffs by the United States.
Tokyo’s KK Line to close for decadelong overhaul as public greenway
People enjoy running and yoga on Tokyo Expressway’s KK Line, a 2-kilometer elevated expressway cutting through the capital’s commercial Ginza district, when it was opened as a pedestrian space in May last year.
Japan promises 'bold and speedy' response to Trump’s surprise 24% tariffs
U.S. President Donald Trump unveils new U.S. tariffs at the White House in Washington on Wednesday.
Tottori takes a bold leap forward in the arts
The city of Kurayoshi in Tottori Prefecture celebrated the opening of its public art museum with festivities such as a parade that drew 1,000 revelers.
Haruki Murakami TV adaptation revisits 30 years of watershed moments
Though Haruki Murakami's trademark whiff of offbeat existentialism is threaded throughout NHK's "After the Quake," the final episode — conceived as a sequel to the story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" — is the most stylized, featuring an anthropomorphic talking frog (voiced by Non) and his erstwhile associate Katagiri (Koichi Sato).
Nintendo to launch the Switch 2 on June 5
The controllers for the Switch 2 will attach to the console magnetically rather than sliding on rails as with the original device.
A new human trafficking trend emerges from Myanmar scam centers
Victims of scam centers who were tricked or trafficked into working in Myanmar gather at a compound inside KK Park, a fraud center on the country's border with Thailand, after a multinational crackdown in February.
A Canadian made a weekend trip to Costco a Japanese pastime
Under the watchful eye of Ken Theriault, Costco representative director and Japan country manager, the American membership-model wholesaler has flourished in Japan.

Podcast

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

Longform

Professional cleaner Hirofumi Sakurai takes a moment to appreciate some photographs in a Gotanda apartment whose occupant died alone.
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