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April 06, 2025
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 28, 2013
'Senkyo 2 (Campaign 2)'
In the more than three decades I've lived here, I have progressed (if that is the right word) from irritation at the oddness of Japanese election campaigns to something like curiosity. How, I once wondered, could anyone choose intelligently among candidates whose "dialogue" with the voters was mostly...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 28, 2013
Documenting Japan's 'strange' election campaigns
A native of Tochigi Prefecture and a graduate of the University of Tokyo, where he majored in religious studies, Kazuhiro Soda took an early turn off a conventional career path when he went to New York in 1993 to study filmmaking at the School of Visual Arts. After a stab at fiction filmmaking, which...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 28, 2013
'Chronicle of My Mother'
Director: Masato Harada
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 21, 2013
'Sayonara Keikoku (The Ravine of Goodbye)'
What are the limits of forgiveness? Our various gods may forgive our sins, but we humans don't always find it easy to follow suit. Violations of the body are among the crimes hardest to forgive, since the victims are left with not only scars, visible and invisible, but also a cold anger against the perpetrator(s)....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 21, 2013
'The Complete (Existing) Films of ...'
Director: Sadao Yamanaka
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 14, 2013
'Kiseki no Ringo (Miracle Apples)'
Raised on a small farm in Southern Ohio, my grandfather hunted and grew much of the food we ate at the enormous Sunday dinners my grandmother prepared, from tasty quail and rabbit to fresh sweet corn and tomatoes. The piece de resistance was often apple pie, made from fruit harvested from backyard trees....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 14, 2013
'Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story)'
Director: Yasujiro Ozu
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 7, 2013
Screen violence is in the eye of the beholder
Some people avoid violent films, while others watch little else. Professional movie reviewers, who may see hundreds of films annually, cannot afford to be so picky. If you are covering the Cannes Film Festival competition, as I did one year for the Screen International daily critics' poll, you cannot...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 7, 2013
'Hakoiri Musuko no Koi (Blindly in Love)'
In a recent interview, Steven Soderbergh complained that critics are "too easily fooled." "Their reading of filmmaking is too superficial," he added. While I am as much a fan of deep insight as the next guy, I am also perfectly happy to be fooled. That is, if a director manages to salvage his pig of...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 7, 2013
'Satoshi Miki Collection'
Director: Satoshi Miki
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2013
Size doesn't matter: Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia celebrates 15 years
The short film gave birth to the cinema — the first narrative film, 'The Great Train Robbery' (1903), is all of 11 minutes long, but the format is now in the shadow of the full-length feature.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2013
Director Yukinori Makabe has high hopes for his 'Tokyo Sky Story' at film festival
A staffer of the Robot production house, where he has worked as an assistant director on entries in the hit "Always" and "Odoru Daisosasen (Bayside Shakedown)" series, 29-year-old Yukinori Makabe has also directed award-winning short films, including "The Sun and the Moon," which beat out 250 others...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2013
'Kuchizuke (Angel Home)'
The Japanese film industry loves medical melodramas, but not much ones with intellectually disabled characters.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 31, 2013
'Kiseki (I Wish)'
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 24, 2013
'Kuroyuri Danchi (The Complex)'
Springing up like the proverbial bamboo shoots after a rain storm in the postwar boom years, when they were hailed as ideal communities for the rising middle class, Japan's danchi (public-housing projects) have since acquired a rather dark image as the older ones molder and decay and the original residents...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 24, 2013
'Saikaku Ichidai Onna (The Life of Oharu)'
Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 17, 2013
KAT-TUN star's knack for reinvention aids film role
Director Satoshi Miki's new comedy "Ore Ore (It's Me, it's Me)" is more on the cultish than the commercial end of the scale, with its head-scratcher of a story about a first-time scammer who starts encountering various versions of himself in a bizarre new world: karmic payback for impersonating a stranger...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 17, 2013
'Ore Ore (It's Me, it's Me)'
Satoshi Miki is best known as a director of comedy, including episodes of the 2006-07 cult hit "Jiko Keisatsu (Time Limit Investigator)" series for TV Asahi and seven feature films. But when I programmed a special Miki section for the Udine Far East Film Festival in 2008, I realized anew how, film by...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 17, 2013
'Ruroni Kenshin'
Director: Otomo Keishi
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 10, 2013
'Chugakusei Maruyama (Maruyama, the Middle Schooler)'
Acclaimed as a comic genius in Japan, actor/scriptwriter/director Kankuro Kudo has been slower to find recognition abroad. His brand of hyperactive comedy, with its machine-gun dialogue and many references to local pop culture, is not the easiest for foreign audiences to understand, though his two previous...
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.
The last cleanup: Life and death in a lonely Japan
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