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July 17, 2024
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 3, 2012
Hasegawa gets the perfect portrait
Making a documentary on a crusading 90-year-old photojournalist who is famously fearless and uncompromising is not for the timid. Saburo Hasegawa, who has been directing television documentaries on a range of social issues since the 1990s, was initially afraid that his subject, Kikujiro Fukushima, might...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 29, 2012
The story of a U.S. Marine who convinced his enemies to live
ONE MARINE'S WAR: A Combat Interpreter's Quest for Humanity in the Pacific, by Gerald A. Meehl. Naval Institute Press, 2012, 246 pp., $34.95 (hardcover) Of war memoirs there is no end, though soldiers of any given war eventually fade away. Also, their memories of a conflict may remain vivid decades...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 27, 2012
'Kazoku no Kuni (Our Homeland)'
Many Japanese directors make family dramas — it's the default setting for serious filmmakers here — but they are usually not telling their own family stories, however fictionalized.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 20, 2012
'Okami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki (Wolf Children)'
Mamoru Hosoda is a leading contender to succeed Hayao Miyazaki for the title of anime master of masters — the one everyone in the industry, Japanese or foreign, looks up to and steals from.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 13, 2012
'Heruta Sukeruta (Helter Skelter)'
One of the signs of aging is that the sort of loud music you loved as a teenager now bores and irritates you, if it doesn't drive you out of the room entirely. Movies can be the same way: Try as I may to channel my inner 15-year-old in the screening room, I sometimes mentally push the volume control...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 13, 2012
Hitoshi Matsumoto gets big laughs in Japan but the comedian wants more
Comics who direct films may start by making audiences laugh, but if they are at all successful they typically turn serious. The classic example is Charlie Chaplin, who went from slapstick two-reelers to speechifying against totalitarianism in "The Great Dictator."
CULTURE / Books
Jul 8, 2012
New religions in the land of the rising sun
CELEBRITY GODS: New Religions, Media, and Authority in Occupied Japan, by Benjamin Dorman. University of Hawai'i Press, 2012, 296 pp., $42.00 (hardcover)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2012
'Kueki Ressha (The Drudgery Train)'
Directors often find themselves boxed in by fan expectations. If a filmmaker who is known and loved for quirky pieces does a serious film or two, fans tend to complain he or she is sliding down a slippery slope toward dreaded respectability.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2012
Director Nobuhiro Yamashita's commercial film departure
Starting with his first film "Donten Seikatsu (Hazy Life)" from 1999, director Nobuhiro Yamashita explored slackerdom, Japan-style, with a laconically knowing eye and a laidback sense of humor. Rejecting the broad approach of so much local comedy, he developed gags from off-beat, spot-on observations...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 29, 2012
'Rinjo: Gekijoban (The Last Answer)'
Japanese murder mysteries, whether on the big or small screen, are typically puzzles, with the characters serving as pieces whose deaths mean little more than Col. Mustard's in the board game Clue. The detective may be eccentric, hard-boiled or a combination of both, but he does not usually show emotion...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2012
'Seesaw'
Many Japanese indie films never achieve the grail of a theatrical release, and some arrive on theater screens here only after a long journey on the festival circuit. Seeing the latter on a distributor's lineup years after shooting wrapped, I feel like saying otsukare-sama ("job well done") to the filmmaker...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2012
'My House' takes Tsutsumi home
"Auteur" is not the first word that leaps to mind to describe Yukihiko Tsutsumi. In a directing career that began with a segment of the 1988 comedy anthology "Bakayaro! I'm Plenty Mad," the prolific Tsutsumi has made films in a variety of genres — mystery/thriller ("Spec: The Movie"), dystopian...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2012
'Michi — Hakuji no Hito (Takumi: The Man Beyond Borders)'
Millions of Japanese have become fans of things Korean, from weepy TV dramas to perky girl pop groups, since the start of the hanryu￣ ("Korean Wave") popular-culture invasion over a decade ago. Many of the younger generation, however, have only a hazy awareness, if that, of the dark period between...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2012
'11.25 Jiketsu no Hi: Mishima Yukio to Wakamono-Tachi (11.25: The Day Mishima Chose His Own Fate)'
On Nov. 25, 1970, at the Self-Defense Forces headquarters in Ichigaya, Tokyo, renowned author Yukio Mishima committed suicide by seppuku (ritual stomach cutting) after urging a crowd of jeering soldiers to overthrow the government in the name of the Emperor.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 1, 2012
'My House'
Two summers ago my son, then 26, shot a documentary about homeless people living on the banks of the Tama River. From hearing his stories and watching the finished product, I learned (or rather had confirmed) that local movie stereotypes of the homeless as lovable eccentrics or pathetic losers didn't...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 1, 2012
Remembering Kaneto Shindo
When Kaneto Shindo died Tuesday at age 100, he was not the world's oldest active director — that honor belongs to Portugal's Manoel e Oliveira, at 103 — but he had had an amazingly productive and celebrated career, which started in 1934. Among his best-known films abroad are 1960's "Hadaka...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 25, 2012
'Mada, Ningen (Still Human Beings)'
Young indie filmmakers have it tough everywhere, but in Japan the hurdles they face are only getting higher. The so-called mini theaters (art houses) that once screened domestic indie films have been closing their doors or changing their programming to more populist fare. Meanwhile, a growing number...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 18, 2012
'Potechi (Chips)'
Yoshihiro Nakamura is an odd man out among contemporary Japanese filmmakers. All of his films as a director, including his 2009 international breakthrough "Fisshu Sutori (Fish Story)," are intended first and foremost as entertainment, not art. At the same time, they are often philosophical investigations...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 11, 2012
'Rentaneko (Rent-a-Cat)'
Japanese films, at both ends of the commercial-indie spectrum, are often about extremes. Deadly disease and violence are rampant. Characters sweat bullets and cry rivers. Viewers, including this one, sometimes wonder if their circuits are being permanently fried from all the over-stimulation.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 4, 2012
'Kantori Garu (Country Girl)'
The first time I went to Kyoto, in the mid-1970s, I thought I was in the middle of the biggest school excursion in the country. Thousands of kids from all over Japan were milling about in shopping districts and on temple grounds, and a foreigner such as I was still a sight rare enough for dozens of them...
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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