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Mark Schilling

CULTURE / Books

Jan 6, 2013

Complex tales of censorship in 20th-century Japan

THE ART OF CENSORSHIP IN POSTWAR JAPAN, by Kirsten Cather. University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 342 pp., $45.00 (hardcover) REDACTED: The Archives of Censorship in Transwar Japan, by Jonathan E. Abel. University of California Press, 2012, 376 pp., $44.95 (hardcover) Censorship in Japan has long been hot-button...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film / BEST OF 2012

Dec 28, 2012

Japan's female directors make a strong showing

Female Japanese directors were once like those rare species periodically discovered in Asian jungles and immediately labeled endangered. This year, however, in their highly individual ways, they made some of Japan's strongest, most ambitious films. By now the only thing endangered is local industry prejudice...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 21, 2012

'Ooku: Eien- Emonnosuke ・ Tsunayoshi-hen (The Castle of Crossed Destinies)'

Based on Fumi Yoshinaga's best-selling manga about a feudal-era Japan ruled by a fictional matriarchy, 2010's "Ooku (The Lady Shogun and Her Men)" was a typical Japanese costume film with gorgeous kimonos and a story of drama in high places.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 14, 2012

'Gummo Ebian! (G'mor Evian!)'

When teenagers see their parents goofing around or generally not acting their ancient age, they often react with embarrassment, scorn or the fervent wish that these so-called adults would just grow up. Then inevitably, not long later, those sophisticated 15-year-olds are goofing around themselves —...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Dec 7, 2012

'MIS: Human Secret Weapon' / 'Santa Kurosu wo Tsukamaete (Chasing Santa Claus)'

Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, thousands of Japanese-Americans, including those born and raised in the United States, were shipped to internment camps, while others joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought with great bravery in the European theater.

CULTURE / Books

Dec 2, 2012

The ever-evolving digital movie world

JAPANESE CINEMA IN THE DIGITAL AGE, by Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano. University of Hawaii Press, 2012, 178 pp., $47 (hardcover) The world film industry, including Japan's, is now completing a changeover from traditional film stock to digital substitutes.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 30, 2012

'Karasu no Oyayubi (Crow's Thumb)'

Genres come with expectations, often advertised right on the poster. The one for Tadafumi Ito's "Karasu no Oyayubi (Crow's Thumb)" shows star Hiroshi Abe and his supporting cast looking well dressed and mostly wised-up, which makes good genre sense since they are playing con artists plotting to cheat...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 23, 2012

'Mimi wo Kaku Onna (The Ear Cleaner)'

Is there a body part that is not, for someone, an erogenous zone? Feet have their fans. So do eyes, noses and, as Hiroshi Horiuchi's "Mimi wo Kaku Onna (The Ear Cleaner)" makes clear, ears.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 16, 2012

'Fugainai Boku wa Sora wo Mita (The Cowards Who Looked to the Sky)'

What is your worst nightmare? In this Internet age, public shaming by misdirected tweet or surreptitious smartphone snap has come to rank high. Of course, the sex video that just happens to go viral has propelled more than one "victim" to stardom (or at least a reality-show version of it), but far more...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 9, 2012

'The Power of Two'

Chronic respiratory disease is something I've lived with as a parent. My son's severe asthma had him in and out of hospitals and doctor's offices from infancy on, including several life-threatening emergencies. Thankfully, as he grew to adulthood, the bad episodes became fewer, though there is never...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Nov 2, 2012

'Kita no Kanariatachi (A Chorus of Angels)'

Sayuri Yoshinaga has appeared in more than 100 films since winning the hearts of millions in the 1960s playing spunky, pure-spirited teens for the Nikkatsu studio. Her legions of admirers, called "Sayurists," have remained steadfast over the decades, while she herself has overcome personal and professional...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 26, 2012

Sono: 'Disaster survivors spoke more frankly to me than to NHK'

Sion Sono is known for making extreme films that get invited to major festivals. One is "Himizu," a drama set near the Tohoku disaster zone post-March 11, 2011, and whose abused teenage hero seethes with violent rage — and unleashes it on a classmate equally ill-treated by her parents. When it screened...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 26, 2012

'Kibo no Kuni (The Land of Hope)'

Not long ago Sion Sono was known abroad mainly as a maker of cult shockers, starting with his 2001 international hit "Jisatsu Sakuru (Suicide Club)."

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 19, 2012

Understand Japanese cinema

The Tokyo International Film Festival, which runs Oct. 20-28 at Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills and other venues around the capital and the Tohoku region, is a great opportunity to see new Japanese films — with a couple caveats.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 12, 2012

'Koi ni Itaru Yamai (The End of Puberty)'

Gender bending in movies is usually a cue for comedy, especially when taken to more fantastic extremes, as when Debbie Reynolds plays a womanizer reincarnated as a woman in Vincente Minnelli's "Goodbye Charlie" (1964) or Satomi Kobayashi and Toshinori Omi play teens who switch bodies and minds in Nobuhiko...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Oct 5, 2012

'Outrage Beyond'

Yakuza movies were once as easy to understand as white-hat-versus-black-hat Hollywood Westerns. A gang that upholds the traditional jingi code of yakuza "chivalry" is being out-fought, out-knifed and outgunned by ruthless, greedy rival hoods. Then a stoic lone outlaw, typically played by Ken Takakura,...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 28, 2012

'Ashura (Asura)'

An anime with a sad-eyed waif as the hero must surely be something for the kiddies, no? Well no, if the waif carries a blood-stained axe and greedily devours human flesh like a starved wolf.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 14, 2012

'Tenchi Meisatsu (Tenchi: The Samurai Astronomer)'

After winning the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2009 for his funeral-business drama "Okuribito (Departures)," Yojiro Takita faced the usual dilemma of the successful: what to do for a followup? This onetime maker of risqué comedies about train gropers had since become a director-for-hire working...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 14, 2012

Nice guy actor Ryo Kase plays rough in 'Like Someone in Love'

There are two types of actors: ones who disappear into their roles and ones who make their roles disappear into them, playing versions of themselves in film after film.

Japan Times

JAPAN / Media

Sep 9, 2012

Yamadera, the man with 1,000 voices

Prior to interviewing Koichi Yamadera, a top voice actor, mimic and TV celebrity, I thought it would be tacky to ask him for samples of his many voices, from the characters on the popular "Anpanman" kiddy cartoon show to the hero of Hitoshi Takekiyo's new animated horror-comedy "Hokago Middonaitazu (After...

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

Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

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

By Johan Brooks

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