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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 15, 2010
'Inshite Miru: 7-kakan no Desu Gemu (The Incite Mill -7 Day Death Game-)'
J-horror is over. The moment for the ghostly ladies with the long black hair has passed. But people still want to be scared at the movies — and among the Japanese films doing it most successfully now are the hybrids of the horror, mystery and thriller genres that treat murder as a game.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 8, 2010
'Redline'
I was into car chase movies for about two minutes in the 1970s — "Bullit," "The French Connection," "Duel" — but they quickly became cliches, then jokes. "Smokey and the Bandit," "Cannonball Run" and — need I say more?
CULTURE / Film
Oct 8, 2010
Movie program offers some Japanese gems
For foreign residents, monolingual or no, Tokyo International Film Festival offers a good chance to see new Japanese films with subtitles, especially in three of the main sections: Competition, Special Screenings and Japanese Eyes.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Oct 3, 2010
India's expanding film industry boasts more than just Bollywood
Everyone knows Bollywood — the film industry centered in Mumbai (formerly called Bombay, hence the "B" in Bollywood) whose singing and dancing entertainments are shown throughout the country — and now the world.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 1, 2010
'Nanase Futatabi: The Movie (Nanase Again)'
Some genres of Japanese movies are hard to "place" for Westerners, since they have no precise Hollywood equivalent. The ero guro (erotic and grotesque) genre, for example, is often lumped into the horror category by overseas festivals and DVD distributors, but the films are usually less about jack-in-the-box...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 24, 2010
'Jusannin no Shikaku (13 Assassins)'
Takashi Miike's rise is complete: This one-time director of cheapo shock pics — which he churned out like sausages and were beloved by foreign Asian Extreme fans — is now a proven hit-maker and recognized auteur, with his new samurai swashbuckler "Jusannin no Shikaku (13 Assassins)" screening in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 17, 2010
'Kimi ga Odoru, Natsu (The Summer You Danced)'
Melodramas have been a staple of Japanese film for decades, proving over and over the observation that Japanese audiences, more than anything else, love a good cry. I've gone to screenings where the women sitting around me take out their handkerchiefs even before the lights go down. The men start blubbing...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 10, 2010
'Beck'
Yukihiko Tsutsumi's band drama "Beck" is being hyped as one of the big Japanese movies of the year for the usual reason: The manga on which it's based, by Harold Sakuishi, has sold 15 million copies. Distributor Shochiku justifiably expects monster box office numbers, no doubt thinking of "Nana," another...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 3, 2010
'Kaidan Shin Mimibukuro: Kaiki (Tales of Terror: The Bizarre)'
Starting in 1990 as a compilation of 100 "true horror" tales from ordinary folks around Japan, "Kaidan Shin Mimibukuro (Tales of Terror)" has spawned a series of short films broadcast on the BS-TBS cable and satellite channel and three theatrical omnibuses. The franchise is the snack food of J-horror....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 27, 2010
'Tokyo-jima (Tokyo Island)'
It's a common fantasy — being the only guy on an island of beautiful women. But to be the only woman on an island of men, including the good, the bad and the ugly? Somewhat different, isn't it?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2010
Pearl-diving sirens return
The castaway on a deserted tropical isle has inspired everything from "Robinson Crusoe" to innumerable New Yorker cartoons — but it was no joke to Kazuko Higa, the young wife of an assistant plantation overseer living on the small Pacific island of Anatahan in the closing days of World War II.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2010
Japan's first film nude still radiant decades after getting skirty
Arranging an interview with Michiko Maeda took nearly a month — she has long been media-shy — but when she finally agreed to meet film writer Yoshiaki Suzuki and me at a Tokyo beer hall, she epitomized kimonoed grace and charm, while saying this would be her final interview.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2010
'Colorful'
One of the iron rules for Hollywood scriptwriters is that the audience must root for the hero. Character flaws and bad behavior are permitted, but, in the final analysis, the hero should not be a jerk.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 13, 2010
Radical director of porn and politics delivers yet again
Koji Wakamatsu is living proof that a lifelong rebel can thrive in Japan's go-along-to-get-along film industry. Today he is celebrated as not just another '60s survivor — he helped pioneer the pinku (pink, or soft porn) genre in that era, mixing in radical politics and experimental aesthetics with...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 13, 2010
'Caterpillar'
Once an enfant terrible, who as a young filmmaker challenged censors and outraged conservative critics with everything from surreal S&M sex to sympathetic portrayals of Palestinian radicals, Koji Wakamatsu has not mellowed so much as ripened.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 6, 2010
'Kinako — Minarai Keisatsuken no Monogatari (Kinako — The Story of an Apprentice Police Dog)'
Animal movies are a thriving genre of Japanese films that foreign critics, scholars and viewers by and large cordially detest. It's similar to the typical gaijin reaction to natto (fermented soy beans) — i.e., disgust at a humble, but beloved, made-in-Japan specialty.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 30, 2010
'Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Natsu (Japan's Longest Summer)'/'Ishii Teruo: Eiga Tamashi (Teruo Ishii: The Soul of Film)'
August is the season in Japan for a never-ending stream of films and TV programs about World War II. Quite naturally, from the Japanese perspective, most of this outpouring examines the war's closing days, particularly the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some outsiders (including this one)...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 23, 2010
'Chonmage Purin (Chonmage Pudding)'
Yoshiro Nakamura is a rare bird among Japanese directors today. Though he has worked at the top of the industry, where the TV networks and Toho rule, he has so far avoided making the usual Japanese commercial film based on a hit manga, game or TV drama.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 16, 2010
'Kari-Gurashi no Arrietty (The Borrowers)'
Studio Ghibli is often assumed to be the animation house that Hayao Miyazaki built, but Miyazaki has directed only nine of its 17 features to date. Four were made by studio cofounder Isao Takahata and four by four different directors. These latter four, however, are all immediately identifiable as Studio...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 9, 2010
'Surely Someday'
The seishun eiga (youth movie) is an important, long-established genre in Japanese films with no exact parallel in the West. The difference is not the theme as such — films about teenagers are hardly rare in Hollywood — but rather their numbers and angle of approach. The Japanese industry produces...
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.

Podcast

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

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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