author

 
Menu
Search
 
April 05, 2025
 

Today's print edition

Home Delivery
Subscribe for more access

Meta

Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 31, 2009
'Yamagata Scream'
Japanese horror movies, under the label J-Horror, were once quite the international thing. Hollywood remade the shockers "Ring" (1998) and "Juon" ("The Grudge," 2002), while foreign video labels snapped up rights to the originals. All that is now a distant memory, though. Fantastic film festivals in...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 26, 2009
The quirky terrain of an otaku mind
"Otaku" is one of those Japanese words that has no precise equivalent in English. "Geek" translates the knowledgeability as well as the social ineptness of the stereotypical otaku, but not quite his (and, more rarely, her) intense interest in what so-called serious adults regard as trivial pursuits:...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 24, 2009
'Amalfi'
Films produced by Fuji TV — one of Japan's five national TV networks — have regularly hit the top of the box-office charts in the past decade. Fuji's biggest franchise started in 1998 with "Odoru Daisosasen The Movie" ("Bayside Shakedown"), a thriller starring Yuji Oda as a rambunctious detective...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 17, 2009
'Futoko'
Since its start in 1978, the Pia Film Festival has served as a proving ground for young Japanese indie filmmakers, with many of its prize winners going on to greater fame, if not always fortune. Among them are Ryosuke Hashiguchi ("Gururi no Koto"), Shinobu Yaguchi ("Happy Flight"), Naoko Ogigami ("Kamome...
CULTURE / Film
Jul 10, 2009
'Kani Kosen'
Why does a novel about exploited workers on a crab cannery boat, published 80 years ago by a young communist writer, later tortured to death by the police, become a hot movie property now?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 3, 2009
'MW'
Japanese live-action films based on manga take various forms, from the silly to the serious, though few are anything like Hollywood comic-book movies, whose superheroes, with their CG-assisted superpowers, are pure wish fulfillment. It's not that the Japanese films are always less fantastic, but their...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 26, 2009
'Dear Doctor'
Movies about impostors and grifters tend to view their roguish heroes with everything from indulgence to outright admiration, but rarely disapproval. One reason, I think, is that the movie business attracts BS artists of every stripe, from the hustlers peddling grade-Z action pics in film market booths...
CULTURE / Film
Jun 19, 2009
'Shugo Tenshi'
Salaryman comedies go back the prewar days. Even Yasujiro Ozu portrayed the tragicomic trials of the salaryman in such films as "Tokyo no Chorus" ("Tokyo Chorus," 1931) and "Umarete wa Mita Keredo" ("I was Born but . . .," 1932), though the genre reached its popular peak in the 1960s, when Hitoshi Ueki...
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2009
'Seishin'
Mental illness, as Kazuhiro Soda notes in his documentary "Seishin" ("Mental"), is one of the big taboos of Japanese society.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 12, 2009
Samurai get put through paces
Anyone who knows anything about musicals knows they require endless rehearsals in order to be staged successfully. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers didn't just jump up and glide around a sound stage as the cameras rolled; they had to practice each step of those seemingly effortless dance routines over...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Jun 7, 2009
It's so cool to play an oily toad
Actors who direct and star in their own films may be motivated by something other than vanity, but they usually manage to make themselves look cool — or at least cooler than they would have if someone else had been in the director's chair.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 5, 2009
'Ultra Miracle Love Story'
Johnny Depp seems to be a role model for Japanese actors with leading man looks, but who almost never plays straight leading man roles. That is, roles in which they romance and win the leading lady — comic fight-and-make-up scenes optional. If Depp's career is any indication, this is a brilliant strategy,...
CULTURE / Film
May 29, 2009
'High Kick Girl'
Movie-action scenes are as choreographed as "Swan Lake," but the exceptional ones that make it real — Buster Keaton standing stock still as the side of a house falls on him in "Steamboat Bill Jr., Jackie Chan sliding 30 meters down a pole in a shopping mall in "Police Story" — linger on in memory...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 22, 2009
Swamped by laughter
I'd met Satoshi Miki several times before interviewing him for "Instant Numa." Our senses of humor mesh well enough that the recording of the interview often sounds like a sitcom laugh track.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 22, 2009
'Instant Numa'
Comedy is big box office in Hollywood now, with such comic odes to male immaturity as "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" grossing north of $100 million. In Japan, on the other hand, making the locals laugh in a movie theater is still the hardest job in the industry — and the returns for comedies...
CULTURE / Film
May 15, 2009
'Donju'
Kankuro Kudo was once hailed as the boy wonder of Japanese show business, first as a scriptwriter for hit TV shows ("Ikebukuro West Gate Park" in 2000, and "Kisarazu Cats Eye" in 2002) and then hit films ("Go," "Ping Pong," "Zebraman"). In 2005, he released his first film as a director: "Mayonaka no...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
May 8, 2009
'Yomei Ikkagetsu no Hanayome'
Films commonly target one sex more than the other. Akira Kurosawa made them mainly for men and Yasujiro Ozu, mainly for women, but today both directors are regarded as masters by critics of both sexes, targeting be damned.
CULTURE / Film
May 1, 2009
'Goemon'
Big, original, visionary films are rare in today's Japanese film industry, which overwhelmingly prefers sure bets developed from hit manga, anime, TV dramas, novels and other media properties.
CULTURE / Film
Apr 24, 2009
'Rain Fall — Ame no Kiba'
Japanese film folks used to regularly complain that they could never compete with Hollywood because the budget gap was simply too great. A guy in a rubber Godzilla suit didn't have the same impact as the gee-whiz effects that Lucas, Spielberg and company could command and that cash-strapped Japanese...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 17, 2009
'Nisesatsu'
Counterfeiting is one of those movie crimes that, by the laws of script writing, is doomed to fail, like the overelaborate heists that end with the thieves either dead or captured and their loot billowing up in clouds of green from an open briefcase.
U.S. tourist arrested after bringing a handgun into Japan
Hyogo police believe the handgun a U.S. tourist inadvertently brought into Japan slipped through security procedures at Kansai International Airport in Osaka Prefecture.
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.
Japan’s leader didn’t read the job description
Prime Minister and ruling Liberal Democratic Party leader Shigeru Ishiba is facing a political funding scandal that has damaged his reputation and sparked speculation that internal efforts to remove him are underway.
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.
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.
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.
Meiji says sayonara to bottled milk, a staple of Japan's bathhouses
Meiji bottled milk lined up in a fridge at Kosugiyu, a bathhouse in Tokyo. The sticker urges patrons to enjoy the milk one last time before it’s gone.
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
By Johan Brooks

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

BOARDING & INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL DAY 2025 (Sunday, April 20)
BOARDING & INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL DAY 2025 (Sunday, April 20)

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS note

Read more

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER