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August 15, 2024
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 22, 2007
Feminine mystique
Bicultural superstar Anna Tsuchiya on her role in Mika Ninagawa's acclaimed debut film 'Sakuran'
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 16, 2007
'Exte'
Sion Sono is following what is now a well-traveled career path for Japanese directors: First the indie debut that plays the international festival circuit ("Bicycle Sighs" in 1990), then the cult sensation taken up by the fan boys ("Suicide Club" in 2002), and finally the horror pic that hopefully makes...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 9, 2007
'Freesia'
Back in the 1990s there was a spate of Japanese movies about alienated young guys who roamed the streets or countryside with a gun, a girl and an attitude. But "Nihonsei Shonen (The Boy Made in Japan)" (1995), "Secret Waltz" (1996) and other films inspired by Hollywood criminal-couples-on-the-road movies...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 2, 2007
'Dororo'
Big-budget period dramas, often set a millennium or more ago and based on a famous legend or historical incident, are the coin of the Asian coproduction realm.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2007
Tokyo's dark side
Welshman John Williams first came to Japan in 1988, intending to stay two years, write a script and return to Britain to make a movie. He ended up making eight shorts, a documentary and finally a feature film -- the drama "Firefly Dreams" -- all in Japan and with Japanese casts and crews. Released in...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2007
'Starfish Hotel'
Many foreigners, from visitors to longtime expats, have made films in Japan, but nearly all of them have ended up distinctly non-Japanese. That's not to say they were bad: Josef von Sternberg's erotic fable "Anatahan" (1953) was unlike anything Japan's film industry was making at the time, but it still...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 26, 2007
'Ai no Rukeichi'
Japan, it has often been noted, has traditionally been a paradise for men. Boys could once look forward to a life of being waited on by self-sacrificing women -- first mothers, then wives and, at the enfeebled end, daughters-in-law, while enjoying the varied erotic pleasures of the mizushobai (water...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 19, 2007
'Tamamoe'
"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive," wrote Sir Walter Scott -- words of wisdom for married cheaters, who rarely turn out to be as clever in their sexual games as they first imagined. Too often passion overcomes prudence as hard-to-explain credit card bills and "business...
CULTURE / Books
Jan 18, 2007
An unflinching account of a cinema legend
Waiting on the Weather: Making Movies With Akira Kurosawa, by Teruyo Nogami. Stone Bridge Press: Berkeley, University of California Press, 2006, 296pp, $25 (cloth) Great directors, once dead, inevitably attract biographers, memoirists and critics in large numbers who chronicle and critique every aspect...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 18, 2007
In the presence of 'Emperor' Kurosawa
Akira Kurosawa's assistant for almost four decades, Teruyo Nogami discusses the master filmmaker's genius, and his weaknesses
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 12, 2007
'Akumu Tantei'
Shinya Tsukamoto has long labored on the fringes of the Japanese film industry, not always by choice. The original cyberpunk bad boy of Japanese movies, Tsukamoto burst onto the scene in 1989 with "Tetsuo," a film so extreme in its violence, sex and general insanity, including an interlude with a whirling...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 5, 2007
'Soredemo Boku wa Yattenai'
Like many other foreigners here, I have had my brushes with the Japanese justice system, from ID checks by cops wanting to practice their English to one memorable appearance on a witness stand. I have also seen it in action as a moviegoer, from prison comedies (Yoichi Sai's "Keimusho no Naka [Doing Time]"...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 4, 2007
NHK to unveil next-generation 3-D technology by next year
NHK, Japan's giant public broadcaster, has become a world leader in 3-D technology, in partnership with the private sector. NHK researchers have been developing 3-D systems since 1990 and NHK Technical Services, an NHK group company, has made more than 300 3-D programs to date, from live sports shows...
CULTURE / Books
Nov 19, 2006
Akebono: Yokozuna to K-1
GAIJIN YOKOZUNA: A Biography of Chad Rowan, by Mark Panek. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2006, 301 pp., $24.95 (paper). Biographers of living celebrities must make a fundamental choice: write from the inside or the outside. At one extreme are the insiders -- friends, relations or paid hacks --...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 12, 2006
Ultraman . . . forever
The "Ultraman" live-action science-fiction series has been a rite of passage for Japanese boys (and a few girls) and their families for four decades now, since the first show was aired in 1966.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 20, 2006
An intro to Tokyo's film fest
The Tokyo International Film Festival, Japan's biggest, glitziest film fest, opens Saturday, Oct. 21, and runs for nine days at Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills in Roppongi, Bunkamura in Shibuya and other venues around the city. The selection is huge, beginning with the four main sections: the Competition,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 6, 2006
She wanted to die, but war saved her life
Many recent Iranian films are about the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, claimed a million lives and, as journalist Robert Fisk noted, "touched every family in both countries."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 23, 2006
Takashi Miike makes his mark
Whatever the place or occasion -- including a hurried press interview in the middle of a film festival, as happened at April's Udine Far East Film Festival for the screening of his first English-language film "Imprint" -- Takashi Miike is always gracious, patient, thoughtful and well spoken. In other...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 16, 2006
Having a laugh with Ryuichi Hiroki
A veteran director of "pink" movies, Ryuichi Hiroki won critical acclaim for the 1994 youth drama "800 (800 -- Two Lap Runner)," his breakthrough into straight films. He first collaborated with Shinobu Terajima -- star of his new movie "Yawarakai Seikatsu -- in "Vibrator," a romantic road movie that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2006
A lifetime in search of Japan's true self
Shohei Imamura, who died on May 30, had one of the great careers of postwar Japanese film, winning the Cannes Palme d'Or twice, as well as many other awards and honors. But he spent much of that career on the fringes of the industry, like a bull elephant who separates himself from the herd and goes his...
Japan to revise consumption tax exemption for overseas tourists
Tourists walk through Nakamise shopping street near Sensoji Temple in Tokyo in April
Japan's tourism industry hit by cancellations after megaquake alert
A beach closed due to a megaquake alert in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, from Friday to Thursday.
Focus shifts to incoming typhoon as Tropical Storm Maria dissipates
Newly formed Tropical Storm Ampil, which is forecast to approach eastern Japan this weekend, is seen on the left side of this satellite image.
Kishida to step down in September in bid to show ‘LDP has changed’
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a news conference Wednesday at the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo.
Publisher finds surprise audience after translating history textbooks
Yamakawa Shuppansha president Takeshi Nozawa holds the publisher's textbook on Japanese history — used in high schools across Japan — alongside the new English version in Tokyo on May 23.
Economic security is about strengthening and sustaining growth, former minister says
Former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi says changes in the international balance of power, along with deepening economic interdependence, have led some countries to attempt to use their economic power to impose their will on others.
Ice bandanas, convenience store breaks: Running under Japan’s summer sun
Blistering heat is becoming a fixture of summer in Japan, but a few tweaks to your routine can make your outdoor runs bearable — if not enjoyable — until cooler temperatures return.
Japan issued its first-ever megaquake alert. What does that mean?
Naoshi Hirata (center), chairman of a committee tasked with evaluating the risk of a Nankai Trough earthquake, speaks at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
France brings down the curtain on its Olympic party with Tom Cruise and Leon Marchand
Fireworks are set off during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Stade de France in Saint-Denis on Sunday.
Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom
Flaring at the Cameron LNG export terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana. Flaring, a common sight at LNG plants, is a controlled burning of gas for reasons ranging from depressurizing equipment to disposing of gas that can’t be used. The practice is a "waste of money" and negatively impacts climate change and human health, says the International Energy Agency.

Podcast

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

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’
By Thu-Huong Ha

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