James Hadfield - The Japan Times

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James Hadfield

Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE HIGH GROUNDS

Sep 4, 2015

Roasted-on-the-spot coffee from Kyoto is going global

The five-story pagoda of Hokanji Temple has crowned the skyline of eastern Kyoto for more than a millennium — give or take the few times when it burned down and was reconstructed. Just down the lane from the current incarnation (constructed in 1440) sits a rather newer landmark, % Arabica, which has...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Sep 2, 2015

White people on holiday are threatened by Asian stereotypes in 'No Escape'

In this globalized age, Hollywood studios can no longer afford to trample over local sensibilities. Earlier this year it was revealed that an upcoming thriller about an American family caught in a Southeast Asian revolution would be having its title changed from "The Coup" to the less provocative "No...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 12, 2015

A disfigured face drags ghosts back to postwar Berlin in 'Phoenix'

In Kobo Abe's 1964 novel "Tanin no Kao" ("The Face of Another"), a scientist left disfigured by an industrial accident dons a synthetic mask and poses as a different man in order to seduce his estranged wife. When she responds rather too readily to his advances, he reacts angrily, only to discover that...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle

Aug 12, 2015

Director attacks critics who claim Japanese films fall short of Hollywood standards

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Shinji Higuchi, the director picked by Toho to revive its dormant "Godzilla" franchise, promised that his version of the iconic monster would be larger and more terrifying than its predecessors. However, the most hair-raising comment in the article was...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 6, 2015

Bryce Dallas Howard kicks her high heels up in 'Jurassic World'

Typical: You spend $150 million on your effects-heavy summer blockbuster, and all people want to talk about is a character's choice of footwear. When "Jurassic World," the long-gestating sequel to the original "Jurassic Park" trilogy, opened internationally in June, the film's producers probably weren't...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 6, 2015

New theme park, old problems, but 'Jurassic World' is still wild

Time hasn't been kind to Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park," the 1993 blockbuster that paved the way for every CGI-driven popcorn flick of the past two decades. But it isn't the movie's visual effects that betray its age: it's the setting. The film's titular theme park may have spent millions on cloning...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Aug 5, 2015

Black depths of Swedish humor plumbed in 'A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence'

If Vladimir and Estragon, the hapless protagonists of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot," had attempted to make a comedy sketch show, they might have ended up with something like "A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence." This mordant, strikingly original work from Swedish director Roy Andersson...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Music

Jul 31, 2015

Never mind the lineup: Fuji Rock is more than music

It has only been three years since Fuji Rock Festival posted its highest-ever attendance figures, with a little help from Radiohead and The Stone Roses, but you wouldn't have known it from the steady drumbeat of glumness that heralded this year's edition. Following a lackluster showing in 2014, when...

Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE HIGH GROUNDS

Jul 31, 2015

High-tech iced coffee cools the summer heat

As the Japanese summer reaches its sweltering zenith, a steamy cup of coffee in the morning no longer seems quite so inviting. It's time to drop your inhibitions, and reach for some ice.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 29, 2015

Ratcheting violence on Belfast's streets in '71

For the last three decades of the 20th century, Northern Ireland was mired in a toxic internecine conflict that came to be known as "the Troubles." Although bombings, assassinations, street battles and clashes with security forces claimed the lives of more than 3,600 people, it was an era defined as...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 22, 2015

'Wild Tales' and black comedy from the dark heart of Argentina

Forget about all the brassy, effects-laden blockbusters crowding the multiplexes this summer: For sheer entertainment value, none are likely to top this Argentine-Spanish anthology of comic shorts. Rich in black humor and satirical invective, "Wild Tales" became the most successful Argentinian movie...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 15, 2015

Walking the Australian Outback in a shirt and undies looks impossibly beautiful

What would compel a young woman to walk almost 1,700 miles across the Australian Outback, with only a dog and a quartet of camels for company? As real-life nomad Robyn Davidson (played by Mia Wasikowska) says at the start of "Tracks" — director John Curran's handsome biopic — "I believe that when...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Jul 11, 2015

Modernity and magical realism in rural Japan

Tokyo may still be thriving, but in Japan's rural hinterlands, the country has already plunged into a state of advanced senescence. At the start of Kazuki Sakuraba's "Red Girls: The Legend of the Akakuchibas," the book's narrator surveys her hometown and struggles to reconcile the stories of its prosperous...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 9, 2015

Japanese winemaker reflects on life and disaster in this succinct New Zealand documentary

Today's documentarians may dream of making epic Frederick Wiseman-style films, but online audiences aren't usually so patient. Three hours? You'll be lucky to hold someone's attention for three minutes.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 8, 2015

The avalanche of cringe in 'Force Majeur'

When a crisis hits, it's hard to say how any of us will react. Tomas (Johannes Bah Kuhnke), a handsome alpha-male type, has managed to drag himself away from work to join his family on a skiing trip in the French Alps. The first day of the holiday passes without incident, but on the second, their lunch...

Japan Times

LIFE / Food & Drink / THE HIGH GROUNDS

Jul 3, 2015

Subtly subversive coffee in Tokyo's book district

There's a spirit of openness in the Tokyo coffee scene at the moment that's really quite refreshing. Rather than jealously guarding their secrets, the current crop of baristas and specialty roasters are talking, sharing and egging each other on.

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jul 1, 2015

'Avengers: Age of Ultron' didn't need a director

How many superheroes does it take to make a movie? At this point, Marvel Studio's cinematic empire is getting so overpopulated that you'd need a spreadsheet to keep track of who everyone is. There are over a dozen comic-book characters vying for attention in "Avengers: Age of Ultron," — some who have...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Film

Jun 24, 2015

Turkey's master of slow-boil cinema keeps his characters simmering with tension in 'Winter Sleep'

This may seem an odd form of praise, but Nuri Bilge Ceylan does boredom awfully well. The Turkish director's last film, "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia" (2011), was a police procedural that had been denuded of the drama you'd normally expect from the genre. Yet as its protagonists trudged fruitlessly from...

CULTURE / Film

Jun 24, 2015

'Through a Lens Darkly' documents the immense power that images have in the African-American community

After the shooting of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, news media briefly circulated a photo of the 18-year-old flashing a "gang sign," transforming him into a menace to society. Twitter users, many of them also young, black males, responded by posting side-by-side photos...

Japan Times

CULTURE / Books

Jun 20, 2015

Cult manga artist Tadao Tsuge's 'Trash Market' is filled with dark tales of misfits and lowlifes

"Too dark, won't sell, no commissions" — such was Tadao Tsuge's verdict on his oeuvre back in 1994. Though he was a noted contributor to alternative manga magazine "Garo" in its heyday during the late 1960s and early '70s, Tsuge remains a cult figure even in Japan, overshadowed by the reputation of...

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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