Tag - yoshimoto

 
 

YOSHIMOTO

Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 22, 2017
'Spark': A fool and a straight man walk into a bar...
Stand-up — one comic in front of a microphone — is the default setting for live comedy in the United States. In Japan the equivalent has long been rakugo, a traditional form in which a single performer tells comic stories. Today, however, aspiring comics usually opt for manzai, a style of duo comedy...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 15, 2017
Known for seeking thrills on TV, Daisuke Miyagawa goes for laughs in 'The Stand-In Thief'
Need someone to chase pigs in Thailand? Daisuke Miyagawa's your man. How about punching watermelons in Australia? Miyagawa's your man.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Sep 29, 2017
Yoshimoto Kogyo comedians team up with Fukushima to restore disaster-hit scenic rail line
Fukushima Prefecture has teamed up with major entertainment company Yoshimoto Kogyo Co. as the prefecture reopens a scenic local railway line that had been partially closed due to damage from torrential rain six years ago.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Dec 17, 2016
'Goodbye Tsugumi': Banana Yoshimoto's portrait of a feisty young woman in '80s Japan
Banana Yoshimoto found fame in 1988 when her wildly successful debut novel "Kitchen" was published. Her unique take on contemporary themes and ability to conjure up feisty yet vulnerable heroines was what attracted readers — two aspects that reappear in "Goodbye Tsugumi," her 1989 novel that chronicles...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Oct 10, 2015
Banana Yoshimoto sprinkles perversion and melodrama over '90s Tokyo in 'N.P.'
This vintage Banana Yoshimoto novel from 1990 is the tale of four confused souls spending a magical summer in Tokyo. Airy and urbane, it follows three women and a guy as they each sit in cafes having rambling confessional conversations, feel lost looking at the deep blue sky and show up drunk at their...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 29, 2015
'The Book of Tokyo' reveals sidelined Japanese writers, but not the city itself
"The Book of Tokyo" is part of Comma Press' "Reading the City" series, though most of the stories inside could be transplanted to other Japanese cities — Nagoya, Fukuoka or Sapporo — without any noticeable difference.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 8, 2015
Rural migration, shaved ice and no easy endings in 'Umi no Futa'
Why not abandon your stressed urban existence, move to a picturesque part of the world and live the simple life? An old dream, but still powerful, as shown by the recent spate of Japanese movies about women getting back their grooves by relocating to a beautiful middle-of-nowhere. Usually their dream...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Apr 25, 2015
Banana Yoshimoto's magical realist rumination on life and death
Amrita, a Sanskrit word that literally means "immortality," is the name of Banana Yoshimoto's strange 1994 novel. It's an essentially plotless tale, but deeply affecting in its blend of ennui and hope.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 15, 2015
Adaptation of Banana Yoshimoto's 'Asleep' is heavy with depression and Eros
Sleep is the great restorer, one we frazzled moderns eternally need, desire and lack. But for Terako (Sakura Ando), the sleepy-eyed heroine of photographer and director Shingo Wakagi's "Shirakawa Yofune" ("Asleep"), the bedroom is a battleground of the spirit.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 25, 2015
When the burden of surviving an earthquake is too much for a child to bear
Survivor guilt is a common outcome of war, natural disasters or anything that produces victims and survivors linked by blood, friendship or other ties. Why did you die but not me? Why couldn't I save you? The questions gnaw, and outsiders have no real answers.
Japan Times
LIFE / Digital
Aug 23, 2014
Yoshimoto Kogyo's role in creating a real-life robot with a sense of humor
With big, round, smiling eyes and a shirt and bow tie displayed on the screen on his chest, humanoid robot Pepper is ready to entertain his guests. Music begins to play, and Pepper shows off his moves to the 1960s hit song "The Loco-Motion" as a crowd of onlookers laughs with pleasure.
Japan Times
LIFE / Lifestyle / CHILD'S PLAY
Jun 6, 2014
Gallery proves a hit with young critic
The art critic wanders purposefully around the gallery, passing instant, scathing judgment on the surrounding artworks.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Mar 27, 2014
Okinawa film fest gives fans an up-close view of the stars
Why go to Okinawa for movies? For anyone familiar with the international festival circuit, especially at its higher, artier end, the Okinawa International Movie Festival may well prompt this question — and a negative answer. "It's not a real film festival!" a fellow foreign journalist exclaimed to...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Jan 11, 2014
Kitchen
When "Kitchen," the debut novel by Banana Yoshimoto, was first released in Japan in 1988, it caused such a stir that the media frenzy around her was dubbed "Bananamania."
Japan Times
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Apr 24, 2013
Yoshimoto seeks laughs and profit beyond Japan
Osaka-based Yoshimoto Kogyo, the giant talent agency that celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, has made an enduring business out of that fleeting phenomenon: laughter.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
May 25, 2012
Play reveals manzai's U.S. roots
Watching the fast-paced, two-person manzai routines that characterize much of Japanese TV comedy these days, it's difficult to imagine that two key influences on that genre's birth were stars of cinema's silent era: Harold Lloyd and Charlie Chaplin.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jan 22, 2012
Can showbiz really sever yakuza ties?
Last August, comedian and TV emcee Shinsuke Shimada retired from show business following allegations that he'd been palling around with an underworld figure. His withdrawal came on the eve of the implementation of a well-publicized police crackdown on organizations that work with antisocial elements,...

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