The death toll from a blizzard that hit Hokkaido and the Tohoku region over the weekend has risen to nine, local police said Monday. The latest fatality as of Monday was Kuniko Jingi, 76, who was found collapsed under the snow on a road ...
Sleeping in. Breakfast in bed. Sunny brunches. Strolls in the park. Laid-back afternoon tea. Cocktails at sunset. Decadent late nights. Saturday — the word brings to mind a flurry of images associated with the first day of the weekend and the chances are, they ...
For the past year, Tokyo sixth-grader Manami has had dinner at home an average of four times a week. The rest of the time she has had to make do with a juku-ben, a boxed dinner prepared by her mother and consumed between classes ...
SELLING WOMEN: Prostitution, Markets and the Household in Early Modern Japan, by Amy Stanley. University of California Press, 2012, 282 pp., $49.95 (hardcover) In the vast cultural landscape, Japan fascinates the mainstream with manga and anime, the martial arts, Zen and kimono. Of course, ...
Cuba overpowers China, winning 12-0 and advancing to the second round of the World Baseball Classic.
Following the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11 in the Tohoku region, survivors received nearly every type of aid imaginable from thousands of volunteers, ranging from hot meals to haircuts. But they also faced long, soul-deadening hours in shelters and temporary housing, with ...
How can a film shock today’s jaded audiences, for whom blood spurts and flying body parts prompt laughter instead of gasps? How can a filmmaker transgress when nearly everything is allowed? Taken far enough, this line of inquiry can lead to the attention of ...
These are hard, uncertain times, especially for young Japanese who have failed to get the right degree from a prestigious university and the right job with a big-name company. If they can find work at all, it is often well below expectations for the ...
Kyoko Kagawa is among the fast dwindling number of living witnesses to Japanese cinema’s Golden Age of the 1950s and ’60s. In a career that started in 1949 with the Shintoho studio, Kagawa worked with the giants of the era, including Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro ...
Koki Mitani is Japan’s most successful comedy writer and director, with a long string of hit plays, TV dramas and films to his credit, most recently “The Uchoten Hoteru (Suite Dreams)” and “The Magic Hour.” His films bear a family resemblance to the hits ...
The 24th edition of the Tokyo International Film Festival ended on Sunday, after nine days and 128 films, without any major mishaps or controversies. This was a disappointment to one journalist friend: “A good film festival invites controversy,” she told me at the closing ...
Katsuhito Ishii was an early avatar of Japanese quirk, making films that celebrated the wilder, goofier side of the local pop culture while flouting the conventions of commercial cinema, including at least a veneer of sanity. After a successful stint directing TV advertisements, Ishii ...
Japanese distributors of foreign films usually follow the path of least resistance in titling their products for the local market, either rendering the title in katakana or translating it more or less directly. One recently released example is the shocker “The Last Exorcism,” whose ...
Non-Japanese residents in Tokyo who want to see new and classic Japanese films but are frustrated by the small number of subtitled screenings can catch up — and move ahead — at the Tokyo International Film Festival (Oct. 22-30). Eleven of the 23 films ...
The samurai movie has a great and glorious tradition, but Japanese directors have long been of two minds about the samurai themselves. For every “Chushingura” remake that celebrates the samurai ethos of loyalty and self-sacrifice, there is a genre masterpiece that questions it. One ...
