26
SUNNY
A sit-in by visa violators and their families entered its second day Tuesday in front of the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau with protesters seeking government good will. The action at the bureau in Minato Ward is being organized by the Asian People’s Friendship Society, ...
Kazuhiro Shiraishi, 66, is a guest-house manager in the Izu-kogen Highlands, a famous resort area on the Izu Peninsula of Shizuoka Prefecture. Looking out onto the Pacific Ocean, and just 90 minutes by train from Tokyo, Izu has a warm climate all year round ...
“I was stopped by two men in a government-registered vehicle, blindfolded and dragged off the street. They took me away to a house in a place I did not know. I was forced into a room with blood all over the walls and floor, ...
Takashi Miike's blood-soaked vengeance tale, one of two Japanese films being shown in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, draws the biggest boos so far, with critics savaging it as overacted and cliched.
Have you ever given your best effort while striving to achieve something but felt like what you were doing was futile? That’s the feeling I’m getting about Tokyo’s bid to host the 2020 Olympics. With just over three months to go until the IOC ...
In February this year, 35-year-old Tomohiro Maekawa’s reputation was given a boost when he was nominated in both the best-playwright and best-director categories of the prestigious Yomiuri Theater Awards. Although Maekawa didn’t walk away with an award; the nominations, coming just six years after ...
Peter Goesnner was born in Leipzig, in the former communist East Germany, in 1962. His dream was to be a great football player, but 40 years later, the witty, easy-going German is in Tokyo directing “Sekishoku Elegy” (“Red Elegy”) by absurdist playwright Minoru Betsuyaku. ...
“Propeller may be another English group of actors doing a play by their compatriot, Shakespeare, but this is something quite different. How different? . . . Well, you will understand what I mean if you see it!” Playwright, director and actor Hideki Noda, who ...
The acclaimed Noh stagings of Shakespeare by Ryutopia (Niigata Prefecture’s public theater) resume next month both at home and in Tokyo. As the theater’s sixth program, Yoshihiro Kurita — Ryutopia’s associate director and the director of all its Noh-Shakespeare works — has chosen the ...
One evening in late May, a cozy rehearsal room in Yokohama was more like a drill hall as Mikuni Yanaihara called for another run through a dance scene in her latest play, “Gonin Shimai” (“Five Sisters”). As a choreographer and dancer, 38-year-old Yanaihara first ...
After staging “Tales of Beatrix Potter,” a cheerful program for kids of all ages in February, then the beautiful and tragic love story of classical-dance masterpiece “Giselle” in May, K-Ballet’s offering for just four days this month is “Symphony No. 9″ by its 37-year-old ...
The title may be cheesy, but there’s plenty that’s memorable about the content of this politically astute musical, too. After opening in a small New York theater in 2001, “Urinetown” soon became such a hit that it was snapped up by Broadway producers and ...
To launch Za Koenji, the new public theater in Suginami Ward designed by Toyo Ito, artistic director Makoto Sato made the bold decision to present “Keshou Two Acts” (“Makeup”), a one-woman play by renowned writer and director Hisashi Inoue that stars Misako Watanabe. Now ...
2008 was undoubtedly the year of “Yakiniku Dragon” (“Korean Barbecue Dragon”), a realistic, autobiographical work by the Korean-Japanese playwright Wishing Chong that premiered April 17 in the New National Theatre’s Pit. When the curtain came down that night on the NNT/Seoul Arts Center collaboration ...
Long ago, 52-year-old Belgian choreographer Alain Platel was an orthopedic therapist. Then, in 1984, he founded his performing troupe called “Les Ballets C. de la B.” Now his company — whose strikingly original approach to contemporary dance positions it, along with the likes of ...
In Los Angeles last week, the showdown in the World Baseball Classic between Japan’s “Samurai” and their South Korean rivals had TV audiences gripped. So, too, were those at Saitama Arts Theater, who witnessed an acting duel between 26-year-olds Tatsuya Fujiwara and Shun Oguri ...
The Oscars are still in the air, and not just in Hollywood, as Tokyo is set to host Juliette Binoche — winner of Best Supporting Actress in 1996 for her role in “The English Patient” — in a weeklong run of “in-i,” a dance ...