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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 ...
The premiere of a stage production based on a major work of fiction is a major event. If the work is “The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone,” a 1950 novel by Tennessee Williams — one of the giants of modern theater — it is ...
Japan may be floundering politically and economically, but amid all the uncertainties it is a joy to report the sparkling rebirth of a major international theater event in Tokyo. Tokyo International Festival (TIF) may be dead — but watch out Avignon, Edinburgh and Adelaide ...
Akaji Maro, founder of the Dairakudakan (Great Camel Ship) company, and one of Japan’s revered icons of the butoh dance form, is known for often speaking rather obliquely. Speaking during rehearsals last July for the world premier of his company’s “Secrets of Mankind” at ...
More than three years ago, theater director Sho Ryuzanji launched Paradise Ichiza, a professional company whose cast was comprised of veteran dramatists who had only ever before been involved off stage, as theater owners, lighting specialists, voice actors, directors or in academia. When Ryuzani, ...
The grave of Karl Marx in Highgate Cemetery, North London, is marked by a bronze bust of the German political philosopher and economist atop a massive granite block on which is inscribed: “Workers of all lands unite.” Here in Tokyo, as global capitalism reels, ...
Who are these two guys — one has a red Mohawk, the other a yellow one? They are popping up everywhere these days on TV sporting black shades and tight mod suits — even advertising potato snacks. Well, the red one’s Ketch, the other ...
Who are these two guys — one has a red Mohawk, the other a yellow one? They are popping up everywhere these days on TV sporting black shades and tight mod suits — even advertising potato snacks. Well, the red one’s Ketch, the other ...
Kuro Tanino leaped into the spotlight in November 2007 with a production of Henrik Ibsen’s tragicomedy “The Wild Duck” that was almost sold out for a month at Theater 1010 in Tokyo’s Kitasenju. A practicing psychiatrist, the 32-year-old Tanino and his Niwa Gekidan Penino ...
If soaring words and soulful music are what you seek from theatergoing, then look no further than “Enoch Arden,” the first program in Tokyo-based production company Total Stage Produce’s series, titled “A Link Between Words/Language and Music.” This performance-recital of the great 19th-century English ...
During his final year at Osaka University of Arts in 1980, Hidenori Inoue founded the Gekidan★Shinkansen theater company with several classmates. The 48-year-old native of Fukuoka in Kyushu hasn’t looked back since. “I got a huge response from audiences early on,” he told The ...
A year ago, I was sad to report on the sluggish condition of the Japanese contemporary theater world. Now, I am delighted to have had to struggle to select just five of the best of plays of 2008 from so many worthy contenders — ...
This is great news for all those who have despaired at the tiny portion of straightforward, high-quality, “grownup” stage entertainment that gets served up to theatergoers in Japan — as opposed to all those dollops of third-rate faux Broadway and facile star vehicles. Written ...