AP A car bomb exploded outside a mosque Sunday, killing at least 37 people and wounding another 141 in a mostly Shiite Muslim neighborhood in the southern Pakistan city of Karachi — the third mass-casualty attack on the minority sect in the country this ...
It's a dangerous, unpredictable world. Twice in January Chinese warships in the East China Sea challenged Japan's Maritime Self Defense Forces patrols in a manner deemed threatening. And on Feb. 12 came North Korea's nuclear test.
Here's an open secret: Japanese men have a bad international reputation on the romance front.
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, ...
Kenta Maeda shook off worries about his form with five shutout innings as Japan beat China 5-2 in first-round Pool A of the World Baseball Classic on Sunday at Fukuoka Dome. Japan improved to 2-0 following a tough win over Brazil in Saturday evening’s ...
This review as originally published on Sunday, Jan. 28, 1968. Director Nagisa Oshima occupies somewhat the same place in the Japanese cinema that Jean-Luc Godard does in the French. A complete intellectual, he is much more interested in ideas than stories, and has more ...
Nagisa Oshima is the best film director in Japan still making good movies. There are other good directors (Kon Ichikawa), but they are reduced to doing company hack-work. Oshima can still do the films he likes, partly because he gets financial backing in France ...
“Seishun Zankoku Monogatari (Cruel Story of Youth)” is the second film directed by 28-year-old Nagisa Oshima and, while hardly the year’s best Japanese film, it is nevertheless of more than usual interest. A young girl (Miyuki Kuwano), restless, wanting excitement and experience, takes to ...
Facebook is so awash in shared quotes and clever little sayings attached to graphics, ranging from heartwarmingly New Age to hipster snarky, that few make an impression beyond the time it takes to read them. Still, every now and then you’ll hit one that ...
There’s an irresistable temptation to describe “The Expatriate” as a discount version of the Jason Bourne series. Pretty much the whole package indicates it’s the same product in a different wrapper: You get the handsome CIA agent; the exotic European location; the order issued ...
A director for the Shochiku studio since 1961, Yoji Yamada is best known for the Tora-san series about a wandering peddler, played by Kiyoshi Atsumi, who is forever falling in love but never gets the girl. In speaking about the 48 installments of this ...
To everything there is a season, even for Hollywood superstars such as Robert De Niro. Having starred in some of the best and most memorable American films of the 20th century, De Niro has remained enthroned in the Hollywood kingdom — but the time ...
At this time of year, it feels good to unplug the computer, stash your electronic devices away and crack open something heavy and dense. While this could be a mega-size box of chocolate (or bottle of bourbon), it’s just possible our senses crave something ...
Based on Fumi Yoshinaga’s best-selling manga about a feudal-era Japan ruled by a fictional matriarchy, 2010′s “Ooku (The Lady Shogun and Her Men)” was a typical Japanese costume film with gorgeous kimonos and a story of drama in high places. The film’s female shogun, ...
Technological progress comes at us so fast and furious, its claims so inflated, its cautions so ignored, that it’s easy to be swept away by the sort of Wired-magazine techno-utopianism in which every leap forward is ipso facto a good thing. But the more ...
There comes a point in a woman’s life when she feels her life is being written by someone else (a man, most likely) and instead of being in control, she’s acting out a part solely to please him and live up to his expectations. ...
OK, I know that some of you out there are anticipating the release of Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” more eagerly than the Second Coming, and for you, here’s the short review: If you liked Jackson’s first three “Lord of the Rings” movies, you’ll love ...
