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 ...
When teenagers see their parents goofing around or generally not acting their ancient age, they often react with embarrassment, scorn or the fervent wish that these so-called adults would just grow up. Then inevitably, not long later, those sophisticated 15-year-olds are goofing around themselves ...
Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, thousands of Japanese-Americans, including those born and raised in the United States, were shipped to internment camps, while others joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, which fought with great bravery in the European theater. ...
Director Tim Burton started out as an animator at Disney, and after working on such milquetoast projects as “The Fox and The Hound” and “The Black Cauldron” he was greenlighted to develop some of his own stuff. After a few animated shorts, he made ...
As the end of the year approaches and the air is filled with the kerching of winter bonuses and brazen consumerist excess, thoughts turn to our loved ones, and the trinkets that will best pacify them at gift-swapping time. For the cinephile in your ...
What with the recent misery in Gaza and Israel, it’s hard to wrap your mind around a feel-good story coming out of the Middle East, but here it is, “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen,” opening at Japanese theaters over a year after its premiere ...
Genres come with expectations, often advertised right on the poster. The one for Tadafumi Ito’s “Karasu no Oyayubi (Crow’s Thumb)” shows star Hiroshi Abe and his supporting cast looking well dressed and mostly wised-up, which makes good genre sense since they are playing con ...
The 007 franchise has been around for 50 years now, and in that time we’ve seen the good, the bad and the Lazenby. The tendency has been, however, to view the success or failure of each movie as resting entirely on the actor playing ...
In 1967, James Bond made his official Japan debut in “You Only Live Twice”: The gentleman spy came to Tokyo and Fukuoka, saw some sumo, consorted with ninja and got intimate with two homegrown Bond girls. Directed by Lewis Gilbert, “You Only Live Twice” ...
Have you noticed that it’s a lot easier to find older men in the movies than older women — in front of the camera and behind it? Take Woody Allen. As he glides toward 80 he’s still in the same old mode of portraying ...
All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl.” So wrote Jean-Luc Godard way back in 1961, and some 50 years later people are still testing that theory. The latest young director to do so is Derick Martini, whose “Hick” stars ...
Is there a body part that is not, for someone, an erogenous zone? Feet have their fans. So do eyes, noses and, as Hiroshi Horiuchi’s “Mimi wo Kaku Onna (The Ear Cleaner)” makes clear, ears. But in this third theatrical film by Horiuchi, following ...
The season of family gatherings is upon us, and here are two movies featuring The Dad in a big way. Though not as familiar as The Mom, The Dad is a cozy Hollywood institution, often deployed to prod at adult male shortcomings — from ...
