Politics & Diplomacy
Hashimoto to retract sex suggestion for U.S. military
Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto aims to retract his remark that U.S. servicemen in Okinawa should use its adult entertainment industry to avoid committing sex offenses.
Film Feb 24, 2013
Recommended reading
by Stephen Mansfield
Donald Richie was a scrupulous writer who paid finite attention to language and content. The following are 10 outstanding choices — titles that should be on any discerning readers’ bookshelf. “Tokyo: A View of the City” (1999) Here Richie manages to give the impression ...
Film Feb 24, 2013
The champion of Ozu's masterwork "Tokyo Story"
by Tadao Sato
Nowadays, the name of the Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) is known throughout the world. But it wasn’t always like this — and it might never have been, without the efforts of Donald Richie. After Ozu’s masterpiece “Tokyo Story” was released in 1953, ...
Film Feb 24, 2013
An inclined view: The life and work of Donald Richie
by Stephen Mansfield
It was with a heavy heart that I heard from Donald Richie's longtime friend and editor Leza Lowitz that he had passed away on the morning of Tuesday, this week. He was 88.
Review Feb 15, 2013
'Sado Tenpesuto'
by Mark Schilling
Beginning with 2001′s “Ichiban Utsukushi Natsu (Firefly Dreams),” a Yasujiro Ozu-esque drama about a friendship that develops between a rebellious teenage girl and an elderly former actress in the countryside, John Williams has been directing films in Japan with Japanese talent that do not ...
Film Apr 6, 2012
Japan's traditional arts held sway over silent era
by Mark Schilling
Japan’s silent-film era began with an exhibition of Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope film-viewing device in Kobe in November 1896, only about one year after the first-ever public film screening in Paris. Despite the early importation of equipment and films from abroad, the Japanese film industry ...
Review Mar 25, 2012
An unserious look at the work of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu
by David Cozy
NORIKO SMILING, by Adam Mars-Jones. Notting Hill Editions, 2011, 239 pp., ￡12.00 (hardcover). “I can hardly be accused of being an expert on Japanese film,” Adam Mars-Jones assures us early in “Noriko Smiling,” his monograph on Yasujiro Ozu’s “Late Spring.” Such protestations at the ...
Film | ENTERTAINMENT SPOTLIGHT Jun 24, 2011
Director Ishii brings style to family drama
by Mark Schilling
Japanese directors with any kind of ambition usually end up making a family drama, which is to Japanese cinema what the Western used to be to Hollywood: the core national genre. Of course, plenty of bad-to-mediocre directors here have made family dramas, just as ...
Review | THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF Mar 5, 2006
Evolution of Japanese cinema and the design of its creators
by Jonny Chinchen
A HUNDRED YEARS OF JAPANESE FILM, by Donald Richie. Kodansha International, 2005, 320 pp., $22 (paper). Among Japanophiles, Donald Richie doesn’t need an introduction, having written over 40 books on Japan, including the definitive works on directors Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu, and the ...
Book | THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF Jun 12, 2005
It keeps coming back to haunt us
by Donald Richie
JAPANESE HORROR CINEMA, edited by Jay McRoy, preface by Christopher Sharrett. Edinburgh University Press, 2005, Traditions in World Cinema Series, 220 pp., £16.99. (paper). Latest among the packaged movie trends is the Japanese horror film. Every month more samples appear, all of them scrutinized ...
Book | THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF May 29, 2005
In the spirit of humanism
by Donald Richie
THE CINEMA OF GOSHO HEINOSUKE, by Arthur Nolletti, Jr. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005, 243 pp., with photographs, $27.95 (paper). Though Heinosuke Gosho (1902-1981) is remembered in Japan where his films are still occasionally shown, he is all but unknown abroad. This neglect is ...
Book | THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF May 2, 2005
Sexual, visual politics: from shunga to shojo
by Donald Richie
GENDER AND POWER IN THE JAPANESE VISUAL FIELD, edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson and Maribeth Graybill. Honolulu: Hawai’i University Press, 2003, 292 pp., 7 color plates, 106 b/w illustrations, $36.00 (cloth). The original impetus for this interesting volume came during the 1994 ...
Book | THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF Feb 13, 2005
Japan makes great genres, but . . .
by Donald Richie
THE MIDNIGHT EYE GUIDE TO NEW JAPANESE FILM, by Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp, foreword by Hideo Nakata. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. 366 pp., 151 b/w photos, $22.95 (paper). The authors of this very interesting new compendium on recent Japanese cinema would agree, I ...