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April 28, 2025
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 3, 2016
'Children of Iron' turns the parent-trap formula on its head
Mom and Dad decide to divorce and their kids try to bring them back together — it's a familiar story here, on screens big and small. And it's not hard to understand why: The kids nearly always succeed, making for a happy ending. Veteran hitmaker Yoji Yamada uses it for his first comedy in two decades,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 27, 2016
'The Actor' gets inside the mind of a struggling Japanese actor
How do Japanese actors do it? I don't mean the stars of mainstream films — those "multi-talents" that are busy 24/7 with TV, stage and advertising gigs — I'm talking about the legions of supporting actors who may have only a single scene or line in a film, or play a body floating in a river. How...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 20, 2016
J-horror master Yoshihiro Nakamura returns to form
Yoshihiro Nakamura entered the film world on a well-trodden path. After making 8 mm films while studying at Tokyo's Seijo University and winning a prize at the 1993 Pia Film Festival — a famous incubator for young Japanese filmmakers — he worked as an assistant director for Juzo Itami, Yoichi Sai...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 20, 2016
Ghosts go hunting for the living in 'The Inerasable'
Have you ever walked down a corridor or into a room in the dead of night with your heart beating and your skin crawling? Something spooks you, for reasons that — in the clear light of day — seem to have to nothing to do with the real world. Or do they?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 13, 2016
Pink and Gray not just an idol film
No one likes spoilers, right? But in some films a major plot twist comes so early that the choice is to either mention it or write an entire review consisting of little more than winks and nods. For example, in Nobuhiko Obayashi's "Exchange Students" ("Tenkosei," 1982) a teenage boy and girl — spoiler...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 6, 2016
Wrestling with Japan's physically challenged, literally
In 1994, I reviewed "Invincible Handicap" ("Muteki no Handicap"), a documentary by scriptwriter and filmmaker Daisuke Tengan about a professional wrestling group called Doglegs whose members were both physically challenged men and able-bodied volunteers. Started in 1991, the Doglegs hardly fit the template...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 6, 2016
'Miss Doc' shows the struggles of a lone female doctor in rural Japan
Change comes slowly to the Japanese film industry. The hagiographic biopic about a doctor, scientist or similarly distinguished personage — rarely seen in Hollywood since the days of Jack L. Warner and Louis B. Mayer — is still alive and well here.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 30, 2015
'Their Distance' explores the pain of being young and in love
'Honesty," Billy Joel famously lamented in song, "is hardly ever heard." The characters of Rikiya Imaizumi's ensemble drama "Their Distance" ("Shiranai, Futari") seem to have been listening: They are honest to a fault with each other about their feelings, even ones that hurt their listener.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 23, 2015
Top 10 films of 2015: War, slackers and a love hotel
It's hard to be an optimist about the present state of Japanese cinema. One reason is the decline of the mid-budget film, previously the refuge of much quality work, with many talented directors going either fully commercial or extremely indie. Micro-budget films are not inferior per se but their subject...
CULTURE / Film
Dec 16, 2015
Kiki Sugino: 'I'm always looking for myself'
Kiki Sugino has a one-of-a-kind resume in the domestic movie business. Many are the young "multi-talents" who act, sing and model, but most are recruited, molded and marketed by an agency. From the start, this 31-year-old actor, director and producer took a more independent route toward multi-dom.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 16, 2015
Family comedy 'Her Father, My Lover' is dark and absurd
"Love is strange," goes the song. But aren't lovers stranger? Maybe not you, but what about your middle-aged pal, besotted with a girl young enough to be his daughter? What could he be thinking? And "strange" is no longer the descriptor many would use. How about the various synonyms for "disgusting"?...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 9, 2015
Domestic film industry focuses inwards at its own peril
The Japanese film industry released 615 films last year, according to the Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan. That figure may include glorified student productions and dressed-up pornography, but is still substantial by any measure. Relatively few of those films, however, are sold abroad....
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 9, 2015
Ryusuke Hamaguchi's study of human love, loss and trust
One Asian film reviewer of my acquaintance writes “(J-film title) could be cut by (number of minutes)” so often that he's probably made it into a keyboard shortcut.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Dec 9, 2015
Filmmakers explore Japan's infamous doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo, with mixed results
Today the saga of Aum Shinrikyo — a doomsday cult that killed 13 Tokyo commuters and poisoned many others with sarin gas in 1995 — seems like something out of a bad manga. What could have possessed so many well-educated middle-class people, to follow Shoko Asahara, a deranged guru who taught a mishmash...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 2, 2015
'Persona Non Grata' a dramatic nod to Sugihara's legacy
Refugees are much in the news now, though the U.S. media commonly refers to the Syrians struggling to enter Europe as "migrants." The reason: Together with genuine refugees fleeing from slaughter are so-called economic migrants seeking a better life in the West — and a news article is not always the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 25, 2015
Hideo Nakata's 'Ghost Theater' recalls true horror
A decade or so ago, J-horror (Japanese horror) was a hot genre worldwide. Thinking they had a sure-fire box-office formula — implacable ghosts scaring the bejesus out of attractive women — filmmakers mass-produced sequels, spinoffs and knock-offs, to mostly diminishing returns.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / Wide Angle
Nov 25, 2015
Welsh filmmaker John Williams has made it in Japan against all odds
It's not easy for anyone to make indie films in Japan. Audiences, venues and funds are all shrinking. And if you are not Japanese, you face additional barriers of language, culture and credibility. Even if your name is the only foreign one on the credits, many will consider your film not "really" Japanese,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 18, 2015
Kohei Oguri's 'Foujita' struggles to win over foreign audiences
Veteran auteur Kohei Oguri's first film in 10 years, "Foujita" is a biopic of artist Tsuguharu "Leonard" Foujita. The toast of prewar Paris for his elegantly drawn women and cats, Foujita radically switched styles on his return to a militarized Japan and his propaganda art for the war effort was heavily...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 18, 2015
Fukada's 'Sayonara' captures android intimacy
'We all die alone" is a thought voiced by the famous (Hunter S. Thompson and Orson Welles among them), but it seems to state the obvious. We also all have toothaches alone, do we not?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 11, 2015
Ryosuke Hashiguchi's inspired drama about love and loss
Watching recent Japanese films, I often have the feeling that their makers need an imagination injection, or simply need to get out more. It's not just that few, especially at the commercial end of the spectrum, work from original scripts. Plenty of great movies are adapted from other media.
China seizes disputed reef near key Philippine military outpost
China Coast Guard officers unfurl a national flag on Sandy Cay reef, near the Philippine-held Thitu Island, in disputed waters of the South China Sea this month in this screen shot taken from Chinese state broadcaster CCTV.
Japan to resist Trump efforts to form trade bloc against China
As Japan gears up for the trade talks, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is also seeking to cushion the blow that the U.S. tariffs may have on the domestic economy.
As many as nine dead after driver plows into Vancouver festival crowd
An ambulance is parked at the site of the Lapu Lapu day festival, where a vehicle drove into a crowd killing several people in Vancouver on Saturday.
Japan’s legal system struggles to deal with AI-made child sexual abuse images
AI-generated content — including those made using pictures of real people, which are known as “deepfakes” — is not explicitly covered under Japan's current legal framework, nor are human-drawn illustrations that depict child abuse.
How to bring up bad news in Japanese
As in other cultures, when someone shares bad news in Japanese it’s best to respond with supportive words.
Amid uncertain tariffs, is now the time to buy a new iPhone?
An Apple store in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward in September. Prices for the newest iPhone models start at around ¥100,000 ($700) in Japan.
Built in a flash, Osaka Expo pavilions wrestle with sustainability
Kengo Kuma & Associates oversaw the construction of the Malaysia pavilion, which is encased in interwoven rows of bamboo that appear to ripple.
Japan weighs using U.S. rice imports as tariff negotiation tool with Trump
A restaurant owner pours California-grown Calrose rice into a rice cooker at his restaurant in Tokyo
Is Japan’s parliament ready to welcome more youth to its ranks?
Lower House lawmaker Kai Odake in his Tokyo office on Wednesday

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.
By Tomoko Otake

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027
Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

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