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April 29, 2025
 

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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 14, 2012
'Tenchi Meisatsu (Tenchi: The Samurai Astronomer)'
After winning the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in 2009 for his funeral-business drama "Okuribito (Departures)," Yojiro Takita faced the usual dilemma of the successful: what to do for a followup? This onetime maker of risqué comedies about train gropers had since become a director-for-hire working...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 14, 2012
Nice guy actor Ryo Kase plays rough in 'Like Someone in Love'
There are two types of actors: ones who disappear into their roles and ones who make their roles disappear into them, playing versions of themselves in film after film.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media
Sep 9, 2012
Yamadera, the man with 1,000 voices
Prior to interviewing Koichi Yamadera, a top voice actor, mimic and TV celebrity, I thought it would be tacky to ask him for samples of his many voices, from the characters on the popular "Anpanman" kiddy cartoon show to the hero of Hitoshi Takekiyo's new animated horror-comedy "Hokago Middonaitazu (After...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 7, 2012
'Yume Uru Futari (Dreams for Sale)'
Ever since her 2003 directorial debut "Hebi Ichigo (Wild Berries)," a black comedy about a dysfunctional family, Miwa Nishikawa has been exploring the infinite human capacity for duplicity and the elusiveness of truth.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 31, 2012
'I'm Flash!'
Religious con-men have probably been around as long as religion itself, though we have no way of knowing what scams fake shamans were running in the caves.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 24, 2012
'Anata e (Dearest)'
To call Ken Takakura an icon is almost an understatement. He is not only one of the few stars left from the heyday of the studio era, but he has for decades embodied the sort of ideal Japanese male (stoic, self-sacrificing, unstoppable in a fight) who is vanishingly rare in real life. (Clint Eastwood...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 17, 2012
'Shokuzai (Penance)'
How much will they miss you when you're gone? Directors typically keep putting off the answer to that question as long as possible, working until they drop. Kiyoshi Kurosawa, whose 2008 dysfunctional family drama "Tokyo Sonata" won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 10, 2012
'Kirishima, Bukatsu Yamerutteyo (The Kirishima Thing)'
High schools are mercilessly hierarchical societies. At mine in rural Pennsylvania varsity basketball players occupied the summit. (Football players didn't because we didn't have a football team.) For a mere honor student to absent-mindedly sit in the "reserved" seat of one of these titans in the lunch...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 3, 2012
'Nippon no Uso: Hodo Shashinka Fukushima Kikujiro 90-sai (Japan Lies)'
Caring too much can be an occupational hazard for journalists in disaster or war zones. The mantra of big media is objectivity, not advocacy. Also, the media spotlight keeps shifting, while victims are still suffering. You either move with it — or get left behind.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 3, 2012
Hasegawa gets the perfect portrait
Making a documentary on a crusading 90-year-old photojournalist who is famously fearless and uncompromising is not for the timid. Saburo Hasegawa, who has been directing television documentaries on a range of social issues since the 1990s, was initially afraid that his subject, Kikujiro Fukushima, might...
CULTURE / Books
Jul 29, 2012
The story of a U.S. Marine who convinced his enemies to live
ONE MARINE'S WAR: A Combat Interpreter's Quest for Humanity in the Pacific, by Gerald A. Meehl. Naval Institute Press, 2012, 246 pp., $34.95 (hardcover) Of war memoirs there is no end, though soldiers of any given war eventually fade away. Also, their memories of a conflict may remain vivid decades later,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 27, 2012
'Kazoku no Kuni (Our Homeland)'
Many Japanese directors make family dramas — it's the default setting for serious filmmakers here — but they are usually not telling their own family stories, however fictionalized.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 20, 2012
'Okami Kodomo no Ame to Yuki (Wolf Children)'
Mamoru Hosoda is a leading contender to succeed Hayao Miyazaki for the title of anime master of masters — the one everyone in the industry, Japanese or foreign, looks up to and steals from.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 13, 2012
'Heruta Sukeruta (Helter Skelter)'
One of the signs of aging is that the sort of loud music you loved as a teenager now bores and irritates you, if it doesn't drive you out of the room entirely. Movies can be the same way: Try as I may to channel my inner 15-year-old in the screening room, I sometimes mentally push the volume control...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 13, 2012
Hitoshi Matsumoto gets big laughs in Japan but the comedian wants more
Comics who direct films may start by making audiences laugh, but if they are at all successful they typically turn serious. The classic example is Charlie Chaplin, who went from slapstick two-reelers to speechifying against totalitarianism in "The Great Dictator."
CULTURE / Books
Jul 8, 2012
New religions in the land of the rising sun
CELEBRITY GODS: New Religions, Media, and Authority in Occupied Japan, by Benjamin Dorman. University of Hawai'i Press, 2012, 296 pp., $42.00 (hardcover)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2012
'Kueki Ressha (The Drudgery Train)'
Directors often find themselves boxed in by fan expectations. If a filmmaker who is known and loved for quirky pieces does a serious film or two, fans tend to complain he or she is sliding down a slippery slope toward dreaded respectability.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2012
Director Nobuhiro Yamashita's commercial film departure
Starting with his first film "Donten Seikatsu (Hazy Life)" from 1999, director Nobuhiro Yamashita explored slackerdom, Japan-style, with a laconically knowing eye and a laidback sense of humor. Rejecting the broad approach of so much local comedy, he developed gags from off-beat, spot-on observations...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 29, 2012
'Rinjo: Gekijoban (The Last Answer)'
Japanese murder mysteries, whether on the big or small screen, are typically puzzles, with the characters serving as pieces whose deaths mean little more than Col. Mustard's in the board game Clue. The detective may be eccentric, hard-boiled or a combination of both, but he does not usually show emotion...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 22, 2012
'Seesaw'
Many Japanese indie films never achieve the grail of a theatrical release, and some arrive on theater screens here only after a long journey on the festival circuit. Seeing the latter on a distributor's lineup years after shooting wrapped, I feel like saying otsukare-sama ("job well done") to the filmmaker...
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.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami
A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
California says it overtakes Japan to become world’s No. 4 economy
Vehicles travel along the 110 freeway in downtown Los Angeles. California's GDP has overtaken Japan's to become the world's fourth largest economy, according to the U.S. state.
Arunima Mazumdar: ‘Japanese literature has a niche but deeply engaged readership in India’
Arunima Mazumdar, a New Delhi-based communications professional, began sharing her love of Japanese literature online in 2022. The platform has grown into a robust community known as Dokusha Book Club.
Counting the reasons why there are so few American cars in Japan
Tesla's store in Tokyo's Shibuya district. While sales of American cars in Japan appear to be shrinking, Tesla's presence in the country is growing.
Expo '25 gives the world a masterclass in mascots
2025 Osaka Expo mascot Myaku-Myaku dances on the stage during the event's official opening ceremony on April 12.
Japan struggles with gray zone of AI deepfakes exploiting children
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.
‘Wildcat Dome’ challenges Japan's historical narratives
On the surface, "Wildcat Dome" tells a personal story of damaged children — now adults — bound together by tragedy. Underneath, there’s a constant undercurrent of political consequence, invisible and pervasive like radioactive particles.
Reclaiming Sanya, one meal at a time
Magokoro Yoshihira (center) is the managing director of Yui Associates, which operates the neighborhood fixtures of Sanya Cafe and Juyoh Hotel. Yusuke Takahashi (left) met Yoshihira during a difficult period in his life and now works as the cafe’s chef. Nancy Anne (right) has worked for over 10 years at Juyoh Hotel and enjoys the multicultural environment.
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.

Podcast

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

Longform

A small shrine perched atop rocks braves the waves hitting the shoreline during a storm in Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture. The area is under threat of a possible 31-meter-high tsunami if an earthquake strikes the nearby Nankai Trough.
If the 'Big One' hits, this city could face a 31-meter-high tsunami
By Alex K.T. Martin

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