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Mark Schilling
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 20, 2006
An intro to Tokyo's film fest
The Tokyo International Film Festival, Japan's biggest, glitziest film fest, opens Saturday, Oct. 21, and runs for nine days at Toho Cinemas Roppongi Hills in Roppongi, Bunkamura in Shibuya and other venues around the city. The selection is huge, beginning with the four main sections: the Competition,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 6, 2006
She wanted to die, but war saved her life
Many recent Iranian films are about the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted from 1980 to 1988, claimed a million lives and, as journalist Robert Fisk noted, "touched every family in both countries."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 23, 2006
Takashi Miike makes his mark
Whatever the place or occasion -- including a hurried press interview in the middle of a film festival, as happened at April's Udine Far East Film Festival for the screening of his first English-language film "Imprint" -- Takashi Miike is always gracious, patient, thoughtful and well spoken. In other...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 16, 2006
Having a laugh with Ryuichi Hiroki
A veteran director of "pink" movies, Ryuichi Hiroki won critical acclaim for the 1994 youth drama "800 (800 -- Two Lap Runner)," his breakthrough into straight films. He first collaborated with Shinobu Terajima -- star of his new movie "Yawarakai Seikatsu -- in "Vibrator," a romantic road movie that...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 8, 2006
A lifetime in search of Japan's true self
Shohei Imamura, who died on May 30, had one of the great careers of postwar Japanese film, winning the Cannes Palme d'Or twice, as well as many other awards and honors. But he spent much of that career on the fringes of the industry, like a bull elephant who separates himself from the herd and goes his...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 2, 2006
Adding color to darkness
Tall, bearded, bald and craggily handsome, Tetsuya Nakashima stands out in a crowd.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 17, 2006
Girls make their mark
Should women directors make films that are identifiably, even explicitly, female -- or should they invade traditional male preserves in gender neutral ways? Make action, horror and gross-out comedies for teenage boys? My own feeling is they should make whatever they want to make. My own observation,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 19, 2006
Director Yanagimachi explores the human condition
...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Dec 25, 2005
Creators, not hacks
OUTLAW MASTERS OF JAPANESE FILM by Chris Desjardins. London, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2005, 262 pp., $19.95 (paper). IRON MAN: The Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto, by Tom Mes. FAB Press, 2005. 237 pp., $24.95 (paper) Foreign critics used to worship at the altars of Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi...
Features
Dec 25, 2005
Haruki Kadokawa: Spirits of the Yamato
Haruki Kadokawa is the closest Japanese equivalent to fabled Hollywood moguls like Sam Goldwyn or Howard Hughes in their glory days as master promoters and unrepentant egotists.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 16, 2005
Stripping it down, thriving on basics
Born in 1970 into an acting family -- his father is butoh master Akaji Maro and his brother is rising star Nao Omori -- Tatsushi Omori served as an assistant director for Junji Sakamoto and Kazuyuki Izutsu before working for producer/director Genjiro Arato on "Akame Shijuha-taki Shinju Misui" in 2003...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 3, 2005
Making a difference in Japanese cinema
Film critics, like any one else, have their pet causes -- films and careers they want to boost or bury. But unless they wield the clout of a Roger Ebert, they are just one voice in a choir that, with the Internet, is growing by the dozens every day. Singing as sweetly as they want about their favorite...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 6, 2005
A prize-winning director quite happy to have a laugh
With his short-brimmed hat and carefully trimmed goatee, Kenji Uchida looks strikingly like the private investigator played by So Yamanaka in "Unmei Janai Hito."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 16, 2005
Directing duo blossoms
In 1990, shortly after I started reviewing for The Japan Times, I saw a film by a former porno director, Shun Nakahara, that made me think I was not wasting my time after all.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 19, 2005
Not a whodunit but a whydunit
Coming last in a daylong round of media interviews, I was expecting my 40 minutes with Shinji Aoyama to be strained, as in "I'm so tired I can hardly stand." Instead, he came into the meeting room at Toho with a smile and a brisk manner, as in "I'm just getting warmed up." While he was obviously there...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 29, 2004
Buy local produce
Japanese films had a good 2004, even if eight of the 10 top box-office slots went to Hollywood. The Japanese exhibition business is coming to resemble the American one, with more multiplex screens and wider openings. This structure favors major Hollywood product -- the latest "Harry Potter" or "Lord...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 22, 2004
Making love from the inside out
Vital Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5) Director: Shinya Tsukamoto Running time: 86 minutes Language: Japanese Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings] When Shinya Tsukamoto released his first feature, "Tetsuo," in 1989, many critics compared the crazed black-and-white speed dream...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 22, 2004
Tsukamoto's great escape
Although his onscreen characters usually range from the demonic to the neurotic, in person Shinya Tsukamoto is the picture of gentle-spirited, well-mannered sanity. One can imagine him as the ideal maitre d' for an exclusive club, able to soothe even the most savage millionaire.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 15, 2004
Godzilla is dead, long live Godzilla
What do most non-Japanese, Western or otherwise, know about Japanese films? About Japanese pop culture, period? More than they did a decade ago certainly, but let's get real: Go to a typical family gathering in America — blue state or red, it doesn't much matter — and ask those assembled for the...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 8, 2004
Dark clouds over Japan
Lady Joker Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5) Director: Hideyuki Hirayama Running time: 121 minutes Language: Japanese Currently showing [See Japan Times movie listings] Why do films about salarymen tend to be either heavy-footed, with the principals rarely cracking a smile or otherwise dispelling...
Japan set to hold rates steady as yen rallies and LDP candidates stump
The Bank of Japan is holding its policy board meeting this week.
Deaths among elderly people using electric wheelchairs on the rise
A re-creation of a scene in which an electric wheelchair tire has become stuck in a gutter
How Intel lost the Sony PlayStation business
Intel in 2022 lost out on a contract to design and fabricate the chip for Sony’s next-generation PlayStation 6.
Mount Fuji restrictions reduce dangerous overnight climbs
Hikers pass through a temporary gate set up at the fifth station of the Yoshida Trail on Mount Fuji in Yamanashi Prefecture in July.
LDP presidential hopefuls lay out priorities for PM in online debate
Candidates for the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election take part in a debate in Tokyo on Saturday. On Monday evening, they took part in an online debate, during which they each made a case for what the top priority should be for Japan's next prime minister.
‘Shogun’ and the painstaking art of ‘getting it right’
Hiroyuki Sanada and the cast and crew of "Shogun" accept the award for best drama series at the 76th Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, California.
Japan’s schools battle to keep kids cool, with or without AC
Students sit under a misting system during recess at Hikarigaoka Haru no Kaze Elementary School in Nerima Ward, Tokyo, on Sept. 6.
Chris Broad's new bar puts cocktails first, YouTube second
A self-proclaimed lover of great cocktails, YouTuber Chris Broad says his new Shibuya watering hole is more a place to get yourself a solid drink than it is anything related to his social media career.
In LDP presidential poll, three kingmakers hold all the cards
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks at the Liberal Democratic Party headquarters in Tokyo in January as former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga (left) looks on.
How China’s dominance of solar and batteries is impacting Japan’s energy transition
Solar panels and wind turbines at a power plant in Hami in China's Xinjiang region. The U.S. and other countries have described China’s actions against Uyghurs in the Xinjiang region, a key cog in the cleantech supply chain, as a genocidal campaign aimed at erasing an entire culture.

Podcast

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

Longform

A store clerk tries to cool things down in front of their shop by spraying a hose.
Is extreme weather changing the way Japan shops?
By Alex K.T. Martin

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