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April 28, 2025
 

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Mark Schilling
CULTURE / Film
Sep 17, 2014
HK Hentai Kamen (HK: Forbidden Super Hero)
Director: Yuichi Fukuda Language: Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Sep 13, 2014
Low City, High City
Best known for his translations of "The Tale of Genji" and the fiction of Yasunari Kawabata, for which the author won a Nobel Prize, Edward G. Seidensticker was also an accomplished essayist and historian.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 10, 2014
Little Forest: Natsu/Aki (Little Forest: Summer/Autumn)
Japanese food culture might be ancient, but Japan's obsession with food in pop culture is relatively recent. The "gourmet boom" of the bubble-era 1980s — when Japanese had more money and leisure to dine in style, rather than simply fill their stomachs — was a big spur. The accompanying proliferation...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 10, 2014
Aku no Kyoten (Lesson of Evil)
Director: Takashi Miike Language: Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 3, 2014
A quarter century of Japanese films in review
In 25 years of reviewing Japanese films and interviewing Japanese filmmakers for this newspaper, I've written 1 million words, give or take a few. This is clearly something no normal person would do, but for me it beats working.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 3, 2014
Sake-Bomb
Director: Junya Sakino Language: English, Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 27, 2014
Bloody hip-hop war set in technicolored Tokyo
A Japanese hip-hop musical? How about a samurai swashbuckler set on the streets of Compton, California? But Sion Sono makes his new film, "Tokyo Tribe," more than an oddity of cultural appropriation. Truth be told, I felt queasy as the story, based on a manga by Santa Inoue, began to unfold in a crime-ridden...
CULTURE / Film
Aug 27, 2014
Bokura ga ita Zenpen and Kohen (We Were There First Love & True Love)
Director: Takahiro MikiLanguage: Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2014
No leader of the pack, but still a heartthrob
What is it with women and bad boys on motorcycles — including college boys with pretensions to being bad? A conundrum of my youth. Yes, I understood the appeal of a Marlon Brando or James Dean with a big thrumming machine between his legs, but why did the women I knew prefer riding on a Honda with...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 13, 2014
The long, bone-chilling gaze of new director Ayumi Sakamoto
Directors have various ways of communicating in interviews — beyond the usual talking points, that is. Koji Fukada drew me geometrical diagrams to explain the intertwining relationships in his coming-of-age drama "Hotori no Sakuko (Au Revoir l'Ete)." Studio Ghibli producer Toshio Suzuki sketched me...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 13, 2014
Female anxiety shot from every angle
The Japanese film industry used to be like much of the rest of Japanese society: male-centered and male-run. It made plenty of movies about women and for women, but their directors were all men. That began to change when Naomi Kawase won a Cannes Camera d'Or prize in 1997 for her first feature, "Moe...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 13, 2014
Bushi no Kondate (A Tale Of Samurai Cooking: A True Love Story)
Director: Yuzo AsaharaLanguage: Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 6, 2014
Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Taika-hen (Rurouni Kenshin: Kyoto Inferno)
The jidaigeki (samurai period drama) is dying, we have been told again and again. Topknots and swords have become rare sights on television, while Japanese studios, which once devoted nearly half their production to the genre, now essay only the occasional chanbara (swordplay) film, with mixed box-office...
CULTURE / Film
Aug 6, 2014
Danshi Kokosei no Nichijo (Daily Lives of High School Boys)
In Daigo Matsui's 2013 comedy, a gang of horny students at an all-boys high school are confronted by a mass invasion of plaid-skirted lovelies from a nearby girls high school for a joint festival. The sharp, absurdist sense of humor of his 2012 breakout hit "Afro Tanaka" is also present in this film,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 2, 2014
The Inland Sea
In his lifetime, Donald Richie was best known as a pioneering expert on Japanese cinema; he famously first brought the films of Yasujiro Ozu to the attention of the West, as well as writing the trailblazing "The Japanese Film: Art and Industry" with fellow cinema scholar Joseph L. Anderson. But among...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 30, 2014
Lost in a dingy maze of booze, sex and crime
Golden-gai, a warren of tiny bars near Shinjuku's Kabukicho entertainment district, has long been a refuge for writers, musicians, filmmakers and other artistic types, who congregate at drinking establishments with like-minded patrons. The area also has a seedier, less reputable side, which is graphically...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 30, 2014
Yurusarezarumono (Unforgiven)
Director: Lee Sang-ilLanguage: Japanese (subtitled in English)
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 30, 2014
R-18 to G: Are pink films losing their potency?
Yuji Tajiri and Shinji Imaoka were two of the “Seven Lucky Gods of Pink” — a group of young pinku eiga (erotic film) directors who were hailed as the genre’s hope after they rose to prominence in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jul 23, 2014
Love beyond the realms of erotic cinema
The varieties of love are many: From the chaste and platonic, to the sexually uninhibited and emotionally obsessed. In a long career as a pinku eiga (pink film) director Yuji Tajiri has concentrated on the latter end of the scale, but in his latest film, "Koppamijin (Broken Pieces)," he makes a successful,...
CULTURE / Film
Jul 23, 2014
New Directors From Japan
Directors: Nagisa Isogai, Hirobumi Watanabe, Kosuke TakayaLanguage: Japanese (subtitled in English)
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 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.
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.
‘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.
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

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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