Many are the Japanese movies about virginal guys who are hopeless with women. One template is "Train Man," a 2005 hit about a shy otaku (geek) who lucks into a date with his dream girl — and needs an online support network to survive ...

Kiyoshi Kurosawa is best known for films about ghosts and other types of strange phenomena that are capable of stirring foreboding feelings through mininal means such as curtains rustling ominously in the breeze or red duct tape stuck incongruously on doors. His new film, "Before ...

How do you imagine the coming alien invasion? Movies have been all over the map with this question, though in recent Japanese films such as Takashi Yamazaki's "Parasyte" duology (2013-14) and Daihachi Yoshida's "A Beautiful Star" (2017), extraterrestrial visitors take a human form. This is ...

Disability presents different challenges for everyone but wheelchair users share a common dilemma: Their mode of locomotion stands out, while they often struggle with social isolation. That was my takeaway from "The Lost Coin," a 2016 short by Mizuko Yamaoka, a filmmaker who has ...

Hirokazu Koreeda is best known for intimate family dramas that overseas critics often compare to the work of Yasujiro Ozu (1903-63), the genre's unquestioned master. Koreeda rejects these comparisons, however, and says he feels more of a cinematic kinship to Mikio Naruse (1905-69), one ...

Murder mysteries are popular film and television fodder in Japan, but most revolve around puzzle plots that hold as much real-world probability as the cases of Sherlock Holmes. Hirokazu Koreeda's "The Third Murder" also presents a puzzle, but it's in the form of twice-convicted killer ...

Despite a career spanning nearly three decades, Yukiko Mishima hasn't appeared on many lists of up-and-coming Japanese female directors, mine included. One reason: She had a relatively late start, not releasing her first feature, a drama based on the Junichiro Tanizaki story "The Tatooer," ...

The Battle of Sekigahara was fought on Oct. 21, 1600, and changed the course of Japanese history. Tokugawa Ieyasu and his Army of the East won an overwhelming victory over the Army of the West led by Ishida Mitsunari, resulting in the political unification ...

In Japan children of famous actors often follow in their parent's footsteps as if it were part of some foreordained destiny. There are many examples of this in kabuki, where acting families can trace their lineages back generations, but it happens quite a lot ...

Last summer, "Your Name.," Makoto Shinkai's anime about gender-swapping high school lovers, began its triumphant march into the box-office record books. Not surprisingly, this summer has seen the arrival of more teen romances, but "Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the ...