The Cannes Film Festival, the world's premier film event, has long been a holy grail for Japanese filmmakers. Selection for the main competition is the ultimate goal for many, though screenings in other sections convey prestige at home that other festivals, in Japan and ...

Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia, whose 21st edition takes place from May 29 to June 16 at venues around Tokyo, is one of the largest festivals of its type in Asia. And, starting this year, four winners of its competitions will be eligible ...

Christianity has never really taken hold in Japan, despite hundreds of years of proselytizing (with a long Edo Period interruption for persecution). In his novel, "Silence," Catholic author Shusaku Endo famously described the country as a "swamp" where the sapling of the Christian faith ...

The husband who gets home late and says nothing to his wife but "furo" ("bath"), "meshi" ("food") and "neru" ("sleep") is a cliche about Japanese married life that is often not far from the truth. The macho ideal has traditionally been the quiet type ...

Japanese films set in high schools are now about as common as cherry trees in Tokyo. This makes box-office sense: Japanese teens read a lot of manga about kids their own age and the more popular become fodder for films. In manga anything goes — ...

Japanese film companies mostly make local films for the local market. Often the films may as well have "not for export" written in the credits. Launched in 2008 by Kiki Sugino and Kosuke Ono, Wa Entertainment has set its sights beyond Japan in everything from ...

The Okinawa International Movie Festival has never been just about movies — or even Okinawa. Held from April 18 to 22, the 11th edition was a showcase for the talents of sponsor Yoshimoto Kogyo — an Osaka-based agency that supplies Japanese TV with many ...

When I taught at colleges here in the 1980s, I marveled at my students' freedom, including freedom from study. They could spend most of their waking hours at part-time jobs or club activities and still, somehow, graduate. But, as Shinya Tamada's ensemble drama, "Lust in ...

The Heisei Era began in January 1989 and I started writing reviews of Japanese films for The Japan Times in July that year. In 1990, I became Japan correspondent for a British movie trade magazine, a job description that, with a change of publication, ...

Why should Japanese kids care about a manga set in China's Warring States Period, (475-221 B.C.)? The players and power struggles are hard enough for professional historians (and this reviewer) to grasp, let alone 10-year-olds. Yasuhisa Hara found a winning answer in "Kingdom," a manga ...