FILM

MUSIC

ART

STAGE

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

BOOKS

TV

WHAT PEOPLE ARE READING

‘First Person Singular’ marks Haruki Murakami’s welcome return to his signature style

by Nicolas Gattig

What makes a writer’s voice addictively readable, selling millions of copies in 50 languages? And how can the same voice remain deeply personal while also speaking to readers all over the globe? For Haruki Murakami, Japan’s maestro of contemporary fiction, first-person narratives were his sign...

Roger that: Detective Kento Saegusa (Kentaro Sakaguchi) communicates with a colleague living in 2009 via a time-jumping walkie-talkie in “Signal The Movie Cold Case Investigation Unit.”

/

‘Signal The Movie Cold Case Investigation Unit’: Obvious but with plenty of panache

by Mark Schilling

Quite a few Japanese films serve as an extra episode of a popular TV series. They even get their own abbreviation: “SP” (special program). Those who venture into these SPs unacquainted with the world of the TV show can feel as though they’ve crashed a family dinner. Fortunately, “Signal The Mo...

Life imitates art: Rihito Itagaki says he felt a natural affinity toward the gender-fluid character of Meguru in “Colorful Love: My Androgynous Boyfriend,” which is based on a popular manga series by artist Tamekou.

Rihito Itagaki brings a splash of color to Japanese television

by Matthew Hernon

While gender-fluid characters populate the plotlines of manga and anime series, there's still a lack of representation in mainstream Japanese media. One Yomiuri TV drama hopes to bring a little more color to what has been a largely binary palette." Based on "My Androgynous Boyfriend," a manga ...

Japanese actor Kunie Tanaka stars as an awkward but loving father in a scene from the long-running TV drama "Kita no kuni kara" (From the Northern Country) in 1983.

Beloved Japanese actor Kunie Tanaka dies at 88

Japanese actor Kunie Tanaka, known for his appearances in the 1962 film "Sanjuro" directed by Akira Kurosawa and a long-running TV drama series, died on March 24 at 88, his family said. Tanaka was a fixture in Japanese households, playing an awkward but loving father in a 20-year-long TV drama...

Gruesome twosome: Fumi Nikaido (left) and Goro Inagaki star in Macoto Tezka’s live-action adaptation of his father’s debaucherous and sexually explicit manga.

/

‘Tezuka’s Barbara’: A dazzlingly dull descent into madness

by James Hadfield

With his black suit, ever-present sunglasses and air of entitlement, hit novelist Yosuke Mikura (Goro Inagaki) comes across like a cut-price Marcello Mastroianni. Women swoon wherever he goes, but a ginger-haired, poetry-quoting vagrant he finds slumped in an underpass is more to his tastes. T...