FILM

MUSIC

ART

STAGE

ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

BOOKS

TV

WHAT PEOPLE ARE READING

Odd jobs: In Kana Yamada’s “Life: Untitled,” protagonist Kanou (Sairi Ito) works as a manager of sorts at an escort agency.

/

‘Life: Untitled’: The fables and foibles of sex work

by Mark Schilling

Sex is big business in Japan, with many well-known directors getting their start making adult movies of various sorts. And sex workers are frequently depicted in non-pornographic Japanese films, from the oiran (courtesans) of the Edo Period (1603-1868) to the call girls of the present, who work f...

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...

The tale of an adolescent swordsman who fights demons in his endeavor to save his younger sister who has been transformed into a demon, the "Demon Slayer" anime and comic series has morphed into a national sensation.

R rating for ‘Demon Slayer’ in U.S. highlights difference in attitudes

by Tomohiro Osaki

Having dominated the box office to become Japan’s highest-grossing film ever, a movie adaptation of the smash-hit anime series "Demon Slayer" is finally heading to theaters in the U.S. later this month. There is a catch, however: The movie has been rated R (Restricted) by the Motion Picture Assoc...

Our chaotic times: The "Attack on Titan" manga speaks to a post-Lehman Shock Japanese readership as much as it speaks to Hong Kongers struggling to maintain their democracy.

Smash-hit ‘Attack on Titan’ spoke to chaotic modern times

by Kei Ogawa

The best-selling manga series "Shingeki no Kyojin," known as "Attack on Titan" in English, concluded in April, arousing a torrent of emotional response from fans. Written and drawn by Hajime Isayama, 34, the series depicts a grueling series of battles taking place on an epic scale between huma...