Film

Music

Art

Stage

'Ballyturk' delivers a surreal yet exciting challenge

'Ballyturk' delivers a surreal yet exciting challenge

by Nobuko Tanaka

When Akira Shirai first read the script for "Ballyturk," he quickly understood why its creator, Irish playwright Enda Walsh, said the work "should bypass the intellect and go straight into your bones." The 60-year-old artistic director at Kanagawa Arts Theatre in Yokohama was mulling over ...

Entertainment News

Dance music superstar Avicii dies at 28

Dance music superstar Avicii dies at 28

Avicii, one of the world's most successful DJs who helped usher in the global boom in electronic music but struggled to cope with the hard-partying lifestyle, died Friday in Oman, his representative said. He was 28. Two years after his unusually early retirement from touring ...

Books

TV

'Ainori' teaches lessons in love ... and soft power

'Ainori' teaches lessons in love ... and soft power

by Patrick ST. Michel

Netflix Japan's reboot of the reality show "Ainori" features plenty of drama — most of it interpersonal, but some geopolitical. The streaming-era version of the show, a joint effort between Fuji TV and Netflix, debuted last fall. Like the original incarnation that ran from 1999 ...

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Learning life lessons in 83 days of death

by Steve Finbow

A 35-year-old-man lies unconscious in a University of Tokyo Hospital intensive-care unit. He has been irradiated. Losing up to 20 liters of body fluids per day, the skin on half of his body is blackened, blistered, and falling off, his internal organs have failed, he is being kept alive by machin...

Knock-on effect: BTS released a Japanese-language album this month.

BTS is big, let’s hope the hype helps other Asian acts

by Patrick ST. Michel

Earlier this month, an album sung mainly in Japanese landed on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart at No. 43. That's a rare accomplishment for any Japanese artist — and an even less frequent one for a non-Japanese outfit to pull off. But it's just another entry on a long list of accomplishments...

People look up at a new Godzilla statue, unveiled on Thursday at a shopping mall in central Tokyo.

New Godzilla statue debuts in Tokyo shopping mall

A new Godzilla statue was unveiled Thursday at a shopping mall in central Tokyo, fulfilling a prophecy inscribed upon its predecessor that more monsters would loom over the area. The new statue, depicting the Tyrannosaurus-like creature featured in the film "Shin Godzilla" released in 2016, me...

Teenage dream: "After the Rain" explores a high school student's romantic infatuation with her older boss. The concept may sound problematic, but director Ayumu Watanabe has created a poignant portrayal of complex love.

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‘After the Rain’: A problematic love story deftly presented with emotional heft

by Matt Schley

"After the Rain" ("Koi wa Ame Agari no Yo Ni"), the 12-episode anime series that finished airing March 30 (and is streaming worldwide via Amazon Prime), centers around 17-year-old Akira Tachibana, a high school student who falls in love with Masami Kondo, the manager at her part-time job, who is ...

Looking for love: Yuki Kimura, known to fans of "The Bachelor Japan" as "Yukipoyo," charmed overseas audiences when she appeared on "The Bachelor Winter Games" earlier this year.

Yuki Kimura may have struck out on ‘The Bachelor Japan,’ but she won the people’s rose

by Naomi Schanen

On the first episode of the reality dating series "The Bachelor Japan," 25 women took turns stepping out of a limousine, walking down a red carpet and introducing themselves to their potential future husband. The women timidly approached the bachelor, Hirotake Kubo, 35, in long evening dresses...