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November 11, 2025
 

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CULTURE

Film

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Entertainment news
Pen-ek Ratanaruang's "Morte Cucina," starring Bella Boonsang, is a food film par excellence.
CULTURE / Film
Asian auteurs stole the show at this year's TIFF
Zhang Lu and Pen-ek Ratanaruang delivered standout entries at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival.
CULTURE / Film
A 40-year wait for ‘Mishima’ ends at TIFF
Paul Schrader’s 1985 biopic of the radical author Yukio Mishima finds its Japanese audience at last.
CULTURE / Film
‘The Obsessed’: Charming anime dances to its own tune
"Crayon Shin-chan" director turns a 2001 novel into a quirky, rough-edged musical anime.
A scriptwriter imagines an encounter between a teenage boy (Mansaku Takada, left) and a young woman (Yuumi Kawai) at a beach in “Two Seasons, Two Strangers.”
CULTURE / Film
Nov 6, 2025
‘Two Seasons, Two Strangers’ captures the subtle sadness of Yoshiharu Tsuge’s manga
By Mark Schilling
Director Sho Miyake transforms two of the cult manga artist’s stories into a poetic film that’s hard to forget.
“Mother Bhumi” takes place in a multiethnic rice-farming community where Chinese, Thai and Malay lineages intertwine.
CULTURE / Film
Nov 6, 2025
Across borders and screens, Tokyo film festival finds humanity in migration
By Erik Augustin Palm
Five films screened at this year’s TIFF put migration and its human impact front and center.
After its July release, “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba — Infinity Castle,” an animated feature adapted directly from a TV arc, became the highest-grossing Japanese film ever.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 31, 2025
Anime isn’t competing with Hollywood — it’s beating it
By Alicia Haddick
Once a niche passion, anime has become a global obsession. “Demon Slayer” lit the fuse. “Chainsaw Man” just proved it’s unstoppable.
Ikken Yamamoto plays a shell-shocked Self-Defense Force veteran whose past comes back to haunt him in “Flames of a Flower.”
CULTURE / Film
Oct 29, 2025
‘Flames of a Flower’: A bold interrogation of Japan’s pacifist identity
By James Hadfield
Oudai Kojima’s PTSD drama turned politically charged thriller takes aim at Japan’s postwar contradictions.
Koto Nagata’s “Baka’s Identity” follows three men (from left: Yuta Hayashi, Takumi Kitamura and Go Ayano) in Japan’s fake ID trade, bound by crime and brotherhood.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 29, 2025
‘Baka's Identity’ exposes an underworld of stolen names and lost souls
By Mark Schilling
In Koto Nagata’s thriller, Japan’s vulnerable youth on society’s margins risk everything — even who they are.
In “Climbing for Life,” Sayuri Yoshinaga (right) portrays Junko Tabei, the first woman to summit Mount Everest, alongside Yuki Amami as the journalist who covered the expedition.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 23, 2025
‘Climbing for Life’ doesn’t break new ground, but knows its footing
By James Hadfield
Sayuri Yoshinaga brings quiet strength to the biopic about the first woman to summit Mount Everest — even when the film itself plays it safe.
Yukari (Hana Sugisaki, right) is brought out of her shell by a beautiful hostess (Kotona Minami) in “Meets the World.”
CULTURE / Film
Oct 23, 2025
‘Meets the World’: A tragicomic hunger for connection
By Mark Schilling
Between grilled meat and gay manga, Daigo Matsui’s latest is a darkly funny tale of friendship, fantasy and female loneliness.

Tsunami threat passes following magnitude 6.9 quake off Iwate
A tsunami advisory was issued for Iwate Prefecture on Sunday evening following a strong earthquake. The advisory was later called off, after waves measuring 20 centimeters were recorded in some areas.
Japan to subsidize demolition of abandoned inns
Abandoned Japanese-style inns in the Kinugawa hot springs resort in Nikko, Tochigi Prefecture, in March 2023
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years
Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Takaichi stands firm on controversial Taiwan contingency remarks
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi responds to questions during a session of the House of Representatives' Budget Committee in parliament in Tokyo on Monday.
From France to Mali, a deportee's struggle far from home
Moussa Sacko, a Malian deported from France — where he had lived since he was a young child — stands on a street in Bamako, Mali, in December. Compared with his home in France, Bamako feels like a different planet, Sacko said.
Florist Nicolai Bergmann flourishes outside the box
Florist Nicolai Bergmann shops for fresh flowers at the Ota flower market in Tokyo on Friday.
Jenson Button brings end to an illustrious racing career intertwined with Japan
Jenson Button races for Honda during the Singapore Grand Prix in September 2008.
Cleanliness gets competitive at Tokyo’s Spogomi world cup
On Oct. 29, teams from 33 qualifying countries scoured the streets of Shibuya for all manners of trash as part of the Spogomi litter-picking competition.
Jon Homewood: ‘There’s beauty in what we throw away’
After a peripatetic childhood around the world, teacher and artist Jon Homewood ended up coming to Japan in 2012 for a professional opportunity.
High-speed rail is expensive and difficult, but seen as a key to growth
Achal Khare, former managing director at India’s National High Speed Rail Corporation, gives a presentation during the IHRA Forum 2025 in Tokyo on Oct. 23.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Bear attacks have dominated Japanese news headlines in recent months, with 13 people so far having been killed by the animals.
Japan’s bears have been on their killing spree for more than 100 years
By Yukana Inoue

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Foreign wrestlers have a long history in sumo
Foreign wrestlers have a long history in sumo

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