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November 01, 2025
 

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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 4, 2015

In the cinematic wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster

In January 2013 Eiga Geijutsu magazine released its annual "Best 10 and Worst 10" lists. The two worst films of 2012, as chosen by the magazine's panel of critics, were Sion Sono's "Himizu" and "Kibo no Kuni (Land of Hope)." The former is about a teenage boy (Shota Sometani) driven to violence by his...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film / 2022 in Review
Dec 16, 2022

Marginalized voices in film spoke louder in 2022

While Ryusuke Hamaguchi's 'Drive My Car' and Chie Hayakawa's 'Plan 75' received wide acclaim at home and abroad, the Japanese film industry took stock of a sobering reality.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 24, 2001

TIFF take 14

Japan has one of the largest film markets in the world. Accordingly, every year the Tokyo International Film Festival serves up world cinema on a grand scale, screening more than 140 films over the course of a week.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Mar 6, 2011

Tadao Sato: 'Japan's single finest film critic'

Tadao Sato laughed an embarrassed laugh as he recalled that three years ago, in London, he had been referred to as a "legend." Though adding to his discomfort, I had to admit that in my university days I had thought of him in the same way. And I still do.
CULTURE / Film
May 2, 2001

Artcore

There's a scene in "Boogie Nights" in which porno director Jack Horner, played by Burt Reynolds, spells out his life dream: to make a "real movie" with hardcore action, something with a story that would make people want to stay beyond the money shot to find out how it ends.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / CLOSE-UP
Jun 3, 2012

Koki Mitani: Japan's Mr. Comedy

Koki Mitani is far and away the nation's best-known dramatist. Although theater is quite a niche medium here, most people in Japan — whether male or female, young or not so young, Japanese or not — recognize his face, even if they couldn't name many of his works. Recently, indeed, I was amazed when...
CULTURE / Film
Dec 7, 2013

Re-examining Yasujiro Ozu on film

Yasujiro Ozu once had a reputation for making films only other Japanese could understand.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 3, 2022

Seven to see at this year’s Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia

The short film festival celebrates the briefest of screen gems. Festival winners not only get the respect of their peers but a shot at an Oscar as well.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 16, 2021

Tao Tsuchiya: Actress, singer, dancer … ninja?

The u2018Rurouni Kenshin' star follows her mother's advice of living life to the fullest.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 29, 2019

Perennials aside, 2019 promises movie classics in Japan

As a program advisor for the Udine Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy, I have spent the last few months scouting Japanese films for the next edition, which will be held April 26 to May 4. This doesn't mean I've seen all the upcoming releases — sales companies are often not ready to screen their...
CULTURE / Film
Oct 19, 2012

Special screenings and other spinoffs at TIFF

The Special Screenings section at Tokyo International Film Festival is largely made up of films that will soon be opening in Japan anyway, but there are still a few hot tickets this year. With "Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away," TIFF has scored the world premiere of this 3-D spectacle featuring the much-loved...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 23, 2011

Disaster not the only reason for Japan's sluggish 2011 box office

After several years of boom, Japanese films finally had a bust in 2011. Although official overall figures have not been released, domestic box-office leader Toho has announced that total revenues from its titles will be down about 20 percent this year compared with 2010. The industry as a whole will...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 8, 2010

Tokyo celebrates a wide world of cinema

Because it offers few world premieres of high-profile films, the Tokyo International Film Festival is not the world's most significant. European and American festivals get all the good premieres, and South Korea's Pusan International Film Festival, the region's best, has a wider selection of Asian premieres...
Japan Times
WORLD
Jul 12, 2013

The Cockney hardman who is Britain's most bankable star in Hollywood

Clipped vowels, a suggestion of impeccable breeding: when it comes to Hollywood's appetite for British and Irish actors it is easy to see why producers keep shopping on these islands. It does not matter whether the stars really went to Eton, the public school sheen on Hugh Grant, Colin Firth, Orlando...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 6, 2012

410,000 attend Okinawa movie fest, but it's still a money-loser

The fourth edition of the Okinawa International Movie Festival, held from March 24 to 31, was a strange beast, combining screenings of 102 films from Japan, Asia and elsewhere with manzai comics and other acts from the powerful Yoshimoto Kogyo agency, which underwrote the entire event, in cooperation...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / THE FOREIGN ELEMENT
Sep 9, 2013

Filmmaker revisits the children of Fukushima's 'Grey Zone'

Ian Thomas Ash has won acclaim and awards at film festivals around the world for 'A2-B-C,' the second of a pair of documentaries about children living in towns a stone's throw from Fukushima No. 1.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 26, 2001

Showing, not telling: the birth of pure film

WRITING IN LIGHT: The Silent Scenario and the Japanese Pure Film Movement, by Joanne Bernardi. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001, 355 pp., 100 illustrations. $39.95 (cloth); $19.95 (paperback) Film evolved differently in different cultures. In the West the cinema was perceived as a new form...
LIFE / Digital / CYBERIA
Mar 29, 2000

Get Shorty

For many of us living in Japan, the Academy Awards ceremony serves as a reminder of where we are in the bigger scheme of things: behind the curve. We often haven't seen many of the nominated or winning films, some won't be here for another year, and others might not come at all. This is a distribution...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 21, 2011

Overcoming disaster via cinematic therapy

Back in May, the rumor among cinephiles in the Japanese media was that the Tokyo International Film Festival (TIFF) wouldn't happen this year. The mood was that it was too soon after the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11 to hold anything festive, especially in the visual-arts scene. All over Japan,...
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 4, 2009

A nation adrift cries out for new visions fired by anger and sorrow

Every era in the life of a country begs for creators to define it and give it momentum for its society to progress. Politicians, economists and bureaucrats seem to believe that culture rides on the wave of the economy — but the opposite is true. It is on progressive waves of culture that economic achievement...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Oct 10, 2008

'Shiawase no Kaori'

Here's an obvious but often neglected rule: Never see foodie movies — films that revolve around the preparation and consumption of scrumptious-looking food — on an empty stomach. Watching Gabriel Axel's Oscar-winning Danish movie "Babette's Feast" (1987) — the "Citizen Kane" of foodie movies —...
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 24, 2021

Asia’s movie rebound is good news for everyone

In the absence of Hollywood fare, 'The Eight Hundred,” a Chinese war epic, became the world's top-grossing movie with a $460 million take.
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Evil Does Not Exist,” released in Japanese theaters in April, sharply dramatizes the clash between rural and urban values. The film won five awards at the 2023 Venice Film Festival, including the second-place Silver Lion prize.
CULTURE / Film / 2024 in Review
Dec 20, 2024

A year of Oscar wins and a quiet push for diversity

International collaborations and indie risk-takers steered the film industry in a fresh direction in 2024.
Andy Summers’ exhibition “A Series of Glances,” currently on view in Tokyo and Kyoto simultaneously, features photographs taken in a wide range of locations around the world, including “Centaur,” which was snapped in Montserrat in July 1981.
CULTURE / Art
May 9, 2024

Andy Summers captures life on and off stage in moody monochrome

The guitarist for The Police, who cites Akira Kurosawa as an important influence, puts his passion for photography on display in Japan.
Park Chan-wook (center) attended the Busan International Film Festival opening ceremony with “No Other Choice" cast members on Wednesday.
CULTURE / Entertainment news
Sep 19, 2025

Park Chan-wook’s sharp satire ‘No Other Choice’ opens Busan festival

The director's socially charged murder-comedy made its Asian premiere at the film festival on Wednesday.
AI is not only transforming the applications we use; it is also reshaping the very process of software development, threatening to render much of today’s tech sector obsolete.
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 15, 2025

How artificial intelligence will disrupt Big Tech

AI is already starting to cannibalize established giants and also to reshape the profession of software engineering.
From movies, anime, manga and even to sports stars, 2023 was a year where global audiences demonstrated their increasing fondness for Japanese soft power.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Dec 27, 2023

From Godzilla to Shohei: Japan's soft power had a big year

Little by little, Japan is getting better at pitching its copious wares overseas, and 2023 proved that.
The title monster in “Godzilla Minus One” is a threat, of course, but the real story is about finding community in the wake of destruction.
CULTURE / Film
Feb 3, 2024

‘Godzilla Minus One’ stomps into ‘Oppenheimer’ territory

Those movies, along with “The Boy and the Heron,” are essentially in conversation about the moral weight of American and Japanese actions in World War II.
Singer-songwriter Mei Ehara confronted the pressure of creating her third album by taking inspiration from a literary device that merely serves as a trigger for a plot. The resulting album is “All About McGuffin.”
CULTURE / Music
Sep 12, 2025

Mei Ehara’s third album finds clarity in the noise

The Japanese singer-songwriter turns the concept of a McGuffin into her most direct work yet, sharpened by a U.S. tour with Faye Webster.
A young boy (Shion Matsufuji, left) who travels a lot with his father’s theater troupe stays in one place long enough to make a new friend (Jun Saito) in “Confetti.”
CULTURE / Film
Mar 14, 2024

‘Confetti’ spotlights the transformative power of theater

Naoya Fujita’s feature debut is a sweet coming-of-age drama and a celebration of "taishū engeki," an art form that doesn’t get a lot of critical respect.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell
Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Trump trims fentanyl-linked China tariffs after 'amazing' Xi meeting
U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping greet each other as they arrive for talks at the Gimhae Air Base, next to the Gimhae International Airport in Busan, South Korea, on Thursday.
Japanese and South Korean leaders agree to boost ties in first meeting
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi shakes hands with South Korean President Lee Jae Myung ahead of their talks at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, on Thursday.
Takaichi and Xi reaffirm pledge in first meet to pursue ‘mutually beneficial’ ties
A screenshot from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's X account shows Takaichi exchanging greetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping ahead of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit meeting in Gyeongju, South Korea, on Friday.　
Japan’s government ramps up bear control efforts amid rise in attacks
A bear roams around a field in the town of Kuzumaki, Iwate Prefecture, on Oct. 12.
Oasis returns to Japan after 16 years — and fans can still sing every word
Liam Gallagher commanded the stage with effortless charisma during Oasis' Tokyo Dome set on Saturday.
At Japan Mobility Show, BYD gears up to conquer Japan's EV market
BYD Auto Japan President Atsuki Tofukuji unveils the Racco at the Japan Mobility Show in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Oasis returns to Tokyo: Rain, rapture and rock
Fans wait to get into the Oasis show at Tokyo Dome on Saturday. While lining up in the rain, some broke into impromptu versions of the British rock group's hits.
Kyushu banzuke sets the stage to cement 2025’s sumo narratives
Onosato ahead of his bout against Aonishiki at The Grand Sumo Tournament at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Oct. 18
Tokyo Film Festival opens with global stars and a spotlight on Asian storytelling
Director Junji Sakamoto (left) walked the Tokyo International Film Festival red carpet with Sayuri Yoshinaga (center) and Non (right), who both play mountaineer Junko Tabei, the first woman to summit Mount Everest, in the biopic "Climbing for Life."

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

Longform

Mamoru Iwai, stationmaster of Keisei Ueno Station, says that, other than earthquake-proofing, the former Hakubutsukan-Dobutsuen (Museum-Zoo) Station has remained untouched.
Inside Tokyo's 'phantom' stations — and the stories they tell
By Alex K.T. Martin

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