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Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 2, 2014

Our movie highlights of the coming year

Another year, another raft of unmissable movies. Here are the most hotly anticipated releases for JT film critics Mark Schilling, Kaori Shoji and Giovanni Fazio — get them in your diary now.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 12, 2013

'The Wolverine'

While it never seems to be as high-profile as the "Iron Man" or "Spider-Man" franchises, the "X-Men" series is actually the longest-running Marvel Comics series on the big screen, and it's the one that opened the gates to Marvel's current dominance. For my money, "X-Men" remains the most interesting,...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 14, 2013

Unflinching survival epic recounts tsunami horror

Director Juan Antonio Bayona came out of nowhere — well, Barcelona and the world of music videos, actually — to drop "The Orphanage" on an unsuspecting world in 2007. This chilling and intelligent reinvention of the haunted-house genre went on to become No. 1 at the Spanish box office and also did...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 28, 2012

'Ashura (Asura)'

An anime with a sad-eyed waif as the hero must surely be something for the kiddies, no? Well no, if the waif carries a blood-stained axe and greedily devours human flesh like a starved wolf.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 21, 2011

'The Green Hornet'

They say that one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. That pretty much sums up me and superhero movies; I keep going to see the damn things, attracted by the latest tantalizing hook, only to wind up feeling like Dr. Doom has trapped me in some...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 29, 2010

'The Lovely Bones'

Director Peter Jackson's latest, "The Lovely Bones," has been out in the United States for a while now, and the critics have been pretty merciless. It relies too much on special effects, it lacks key elements of the novel it's based on (Alice Sebold's best seller), some of the performances fail to connect...
Japan Times
WORLD
Jan 2, 2023

War-themed video game fuels wave of Ukraine conflict misinformation

Footage from Arma 3, often marked 'live' or 'breaking news,' has been used repeatedly in recent months in fake videos about the Russian offensive.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 8, 2022

‘Fragments of the Last Will’: You’ll need tissues for this WWII tearjerker

Takahisa Zeze's period drama about the true-life story of a Japanese soldier's fight for survival in a Soviet camp aims for the heart.
Japan Times
LIFE / Travel
Nov 1, 2022

Review: Is the new Ghibli Park worth all the hype?

The new theme park in Aichi Prefecture signals a change of direction for the legendary animation studio as it prepares for the next phase of Hayao Miyazaki's legacy.
Japan Times
ASIA PACIFIC / EVENTS AND INFORMATION
Oct 28, 2022

Dinosaurs to run amok in virtual Shibuya

Held from Oct. 26 to 31, this year’s Virtual Shibuya Halloween Fes will be the third installment of a six-day-long digital celebration in which people will create avatars and log into a re-creation of Shibuya to virtually experience Halloween. There will be live shows, fun games and exciting events...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Sep 29, 2022

‘Tatami Time Machine Blues’: Kyoto slackers return for summer fun

Anime director Shingo Natsume seamlessly takes up the mantel to revisit the characters from 'The Tatami Galaxy' for new hijinks and a jaunt through time to retrieve a broken remote control.
Japan Times
WORLD
Sep 9, 2022

Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, dies at 96

Her reign took Britain from the age of steam to the era of the smartphone, and she oversaw the largely peaceful breakup of an empire that once spanned the globe.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / World
Jun 29, 2022

AI’s next big thing is ‘fake’ data

Strange as it may sound, the growth of fake data is a step in the right direction, and not just because it avoids using people's personal data.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 10, 2022

‘What to Do with the Dead Kaiju?’: Satoshi Miki’s inverted monster movie bites off more than it can chew

Satoshi Miki's disaster film about what happens after a monster attack sounds good on paper, but it's an almighty mess.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 11, 2021

‘Parasite in Love’: Pulpy drama has young love on the brain

Kensaku Kakimoto's moody romance has an interesting premise about the relationship between love and mental illness, but it doesn't quite settle on the right tone.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Art
Apr 17, 2021

‘Culture Gate’ brings top-flight artworks to Japan’s airports

Dozens of works are now on display in terminal buildings across Japan as part of a major media arts exhibition split between seven airports and one international cruise port.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 8, 2021

Sex, murder and a getaway car: ‘Ride or Die’ stars go on the trip of a lifetime

Kiko Mizuhara and Honami Sato discuss the challenges of bringing Ching Nakamura's harrowing, sexually explicit manga to the screen in a provocative new Netflix movie.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 25, 2021

‘The Blue Danube’: Finding levity in the drudgery of war

Akira Ikeda's absurdist drama about two towns locked in an interminable war finds humor in tragedy and boredom.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 5, 2020

NPO Animator Supporters seeks to ensure anime talent get their fair share

After seeing his friends struggle in the anime industry, founder Jun Sugawara opened a dorm for rookie animators and started crowdfunding projects to provide fair wages.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Aug 20, 2020

‘Crazy Samurai Musashi’: One-cut carnage is bloody exhausting

Yuji Shimomura's “Crazy Samurai Musashi” boasts a 77-minute continuous shot in which Tak Sakaguchi slashes his way through nearly 600 adversaries.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
May 22, 2020

Daiki Tsuneta: From the top of the charts to the great unknown

King Gnu frontman, Daiki Tsuneta, heads for further glory as he pushes forward with his side project, Millennium Parade.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Dec 5, 2019

'My Girlfriend is a Serial Killer': A rom-com slasher for killing time

In this adapation of the lurid manga series 'Peephole,' Yosuke Sugino plays a suicidal shut-in who falls for his murderous neighbor.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Nov 14, 2019

Japan's decade of 'closed country' cinema

As Japanese box office figures hit record highs in the 2010s, the country's film industry became increasingly insular
Japan Times
CULTURE / Music
Jan 10, 2019

Perfume goes back to dance basics ahead of Coachella debut

Perfume keeps finding new opportunities more than 15 years into its career. This spring, the electro-pop trio embarks on its latest international tour, with stops in Asia and North America, but the real development comes at the very end of that jaunt when the group plays the Coachella Valley Music and...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / Japan Pulse
Nov 17, 2018

Live-action Pokemon trailer reaffirms Pikachu's enduring popularity

Ever since the original release of the “Pokemon” games for the Nintendo Game Boy back in 1996, the series’ central character — the electric, yellow rodent Pikachu — has found a permanent place in the world’s pop-culture zeitgeist. Pikachu has since shown up everywhere, including on countless...
JAPAN / History / Defining the Heisei Era
Sep 29, 2018

Defining the Heisei Era: When Japanese games went global

The Japan Times presents the fifth installment of a monthly 12-part series that looks back at the leading issues of the past three decades.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Aug 18, 2018

Japan's bears are widely vilified and little understood

On Aug. 6, the BBC aired a story about four Ussuri brown bears being successfully transported from a museum in Hokkaido to a wildlife park in England. In the story, a British organization called Wild Welfare said it had become "concerned" about the animals' living situation at the Ainu Museum, where...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jun 20, 2018

'The Cat in Their Arms': Forget the idol-pop plot points and stick with the pets

You probably know the type: lonely, maybe even a little antisocial and more comfortable talking to cats than people.
Japan Times
BUSINESS
Mar 29, 2018

Airbus urges EU to let Britain stay in Galileo space project despite Brexit as U.K. firms face shutout

The chief executive of aerospace firm Airbus said Britain should not be frozen out of the European Union's Galileo space program after Brexit, calling on both sides to find a long-term solution in the interest of security.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Jan 31, 2018

'Manhunt': Action maestro John Woo drops the baton

'Manhunt' has got the white doves, gratuitous slo-mo and operatic gunplay that fans of Woo's earlier films would expect, but the whole thing is as slackly executed as an 'Expendables' movie.

Longform

After pandemic-era border regulations eased, Indian migrants began returning to Japan. Their population now stands at more than 50,000 across the country.
How remote work is rewriting the migrant experience in Japan