Having survived a devastating U.S. air raid on his hometown in World War II, film director Isao Takahata has firsthand experience of the horrors of war. It's perhaps not surprising, therefore, that he staunchly opposes Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's attempt to push controversial security ...
Judging from recent comments posted on Twitter and websites such as abe-no.net, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe doesn't appear to have endeared himself to a number of celebrities who hold plenty of sway over public opinion with regards to his moves to change the nation's ...
AnimeJapan 2014, the rebranded and reunified annual industry trade show, exceeded organizers' expectations last month, hosting 110,000 producers, publishers, journalists, cosplayers and public visitors. What a relief. Since 2010, the anime industry's political divisions meant two separate shows: one in Chiba called the Anime Contents ...
Japanese films did quite well both commercially and critically in 2013, with Hayao Miyazaki's final feature animation, "Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises)," thumping the Hollywood competition at the local box office. But the industry's over-reliance on sure-thing manga, TV shows and novels for source ...
Regular JT film critics Mark Schilling, Kaori Shoji and Giovanni Fazio got together at the Uplink theater/restaurant in Shibuya to talk about each other's No. 1 films for 2013: "Cloud Atlas" (Fazio), "The Perks of Being a Wallflower" (Shoji) and "Kaguya-hime no Monogatari (The ...
Isao Takahata has long been overshadowed by longtime colleague and Studio Ghibli cofounder Hayao Miyazaki. The younger man (Takahata is 78, Miyazaki 72) has had more and bigger hits, including his latest, the World War II-themed "Kaze Tachinu (The Wind Rises)," while Takahata's last ...
