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July 20, 2025
 

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JAPANESE FILM

Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 19, 2013
Ishikawa knows when to throw away the script
Japanese directors of TV dramas often make films that are basically big-screen versions of small-screen shows. No surprise, since their TV-network backers want product that will work equally well with multiplex audiences and home viewers.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Apr 12, 2013
Funahashi: 'Good stories don't need happy endings'
A graduate of the University of Tokyo's cinema studies course, Atsushi Funahashi studied directing at the School of Visual Arts in New York and shot his first two films, “Echoes” (2002) and “Big River” (2005), in the United States.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 29, 2013
'Daijobu 3kumi (Nobody's Perfect)'
Teaching kids is usually not thought of as a physically taxing job, but take it from one who has done it: It is, especially in Japanese schools, where one teacher may have to deal with 40 bundles of not-always-well-behaved energy. I spent much of my class time at a Tokyo boys' high school in the 1980s...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 15, 2013
'Purachina Deta (Platinum Data)'
Why are so many Japanese sci-fi thrillers so sure our near-future rulers will try to tyrannize us, dehumanize us or, as in "Batoru Rowaiaru (Battle Royale)," make us slaughter each other, even when our only crime is possessing raging adolescent hormones? Given what I've seen of Tokyo's Kabutocho financial...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 8, 2013
'Arekara (Since Then)'
It's rare indeed that I ever wished a new Japanese film were longer — and I am not the only one. "This could be shorter by (name your number) minutes" is such a cliche of Japanese film reviewing and commentary that I inwardly groan every time I read or hear it; and yet more often than not, it's right....
CULTURE / Film
Mar 1, 2013
Fifth Okinawa fest celebrates community films
Since its start in 2009, the Okinawa International Movie Festival has been more than its name implies. It has the usual competition sections: one called Laugh for comedies and another called Peace for dramas, though not all the films fit neatly into these two bins. But it has also been a promo event...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Mar 1, 2013
'Su-chan Mai-chan Sawako-san'
Yonkoma manga, or four-cell gag comics, are popular here with both sexes and all ages, but they account for relatively few of the many hit live-action films made from manga. For one thing, it's not so easy to string all those gags together into a three-act story. Doable, yes. Done well? Not so often....
CULTURE / Film
Feb 24, 2013
Recommended reading
Donald Richie was a scrupulous writer who paid finite attention to language and content. The following are 10 outstanding choices — titles that should be on any discerning readers' bookshelf.
LIFE
Feb 24, 2013
An inclined view: The life and work of Donald Richie
It was with a heavy heart that I heard from Donald Richie's longtime friend and editor Leza Lowitz that he had passed away on the morning of Tuesday, this week. He was 88.
Japan Times
LIFE
Feb 24, 2013
Sharing films with a master critic
Donald Richie was my friend and mentor for more than 20 years and my inspiration before that. When I was preparing to come to Japan for the first time in 1975, I read many books about the place, but Donald's masterpiece "The Inland Sea" was the one that entranced me. My first long trip after my arrival...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 15, 2013
'My film remixes "The Tempest" '
A Welshman who moved to Nagoya in 1988 and has been based in Japan ever since, John Williams is the rare foreigner who has worked in the Japanese film industry in not only the usual facilitator roles, as line producer and translator, but has also directed his own well-regarded films here. His first...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 8, 2013
'Kiiroi Zo'
Ryuichi Hiroki has become the go-to director for romantic dramas that quality-wise are a cut above the local formula weepers whose starred-crossed lovers are parted by a slow, beautiful death (though Hiroki's couples are hardly immune to life's vicissitudes). At the same time, his films in this genre...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Film
Feb 1, 2013
'R-18 Bungakusho Vol. 1: Jijojibaku no Watashi'
Sex is universal, but kinks can be local. Japanese S&M, at least the varieties I've seen in films over the years, is less about black leather and fishnet stockings, more about candle wax and artfully elaborate knots designed to display the flesh of the (inevitably female) subject in enticing ways.
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Aug 22, 2004
Sexual, textual and visual boundaries
IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES (BFI Film Classics), by Joan Mellen. London: British Film Institute, 2004, 88 pp., with photographs. £8.99 (paper).
CULTURE / Books / THE ASIAN BOOKSHELF
Feb 17, 2002
Donald Richie rewinds a century of film
Donald Richie has always struck me as the ideal role model for the aspiring writer. More the distiller than the brewer, the cordon-bleu chef than the bone-cook, there is much to be learned from Richie's refinements.
Japanese markets brace for triple whammy if opposition wins big
A Sanseito campaign van in Shinjuku. The populist party is gaining ground and challenging the more centrist parties.
Sunken WWII Japanese warship Teruzuki found off Solomon Islands
The Solomon Islands. A team from the U.S. nonprofit Ocean Exploration Trust has discovered the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Teruzuki on the deep seabed off the Solomon Islands as the 80th anniversary of the war's end approaches.
Living conditions index hits lowest level in 15 years in Japan
The share of respondents to a Bank of Japan quarterly survey in June who said they have become worse off came to 61.0%, up 5.1 percentage points from the previous survey.
In Upper House race, younger voters in Tokyo turn to DPP for new direction
The Tokyo district has the highest number of candidates in the 2025 Upper House election with 32 people in the running for seven seats.
Concerns grow in Japan over possible Russian interference in Sunday’s election
A think tank researcher said anti-government propaganda by Russian bot accounts was what has made the small far-right party Sanseito so popular leading up to the Upper House election.
Japan's rice farmers are confounded by Shinjiro Koizumi’s policies
Kiyoshi Shibata stands in front of one of the rice paddies in Murayama, Yamagata Prefecture, where he produces the prefecture's signature rice brand Tsuyahime.
From stalking to death threats, female candidates still face harassment
Mayu Ushida, a former NHK newscaster running for election in the Tokyo electoral district on the Democratic Party for the People ticket, signs an autograph for a voter after a public rally at Shinjuku Station in Tokyo on Tuesday.
Kawaii Lab redefines idol pop for the TikTok generation
Misa Kimura is the main producer for Kawaii Lab, a project by entertainment agency Asobisystem whose groups have found success by pairing a social media-first strategy with a fresh perspective on traditional idol-pop tropes.
Craig Mod's life in motion in a disappearing Japan
Mod's memoir “Things Become Other Things” chronicles his walking trips across the Kii Peninsula, surveying “a graceful end to a certain life cycle.”
With China and Trump, Japan defense report says world entering ‘new era of crisis’
A senior member of a Self-Defense Forces honor guard inspects a formation before the arrival of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba for a visit to the Defense Ministry in Tokyo on June 30.

Podcast

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

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
By Megha Wadhwa

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