Posted in books, culture, movies, intercultural on Apr 8th, 2007 No Comments »
Japanese Schoolgirl Inferno: Tokyo Teen Fashion Subculture Handbook looks so much like a beautiful piece of candy that it is difficult to resist the temptation to pick a copy up when coming across it in a bookstore. And “eye candy” it certainly is, with great illustrations by Kazumi Nonaka and graphic design by Izumi […]
Posted in writing and poetry, movies, art and photography, news on Mar 17th, 2007 No Comments »
Earlier this month the Akutagawa Prize for new writers of literary fiction was awarded to Aoyama Nanae for Being Alone. Here she is interviewed by the Japan Times (registration required).
Kadokawa’s latest overblown epic film, Aoki Okami (Blue Wolf), about Genghis Khan, is found “somewhat empty and soulless” by Daily Yomiuri’s Aaron Gerow. Although there are […]
Posted in internet, culture, movies, travel and places, museums, news on Mar 14th, 2007 No Comments »
Despite the expected boost it will give the economy, not everybody in Nagasaki is happy with the government decision to register 20 Christian sites with the Unesco World Heritage List. As Asahi.com reports, the priests are afraid noisy tourists will disturb the peace of the believers by snapping their picture, leave graffitti on the walls […]
Posted in movies on Nov 11th, 2006 2 Comments »
After reading Stray Dogs & Lone Wolves, I felt like making my own list of favorite samurai films and this is what I came up with:
Miyamoto Musashi aka Samurai (1954-56) by Inagaki Hiroshi. In three films Inagaki follows the exploits of Japan’s greatest legendary swordsman. The first film is rather sentimental (due to the time […]
Posted in Japan, movies, intercultural on Nov 11th, 2006 No Comments »
Japan is still suffering from the “yokai” monster boom that was caused by Miike Takashi’s enjoyable and totally extravagant The Great Yokai War (2005). These folktale goblins were first popularized by the 1966 humoristic manga Ge ge ge no Kitaro by Mizuki Shigeru (who rightly has a cameo in Miike’s film; on top of that, […]
Posted in books, movies on Nov 11th, 2006 3 Comments »
The first Japanese film I ever saw was Rashomon and since that momentous evening I have been hooked on samurai films (and Japanese film in general). This was about 20 years ago, at a time when it was still difficult to find Japanese films. The situation improved after I moved again to Japan in the […]
Posted in Japan, movies on Oct 25th, 2006 No Comments »
One of the first Japanese novels that I read in the original language (painstakingly slow!) was Zero no Shoten (Zero Focus) by popular mystery author Matsumoto Seicho - it is more than twenty years ago when I found a copy in a secondhand bookstore in Kyoto. I especially enjoyed the atmosphere of the […]
Posted in movies on Oct 21st, 2006 1 Comment »
Today the 19th Tokyo International Film Festival opens (it will run until next week Sunday).
Among the opening/closing line-up is a new film by 91-year old veteran Ichikawa Kon, a remake of his own 1976 Murder of the Inugami Clan, after a complex detective novel by Yokomizo Masashi, featuring Ishizaka Koji as sleuth Kindaichi. Ichikawa Kon […]
Posted in movies, anime on Oct 19th, 2006 No Comments »
Japan is the last hypermarket at the end of the world, the great display case where everything that has been made anywhere anytime ends up, the ultimate dustbin of cultures and styles. That is not only true for the huge variety of articles in its shops, but also for its food which ranges from Chinese […]
Posted in books, movies, history on Oct 12th, 2006 No Comments »
Why is swordsman Miyamoto Musashi so popular? We know almost nothing about him and what we know with any certainty is not very spectacular. Is it because he is the author of The Book of Five Rings? Or is it thanks to the novel by Yoshikawa Eiji and the films by Inagaki and other directors? […]
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