By Jasper Sharp. There are many paths one might take through the vast and varied terrain of Japanese cinema. Peter Cowie’s addition to the ever-expanding range of publications on a subject – so thoroughly pioneered, surveyed and demarcated by fans, pundits and scholars alike over the decades – provides cause for thought that there is […]
Sep 6, 2022 • Subscribe
More like this
Books: Japanese Drinking
By Shelley Pallis. Masaaki Watanabe’s anime series Bartender is part of a long tradition of TV shows about smart loners who help others in secret. Its leading man…
Books: Branding Japanese Food
By Jonathan Clements. In 2013, the Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe took the remarkable step of appearing on YouTube to talk about Japanese food. He was addressing the…
A Year in World Cinema – February: Japanese Cinema
Her Love Boils Bathwater (2016): 8/10 Director: Ryota Nakano I got the chance to see Her Love Boils Bathwater during the online Japanese Film Festival 2022. This is…
Books on Japanese Culture and Society
This past semester I taught a class on Japanese science fiction and fantasy, and I was surprised by how interested my students were in learning more about the…
1989, The Year in Japanese Cinema: An Introduction
Chief Cabinet Secretary Keizo Obuchi announces the Heisei era I was recently watching a few films in my collection and happened to notice ho...
Blue Blink, Idol Densetsu Eriko, Princess Princess, Ranma ½, Singles
Naruse A Master of the Japanese Cinema - Booklet
Articles by Audie Bock, Hideko Takamine and Kihachi Okamoto (19 Pages )
10 Japanese Literature Books To Read This Halloween
In the spirit of spooky season, it’s time to delve into the mysterious, the unsettling and the downright terrifying.
Books: Japanese Film and the Challenge of Video
By Jonathan Clements. Tom Mes’s new book begins in 2022 with Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car winning an Oscar, followed by a flood of gushing articles about how…
Which Japanese Books Get Left Out of Translation?
There are more Japanese books being made available in English every year. Still, only a small portion of them get translated.
20 Books in 2020 (Part IV) Japanese Literature
It’s getting closer and closer to the end now, but there’s still a little while to go. Thanks to my Kindle screen becoming a temperamental little nuisance (by…
20 Books in 2020 (Part V) Japanese Literature
So, here we are. After spending a whole year attempting the challenge to read 20 books’ worth of Japanese literature in 2020, the deadline is here.
Read Japanese Books with the Listening-Reading Method
Want to read Japanese books and novels? We outline a method to help get you started - and build your Japanese listening skills along the way.
The ‘best’ of Japanese Cinema I’ve Watched – My Thoughts
A few weeks ago I saw this list on the my Facebook feed, “The best Japanese film of every year – from 1925 to now” which was curated…
Only Yesterday, Porco Rosso, Shop, Spirited Away, Summer Wars
Asian Pop-Up Cinema Announces Season 16 Japanese Showcase
Runs in Chicago March 18 & 19 with a screening of French-Japanese co-production Umami on March 22.
Benshi: The Voice and Color of Japanese Silent Cinema
Once when there might have been silence, the voices of the benshi rang out in the theaters of Japan. This is the story of a lost cinema art…
10 Japanese Literature Books For Your Autumn Reading List
If you're looking to add some spice to your autumn reading and wish you could travel to Japan this fall, let the pages of a book take you…
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – Cheltenham Literatur...
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – Cheltenham Literature Festival 2022 Our Senior Arts Programme Officer joined one of the events with Daniel Hahn as part of the Cheltenham Literature…
FEATURE: The Harajuku Line: Forgotten Fashion Monsters of Japanese V-Cinema
3 Imaginary Films That Don't Exist (But Should)
Books & Sake
「高円寺古本酒場ものがたり」狩野俊 Story of Koenji Books & Sake, by Suguru Karino The “Story of Koenji Books & Sake” is Suguru Karino’s account of how he started a bookstore and…
Books & Sake
「高円寺古本酒場ものがたり」狩野俊 Story of Koenji Books & Sake, by Suguru Karino The “Story of Koenji Books & Sake” is Suguru Karino’s account of how he started a bookstore and…
Books: Ghibliotheque
By Andrew Osmond. The Ghibliotheque podcast started in 2018, and soon became an institution. It offered a journey through the films of Studio Ghibli, presented by Michael Leader…
Books: Sexiled
By Shelley Pallis. Tanya is twenty-five years old. She’s got half a decade of adventuring behind her, looting treasure from dungeons, spell-casting to protect her friends from goblins…
Books: Orienting
By Jonathan Clements. “My stay here has been so short,” said Rabindranath Tagore to Japanese students in 1916, “that one may think I have not earned my right…
BFI Japan 2021 to Celebrate More Than 100 Years of Japanese Cinema
At the BFI Southbank and various venues throughout the UK October to December 2021
A Year in World Cinema – January: Thai Cinema
The Promise (2017): 6/10 Director: Sophon Sakdaphisit A horror story that stems from a teenage friendship between two friends, The Promise started off with a great potential. Against…
A Year in World Cinema – March: Korean Cinema
Way Back Home (2019): 9/10 Director and Writer: Park Sun-joo Way Back Home is a drama about Jeong-won, a middle aged woman, who deals with the information of…
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – The Times and Sunday...
Junko Takekawa’s Recommended Japanese Books – The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival 2023 During The Huddle Free Programme at The Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival…
Titan of Cinema
By Jonathan Clements. For anyone in Edinburgh for this week’s Scotland Loves Anime, the sumptuous Ray Harryhausen: Titan of Cinema exhibition traces the animator’s life and work in…
Japan Society NY & ACA Cinema Project Present Family Portrait: Japanese Family in Flux
Runs Feb 15 to 24 at Japan Society New York and partner venues.
22nd Nippon Connection Film Festival Brings Japanese Cinema to Frankfurt, May 24–29
22nd Nippon Connection Film Festival Brings Japanese Cinema to Frankfurt, May 24–29
A Year in Asian Cinema – April: Chinese Language Cinema
Farewell My Concubine (1993): 8/10 Director: Chen Kaige ; Writers: Lu Wei and Lilian Lee Farewell My Concubine is a historical drama set in 20th century China, exploring…
Books: Anime’s Identity
By Jonathan Clements. Stevie Suan’s new book, Anime’s Identity, cannot resist telling a story from the production of King’s Avatar (above), a 2019 Chinese animated series that subcontracted…
Books: Tearmoon Empire
By Jonathan Clements. Then she woke up, and it was all a dream. Or was it? The teenage princess Mia Luna Tearmoon vividly recalls being eight years older,…
The Best Books
Buying books, especially old books, is a fascination and my biggest weakness. I love the old wear and tear on antiques, and sitting and pondering where the scraped…
Books: Terminal Boredom
By Jonathan Clements. “There is something wrong with our present society,” Izumi Suzuki once wrote, “and I can’t stand SF written by people who don’t understand that… Even…
Books: Hell Mode
By Shelley Pallis. Kenichi is a gamer suffering from that common modern malaise, a frustration with games that make life too easy for him. He’s just spent three…
Books: Combat Baker…
By Jeannette Ng. The light novel series The Combat Baker and the Automaton Waitress follows Lud “Silver Wolf” Langart, a former captain and mech-operator who retires after a…
Books: Leiji Matsumoto
By Jonathan Clements. For all the passion and excitement that the contributors bring to the new collection Leiji Matsumoto: Essays on the Anime and Manga Legend, their subject…
Books: Monster Kids
By Jonathan Clements. In his lively new book Monster Kids: How Pokémon Taught a Generation to Catch Them All, Daniel Dockery talks us through the original plans in…
Books: Kyoto Stories
By Jonathan Clements. “Riding on public transportation in Japan makes you feel a part of the general population,” writes Steve Alpert in Kyoto Stories. “One of the people.…
Books: Rediscovered Classics
By Zoe Crombie. Anime has taken inspiration from Western cultures throughout much of its history, from Astro Boy’s Disney-inspired aesthetics to the gorgeous European locales of films like…
Books: Reading Murakami
By Jonathan Clements. Almost everything that is written about fiction is either reception (what the reader thought of the book) or production (an occasional making-of about the author…
Books: Studio Ghibli
By Jonathan Clements. Producer Toshio Suzuki was entertainingly underwhelmed when he was approached by agents for the pop stars Chage and Aska, who asked if Studio Ghibli would…
Books: Rebuild World
By Jonathan Clements. When we first see Akira, he is gripped in the jaws of a mutant dog. Nafuse’s Rebuild World ditches the tiresome induction scene of many…
Books: Otherside Picnic
By Shelley Pallis. Sorawo Kamikoshi is a loner, a twenty-year-old nerd studying cultural anthropology at a Saitama university, whose hobby is exploring spooky places. Nor are these randomly…
Books: Infinite Dendrogram
By Shelley Pallis. Infinite Dendrogram is the best game ever invented, a “virtual reality massively multiplayer online game” but not a crap one like all the ones that…
Books: Tatami Galaxy
By Tom Wilmot. Any mention of The Tatami Galaxy usually brings to mind Masaaki Yuasa’s much-loved 2010 anime. The charming series has become something of a modern classic,…
Books: Hayao Miyazaki
By Andrew Osmond. Hayao Miyazaki, published to tie in with the current exhibition about the director at the Academy Museum in Los Angeles, is a whopping big book.…
Books: Spirit Chronicles
By Shelley Pallis. Yuri Kitayama’s Seirei Gensouki: Spirit Chronicles has several different beginnings, and to be frank, I am not sure that it has stopped beginning yet, even…
JFF+ INDEPENDENT CINEMA: A New Batch of Japanese Independent Films to Stream in 2023
Stream Japanese Indie Movies via Japanese Film Festival+ – Titles Available: An Artisan’s Legacy, Tsunekazu Nishioka, Hey! Our dear Don-chan, Lonely Glory, Bon Uta A Song From Home,…
