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June 30, 2026
 

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James Hadfield
In Koji Fukada’s “Love on Trial,” a pop idol (Kyoko Saito) is sued by her management agency for violating the no-dating clause in her contract.
CULTURE / Film
Jan 22, 2026
‘Love on Trial’: When romance becomes a legal risk
Koji Fukada’s drama gets the details right about idol culture, but softens its moral punch.
Revisiting childhood memories helps a troubled teenager rediscover his sense of wonder in Takuro Ijichi’s debut feature, “Vicissitude.”
CULTURE / Film
Jan 16, 2026
‘Vicissitude’: A golden-hour reverie on childhood and lost wonder
Takuro Ijichi’s debut feature is most enchanting when it surrenders to pure feeling and risks faltering when it explains itself.
A monstrous bear with a taste for human flesh terrorizes anyone who ventures into its forest home in “Higuma!! The Killer Bear.”
CULTURE / Film
Jan 8, 2026
‘Higuma!! The Killer Bear’: Monster movie proves a little too timely
A bear with a taste for human flesh collides with illicit gig work and slapstick humor in this blood-soaked monster movie.
Sota Fukushi (left) and Haruka Fukuhara find romance in the aftermath of tragedy in Isao Yukisada’s “Kaede,” the latest in a succession of Japanese movies based on popular songs.
CULTURE / Film
Dec 25, 2025
Can a pop song carry a movie? Japan thinks so.
Hollywood rarely tries it, but Japan keeps going back for more. Isao Yukisada’s drama “Kaede” is the latest reminder that hit songs make potent movie fuel.
Keita Machida (left) and Ryoma Takeuchi play a pair of ballroom dancers whose relationship becomes more than strictly professional in Keishi Otomo’s live-action manga adaptation, “10 Dance.”
CULTURE / Film
Dec 18, 2025
‘10 Dance’ teases passion but stays cautiously chaste
Ryoma Takeuchi brings the swagger as a bad-boy Latin dance champion, but Keishi Otomo’s queer romance delivers surprisingly little heat.
Itsuki Nagasawa (center) plays a young woman caught in a feud between her deaf father (Kazuyoshi Kezuka, second from left) and a Kurdish restaurant owner (Murat Cicek, second from right) in Ken Kawai’s “The Chatterboxes.”
CULTURE / Film
Dec 3, 2025
‘The Chatterboxes’: ‘A comedy of errors finds a common language
Ken Kawai’s comedy about a feud between a deaf Japanese man and a Kurdish immigrant tackles a range of themes including prejudice and communication.
Yukino Kishii (left) and Hio Miyazawa play a pair of college sweethearts whose bond is put to the test by the pressures of adult life in Chihiro Amano’s “Sato and Sato.”
CULTURE / Film
Nov 27, 2025
‘Sato and Sato’: Unraveling marriage story feels universal
Chihiro Amano’s film about a couple with Japan’s most common surname shows how even small cracks can split a relationship wide open.
Hiroshi Tachi (left, with Gordon Maeda) plays a yakuza turned fisherman who takes self-sacrifice to the extreme in Michihito Fujii’s “A Light in the Harbor.”
CULTURE / Film
Nov 13, 2025
Predictability weighs down ‘A Light in the Harbor’
Michihito Fujii’s yakuza drama is determinedly old-fashioned — and not in a good way.
Made at a time when Japan was still grappling with Yukio Mishima’s legacy, Paul Schrader’s biopic “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” was blocked from screening in the country for decades.
CULTURE / Film
Nov 6, 2025
A 40-year wait for ‘Mishima’ ends at TIFF
Paul Schrader’s 1985 biopic of the radical author Yukio Mishima finds its Japanese audience at last.
Ikken Yamamoto plays a shell-shocked Self-Defense Force veteran whose past comes back to haunt him in “Flames of a Flower.”
CULTURE / Film
Oct 29, 2025
‘Flames of a Flower’: A bold interrogation of Japan’s pacifist identity
Oudai Kojima’s PTSD drama turned politically charged thriller takes aim at Japan’s postwar contradictions.
In “Climbing for Life,” Sayuri Yoshinaga (right) portrays Junko Tabei, the first woman to summit Mount Everest, alongside Yuki Amami as the journalist who covered the expedition.
CULTURE / Film
Oct 23, 2025
‘Climbing for Life’ doesn’t break new ground, but knows its footing
Sayuri Yoshinaga brings quiet strength to the biopic about the first woman to summit Mount Everest — even when the film itself plays it safe.
A hitman (Ryuhei Matsuda, left) and a spiritual ascetic (Yosuke Kubozuka, right) go to infinity and beyond in “Transcending Dimensions.”
CULTURE / Film
Oct 16, 2025
‘Transcending Dimensions’: A wild trip to enlightenment
Toshiaki Toyoda’s latest feature is a spiritual odyssey with punk energy and cosmic chaos.
Chloe Zhao’s "Hamnet"
CULTURE / Film
Oct 16, 2025
What you need to see at this year’s Tokyo film festival
From slow cinema and satire to moving biopics and restorations of classics, the TIFF lineup has something for every cinephile.
Masami Nagasawa plays the talented but circumscribed offspring of a famed ukiyo-e artist in “Hokusai’s Daughter.”
CULTURE / Film
Oct 9, 2025
‘Hokusai’s Daughter’ captures the ferocity of a forgotten painter
Masami Nagasawa delivers one of her most compelling performances yet in Tatsushi Omori’s historical biopic.
Suzu Hirose (left), Satoshi Tsumabuki (center) and Masataka Kubota (right) play childhood friends caught up in the simmering tensions of postwar Okinawa in Keishi Otomo’s “Hero’s Island.”
CULTURE / Film
Sep 25, 2025
‘Hero’s Island’: Okinawa-set epic is lavishly realized but lacks bite
Keishi Otomo recreates postwar turmoil in rich detail that is sometimes more vivid than the characters themselves.
Yoshihiko Matsui’s “There Was Such a Thing Before” follows two high-school friends (Oshiro Maeda, left, and Airu Kubozuka) growing up in the aftermath of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant meltdown.
CULTURE / Film
Sep 18, 2025
‘There Was Such a Thing Before’: Fukushima grief and fury in monochrome
Eighteen years since his last feature, Yoshihiko Matsui is back with a somber Fukushima tale that demands attention, even as its drama feels stilted.
Polish pianist Hania Rani took the audience on a synth odyssey at the first Japan edition of Unsound Osaka over the weekend.
CULTURE / Music
Sep 11, 2025
Unsound turns Osaka into a laboratory of avant-garde music
Long-running Polish music festival Unsound channels Expo ’70 at its first Japan edition.
Anton Felix Schindler (Yuki Yamada, left) sets out to rewrite the history of his late employer, Ludwig van Beethoven (Arata Furuta, right), in Kazuaki Seki’s “Faking Beethoven.”
CULTURE / Film
Sep 10, 2025
‘Faking Beethoven’: Comedic musical biopic forgets to have fun
Kazuaki Seki’s comedy centers on the notorious fibber who shaped a maestro’s myth.
A middle school student (Chiyuri Nishiguchi) tries to keep her family afloat following the sudden death of her mother in Yoshihiko Taniguchi’s “Happy Life.”
CULTURE / Film
Aug 22, 2025
‘Happy Life’ brings dignity to family’s struggle with grief and poverty
Yoshihiko Taniguchi’s film balances realism and compassion in its depiction of a family adrift after a sudden death.
Modeled on a real-life World World II figure, Yutaka Takenouchi plays the captain of a “lucky” Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer in “Yukikaze.”
CULTURE / Film
Aug 14, 2025
‘Yukikaze’ turns fabled warship into floating snoozefest
The story of a “lucky” Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer that survived World War II is given a lightly fictionalized treatment in Toshihisa Yamada’s first feature.
Uruguay federation reportedly cancels charter flight after World Cup exit
Uruguay's Jose Maria Gimenez reacts after the team's loss against Spain at the 2026 FIFA World Cup on Friday.
Inside Japan’s rigid adoption system, a British family finds a way
James Benstead, his wife, Jesse, and their three children. Their adopted son is in the rear stroller.
India’s gig workers pay the price for exposure to New Delhi’s hazardous air
Rohit Kushwaha waits for a customer as he delivers his last parcel of the day, in New Delhi in January. His work as a delivery driver has helped pay the family’s bills, but has had a significant impact on his health.
Chinese and Russian bombers and fighter jets stage joint patrol near Japan
A Chinese Air Force H-6 bomber is seen during a joint patrol with Russian military aircraft on Saturday.
U.S. missile moves in Japan send China clear message: A new era has arrived
Soldiers conduct the first Typhon midrange capability live-fire exercise outside of the continental United States, firing an SM-6 missile in July last year in Australia's Northern Territory during Exercise Talisman Sabre.
Japan’s fertility system offers few safe paths for same-sex couples
A Tokyo Pride parade participant holds a sign that says "we want to be a married couple, not a couple."
Inside Japan’s rigid adoption system, a British family finds a way
James Benstead, his wife, Jesse, and their three children. Their adopted son is in the rear stroller.
A French ship with close ties to Japan combines arts and sciences on the high seas
Romain Troublé, the executive director of Tara Ocean Foundation, speaks to visitors aboard the Tara during a rare port call in Tokyo in April.
In Kyushu’s far south, Senti.U sparks a culinary destination
Chef Yasuhiko Uchida was born in Saga Prefecture but has made his home in Kanoya, Kagoshima Prefecture, since 2012.
‘The colors speak for themselves’: How Japan’s chroma bible went global
“A Dictionary of Color Combinations” is meant to function as a quick-reference guide for artists, designers and anyone with a passing interest in aesthetics as a quantifiable pursuit.

Podcast

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

Longform

The Terasaka Rice Terraces are seen with Mount Buko in the background.
What Yokoze can teach Japan about rural revival
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