Japan Navigator

The 2007 autumn edition of Kateigaho International Edition has a report on contemporary Japanese film that also includes an article about Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp, the two minds behind the website Midnight Eye (and the book of the same title, a must-have guide to contemporary Japanese films and directors). We also get their “Top [...]

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The beauty of autumn foliage has been a frequent subject in Japanese art and literature and continues to attract viewers even today. Momijigari, the pastime of viewing autumn leaves, is still just as popular as hanami, cherry blossom viewing, in spring, usually minus the drunken parties.

[Momiji clinging to the stone steps - Photo © Ad [...]

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With Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity Katarzyna J. Cwiertka has written the best book about Japanese food culture I know. It is much more than the title says: this essay is not only about modern cuisine, that is to say how the Japanese came to eat meat and other outlandish dishes, but [...]

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I am not much of a thriller or detective reader anymore, although I must confess I have devoured a lot of them in the past. But I am making an exception for the novels by Sujata Massey because her suspense fiction is written from an interesting intercultural viewpoint. The heroine of the novels, Rei Shimura, [...]

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Nishinomiya, the second town in Hyogo Prefecture when you come from Osaka, was originally the “temple town” of the Nishinomiya Ebisu Shrine (still existing, but in a modern concrete incarnation – affectionately called Ebessan, the main festival of this shrine dedicated to the god of luck and good fortune is on January 10). From the [...]

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The house Tanizaki lived in for the longest period during his sojourn in the Kansai, was a house he called “Isho-an” in what is now Uozaki in Kobe.　Although it has been moved 150 meters from its original location due to the extension of a road (it stood at the bank of the Sumiyoshi River), it [...]

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When I visited Shingu recently, I was surprised to find most of the shops in town shuttered down, even on normal weekdays. The long shopping arcade that runs through the center of the town was like a ghost town. Only a few elderly citizens were moving about, dressed in cheap training suits and running shoes. [...]

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After the great Tokyo earthquake of 1923, “Edokko” Tanizaki Junichiro, Japan’s foremost 20th century author, moved to the Kansai. Fear of another quake and despair at a quick recovery of the metropolis were certainly factors, but in his literary work Tanizaki also was reaching a stage of maturity where he reached out to Japan’s tradition [...]

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In the US, you are only as good as your latest succes and after three failures, Paul Verhoeven returned to the Netherlands to make a new film on native soil. And what a film it is, Black Book, there could be no more worthy comeback! This is a film on the same level as Basic [...]

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