October 2009
By Kazutaka Shimanaka • October 30, 2009
In 1994, a company called the “Otetsudai-san Haken Center” was established in Tokyo’s Otemachi district and immediately found booming demand for its services. The center would dispatch housewives, dressed in maid uniforms, to call on the residences of these temporary bachelors.
By CJ • October 27, 2009
The extortion, racketeering, prostitution and gambling rings associated with Japan’s yakuza criminal organizations have been written up in books and glorified in films too numerous to count. Yet a substantial first-hand peek inside this insidious underworld by a foreign journalist — not straitjacketed by Japan’s press system — has not existed. Enter reporter Jake Adelstein, author of the recently released memoir “Tokyo Vice,” an account of his 12-year stint of working the crime beat for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper.
By Kazutaka Shimanaka • October 27, 2009
Shukan Post (Nov. 6) reports on synthetic hymens imported from China.
By CJ • October 26, 2009
The 22nd Tokyo International Film Festival closed on Sunday with the award of the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix to “Eastern Plays,” the story of two brothers facing challenges upon entering adulthood in Sofia, Bulgaria.
By Mieko Shimizu • October 25, 2009
The September issue of women’s soft porn mag Amour Ura Joho features a gal reminiscing over the time when she fell hook, line and sinker for a deep-sea fisherman.
By CJ • October 25, 2009
Japanese writer-director Izuru Kumasaka was on Thursday awarded the Tokyo Project Gathering (TPG) award for his work “Secrets On The Table” — the capper to the four-day market (Oct 19-22) that features film projects and is affiliated with the Tokyo International Film Festival.
By CJ • October 23, 2009
Louie Psihoyos, director of the controversial dolphin-hunting documentary “The Cove” speaks to the press during the Tokyo International Film Festival.
By CJ • October 23, 2009
Japan’s Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and his wife Miyuki at the opening ceremony of the Tokyo International Film Festival.
By Kenji Nakano • October 22, 2009
Police targeting excessively provocative services
By Kazutaka Shimanaka • October 22, 2009
But wait; why would a respectable woman want to go to a whorehouse in the first place? Because she’s a feisty female fuzoku writer, Nikkan Gendai (Oct. 22) reports, in the latest installment of a series titled “Fuzokukai no Yami” (the dark side of the sex business).