Flip fantasia: Engaging an audience with kamishibai

(Photo by Tokyo Reporter, October 20, 2011)

TOKYO (TR) – Developing an understanding of the present global financial debacle has perplexed experts and laymen worldwide. One difficulty is that obscure topics like “sub-prime loan” and “sovereign risk” make little sense without a detailed explanation. Another challenge lies in comprehending the mechanics for how these elements came together to fuel the crisis.

The October 1 issue of Tokyo-based weekly business magazine Shukan Diamond took a unique approach to simplify things. Over ten consecutive even-numbered pages — excluding a subscription insert — the publication printed a single descriptive phrase above a half-page cartoon, each　representing a stage in the crisis, to accompany the charts, tables, and main text of an article about the problem.

In the first drawing, a sharply dressed banker is seen handing over home loan agreements (stamped “sub-prime”) to citizens atop a stick of lit dynamite; next, Barack Obama, former Prime Minister Taro Aso, and Chinese premier Wen Jiabao drop armfuls of cash from the basket of a hot-air balloon floating just beneath a darkened sky; and so on. The idea is that a reader will turn each page, almost like a flipbook, and easily comprehend how, for example, the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers influenced the lowering of Japan’s credit rating. Read more

Tokyo Motor Show rolls out green vehicles

(Photo by Tokyo Reporter, December 2, 2011)

TOKYO (TR) – Beginning Saturday, the 42nd Tokyo Motor Show will highlight the latest in environmentally friendly vehicles from automakers worldwide.

The week-long event, held at Tokyo Big Sight in Koto Ward, will feature cars powered by plug-in hybrid, fuel-cell, and next generation hybrid systems from among the approximately 179 exhibitors expected to attend.

Yet attracting the most attention at a press event on Wednesday was a flashy prototype from Toyota for which the power source is undecided. The Fun-Vii is a slim and sleek three-seat concept car that uses capacitance-screen technology to emit messages on its door panels. “It’s a four-wheeled smart phone,” said Akio Toyoda, the president of Toyota. Read more

Ex-Olympus chairman Woodford back in Japan, would consider return to helm

(Photo by Tokyo Reporter, November 25, 2011)

TOKYO (TR) – Former Olympus president Michael Woodford said on Friday that he would consider a return to the top of the embattled camera and endoscope maker if the shareholders approved, though he is not obsessed by the idea.

“If I’m not wanted back, and the shareholders will make that decision, then that’s fine by me,” said the 53-year-old at a press conference at The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan in Tokyo. “I’m prepared to go back, I have a commitment to the employees.” Read more

Major developer Sumitomo acquires site of former gangster headquarters in Roppongi

(Photo by Tokyo Reporter, November 3, 2011)

TOKYO (TR) – Sumitomo Realty & Development last month acquired a controversial property once used as the headquarters for a yakuza organization in Tokyo’s Roppongi entertainment district, public records show.

Documents obtained from the real estate section of the Minato Ward branch of the legal affairs bureau indicate that on October 11 Sumitomo took title of the 3,800-square-meter property that was once occupied by the infamous TSK.CCC Terminal building, situated midway between the Tokyo Midtown and Roppongi Hills complexes. Read more

France’s ‘Untouchable’ takes Sakura prize at Tokyo International Film Fest

TOKYO (TR) – The 24th Tokyo International Film Festival concluded on Sunday in Tokyo with its top prize being awarded to France’s “Untouchable,” directed by Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache.

The nine-day festival awarded the Tokyo Sakura Grand Prix and $50,000 to the drama, the true story of a man paralyzed from the neck down and his caregiver, from a field of 15 films at a ceremony at the Roppongi Hills complex in Minato Ward.

TIFF featured over 315 screenings before 41,000 film fans at theaters in the Roppongi entertainment district. Read more

Tokyo fest opens with ‘The Three Musketeers,’ Noda offers thanks for Tohoku support

(Photo by Tokyo Reporter, October 22, 2011)

TOKYO (TR) – Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was among those in attendance on Saturday in the Roppongi entertainment district of Tokyo for the opening night of the 24th Tokyo International Film Festival, a week-long event that will feature more than 200 films.

Just outside one of the main screening theaters, biz luminaries strode along the ceremonial “green carpet” — a symbol of the fest’s ecological theme — laid upon Keyakizaka-dori at the Roppongi Hills complex in Minato Ward as the assembled crowd snapped photos and sought autographs. Read more

Tokyo fest to feature five world premieres, offer support to Tohoku

TOKYO (TR) – The 24th Tokyo International Film Festival will be highlighted by five world premieres in competition and offer encouragement to the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake, organizers announced on Wednesday.

TIFF chairman Tatsumi “Tom” Yoda said at a press conference at the Roppongi Hills complex in Tokyo’s Minato Ward that this year’s installment of the fest, which runs between October 22 and 30, will utilize the slogan “Believe! The power of films” in an effort to support the victims of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan’s Tohoku region. Read more

Actress Kyoko Kagawa looks back prior to retrospective at Tokyo fest

TOKYO (TR) – Prior to her nine-pic retrospective at next month’s 24th Tokyo International Film Festival, legendary actress Kyoko Kagawa earlier this week compared filmmaking from six decades ago to the modern era.

At a press conference at The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan on Tuesday, the 79-year-old actress said the biggest difference is the lack of big studios making films today. “The studios supported the filmmakers with much money and time so that they could make masterpieces,” said Kagawa, who started her career at now defunct studio Shintoho in 1949. “But today it seems that everyone is an independent filmmaker and there is more freedom, for better or for worse. When I worked with the masters, it was intimidating, but now it is more casual.”

Born in Ibaraki Prefecture, Kagawa was a part of the second “Golden Age” of film, which extended from 1952 to 1960. She got her start in rather innocent roles, but eventually moved on to more serious parts, making her name in such pics as Yasujiro Ozu’s “Tokyo Story” (1953), a post-war drama about a couple feeling emotionally neglected by their children, “Sansho the Bailiff,” Kenji Mizoguchi’s winner of the Silver Lion award at the Venice Film Festival the following year, and Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 tale of extortion, “High and Low.” Read more

Tokyo porn channel wraps ninth AIDS charity fund drive

(Photos by Tokyo Reporter, August 21, 2011)

TOKYO (TR) – In its typically provocative and uncompromising style, adult satellite channel Paradise TV on Sunday wrapped the ninth edition of its two-day AIDS fund drive.

The channel, which specializes in wacky porn programming that often features naked news broadcasts, “strip” mahjong exhibitions, and auctions of sex toys, holds its “24-Hour TV: Eroticism Saves the Earth” fund drive each year to raise money and awareness to assist in reducing the spread of AIDS, a condition that continues to be a worsening problem in Japan. Read more

Helmer Sabu adapts manga ‘Bunny Drop’ to the big screen

TOKYO (TR) – One of the aspects inherent within the hundreds of manga titles released each year that keeps readers loyal is that they often contain themes and story lines that are not too dissimilar from ordinary life.

That might be fine in winning a readership, but it poses a challenge when it comes to a film adaptation. This year’s drama “Usagi Doroppu (Bunny Drop),” based on the popular nine-volume series of the same name by Yumi Unita, offered such a dilemma to veteran helmer Sabu.

“The manga is characterized by a very ordinary quality,” said the 46-year-old director, whose real name is Hiroyuki Tanaka, following a press screening of the film last week at The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. “It doesn’t contain anything too spectacular.”

The film, shot in August of last year, tells the story of the unlikely cohabitation of 27-year-old Daikichi (Kenichi Matsuyama, “Gantz,” “Death Note”), a bachelor working at a publishing company, and Rin (Mana Ashida), the six-year-old daughter of his deceased grandfather. Read more

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