Imitation and Creativity in Japanese Arts
By Michael Lucken In this interdisciplinary study, the author attempts to both discern the past in contemporary Japanese art, while also focusing on its innovative characteristics, unpicking and complicating the idea of Japan as [...] Review by Dominika Mackiewicz
Our Little Sister
Directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu Director Kore-eda has produced another gentle masterpiece – a family drama dealing with death, desertion, vulnerability, responsibility and loss. That the four main protagonists are women with with strong [...] Review by Susan Meehan
Cosmic Birds at IDFB 2016
By Ito Shun Cosmic Birds comprised twenty mechanical assemblages dancing in the ghostly offices and spaces of the old Municipal Bank located in the very heart of Birmingham. The site of the show contributed to the [...] Review by Dominika Mackiewicz
Nagasaki: Life After Nuclear War
By Susan Southard This work joins an increasing number of books about the enormity of suffering undergone and delivered by the Japanese more than 70 years ago. Southard’s motivation to research the story of the hibakusha [...] Review by Elizabeth Ingrams
Lost Japan
By Alex Kerr From the first page readers find themselves guided through the author’s extraordinary journey through vivid accounts of traditional Japanese life, from the landscape of Shikoku to the dressing rooms of Tokyo’s [...] Review by Harry Martin
The Brick Lane Japan Film Festival: Kamikaze Girls
Directed by Tetsuya Nakashima This film festival of independent Japanese cinema, run from a small gallery space on Brick Lane, is a great example of how a group of friends can get together and produce a vibrant, successful cultural event. Review by Annabelle Sami
London Bubble Theatre Company’s After Hiroshima: A Post-Event Reflection
At the beginning of After Hiroshima British soldiers come across the ruined city, four months after the dropping of the bomb. One soldier recounts the harrowing experience, of the shadows burnt into the [...] Review by Annabelle Sami
The Bite
By Suzuki Atsuto What to do when the dolphin you are ‘keeping’ in a fish tank at home ‘evolves’ – introducing himself as meat-eating Putin, born to parents from the Sea of Okhotsk? The play is hilarious, full of surprises and [...] Review by Susan Meehan
Japan Now
Japan Now, an all-star panel with writer Ian Buruma, journalist Richard Lloyd Parry, and Professor Shimazu Naoko, and chaired by Christopher Harding who pulled together conflicting view points and provocative [...] Review by Jenny White
Six Four
By Yokoyama Hideo 1989 saw Japan move to the Heisei era. In the closing days of Shōwa, the novel’s first victim, seven-year-old Amamiya Shoko, was kidnapped and killed. The ascension of a new Emperor underlined the failure of [...] Review by Charlotte Goff