Dear Community,

It is with some regret I must announce that, due to other obligations, I have to step down as a Rekuru blogger. I’ve really enjoyed my time here, and if even one of you enjoyed one of my articles, I consider it time well spent; I think this is a cool site and I’m proud of my fellow bloggers. But since my defining trait is to be unable to stop talking (or, that is, writing) I’ll leave you with a few thoughts. More »

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Hiroshima from Tokyo: by bullet train (2 hours 30 minutes) Nagasaki from Tokyo: by bullet train to Fukuoka (4 hours) then by special express (2 hours)

There is a lot more to both these vibrant cities than that they alone, of all cities on earth, were once atomic bomb targets. But let’s be honest, we go there for one main reason. More »

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This is an unscheduled post, but as of when I’m writing, America just lost a great hero. J.D. Salinger, author of The Catcher in The Rye, understood perhaps better than anyone what’s it like to be a teenager; and helped every generation since cope with its angst with the wit, charm and sympathy of his writing. I read Catcher in one day, and for a long time it was my favorite book; many can say the same, but personally, it also made me really want a kid sister. Years later I went to Japan and found I wasn’t the only one. So without further ado: the top five anime kid sisters of all time. More »

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I’m really grateful to have had the chance to see Kurosawa’s last film, Dreams (1990), at the New York Film Forum. Not only is it an incredible film–certainly one of his best–but it provides, if in a problematic form, a sort of answer to the two questions Kurosawa claims to have struggled with all his life: Why can’t people be happier? and Why can’t they be happier together? More »

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This film is a treasure. Technically it shouldn’t be here, as it was made in Thailand and directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaraung (okay, I’ll stop making fun of my friends who get confused by Japanese names). But as a collaboration with bad-boy Japanese director Takashi Miike, it features superstar Tadanobu Asano in the main role with dialogue in Thai, Japanese and English. Last Life in the Universe (2003) is a crime film of sorts, but at the same time a penetrating look at cross-cultural communication (or the lack thereof) and how all human longing is, in some sense, romantic. More »

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Of course, no discussion of Akira Kurosawa would be complete without a mention of Kurosawa’s (arguably) best and (certainly) best-known film: The Seven Samurai. More »

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Perhaps motivated by white guilt (having only a trace of Asian heritage myself), I’ve always opposed characterizations of Japanese art as subtle, inscrutable, feminine or “Zen” (whatever that means)…and then I encounter an artist who actually is all those things: filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu is perhaps Kurosawa’s most serious competition for the title of “greatest twentieth century Japanese director,” and his name routinely appears on lists of the greatest directors of all time. More »

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I rave so much about Japanese art that it may seem like as far as I’m concerned, everything is the “best” or “most important” or “life-changing” or oh-so-much better than its Western counterpart. But getting down to it. Across all genres–what is the best, that is the one most important story told in recent years: the narrative of modern Japan? As an example of what I mean by this, in America for a long time it was Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. Like it or not (I personally don’t), that’s basically the story of America. As far as post-War Japan goes, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a strong candidate. So is Barefoot Gen. But I have to put my money on the pop-culture phenomenon of Battle Royale. More »

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So up until now, I’ve been writing about Akira Kurosawa films I had already seen; only now have I taken advantage of the riches of the Film Forum going on now in New York and seen for the first time Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963). I do encourage everyone living in striking distance of New York to get out and attend this thing; it’s a great opportunity. As for High and Low itself, I strongly recommend it–perhaps not on a level with Rashomon and Ran, but at the same time, it presents a side of Kurosawa you don’t get from his best known films. More »

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Stereotypically, one might expect Japan’s greatest filmmaker to craft intricate, mysterious, emotionally opaque films with a subtly previously unknown to the West. And if you think that greatest filmmaker is Yasujiro Ozu, you’d be correct. But Kurosawa wears his heart on his sleeve, and his films, however stylistically intricate (and not being a film expert, I’m more or less blind to these subtleties) are political, emotionally raw, moralistic, at times even sentimental. In fact, Kurosawa was taken less seriously in his time by certain Japanese critics who found his sensibility “too Western.” Nowhere is this more evident than in my personal favorite, Ran (”Chaos”). More »

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