Japan

Latest Articles

Review: Littlerock

Altogether original
Two young Japanese tourists, siblings Rintaro (Rintaro Sawamoto) and Atsuko (Atsuko Okatsuka), get stranded when their car breaks down in the California backwater of the title.
By PETER KEOUGH | October 05, 2011

Review: Sakura

Lots of choices for lunch
On Wickenden Street with a friend, looking for a reasonably priced lunch, it occurred to me that a nice bowl of donburi would be cheap and filling. Sakura it was.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | September 06, 2011

Review: Wretches and Jabberers

Documentary searches for the heart of autism
Imagine having as much inside you — thoughts, feelings, desires, needs — as you really do, but being unable to express them.
By DEIRDRE FULTON | June 08, 2011

Photos: Anime Boston 2011

Anime Boston | Hynes Convention Center | April 22-24, 2011
Anime Boston , winner of the Best Nerd Gathering award in the Phoenix Best 2011, takes over the Hynes Convention Center on April 22-24, 2011.
By ANDREW MCFARLAND | April 26, 2011

Japan's Chernobyl

Plus, what's Donald Trump all about?
It may have receded from the headlines, but the crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station continues.
By EDITORIAL | April 13, 2011

Review: Yakuza 4

Gangster’s paradise
At one point in Yakuza 4 , a grizzled old gangster gives some advice to an upstart.
By MITCH KRPATA | April 13, 2011

It's Japan's turn

Letters to the Boston editor, April 8, 2011
This letter is in response to your editorial, "Nuclear Failure" (March 18), covering the disaster in Japan. It never fails to amaze me that change always has to be the result of catastrophe.
By BOSTON PHOENIX LETTERS | April 06, 2011

Maine nuke reports missing

Seeking solace
With Japan in the midst of the most serious nuclear power plant mishap since Chernobyl, Mainers may have been looking for reassurances regarding the spent fuel stranded at what was once Maine Yankee.
By COLIN WOODARD | March 30, 2011

Review: Pai Men Miyake

Second time’s as charming
I suppose there will be a time when Portlanders barely remember Masa Miyake's first sushi bar.
By BRIAN DUFF | March 23, 2011

Review: A cornucopia of local art at Aucocisco

Eight is enough
Ignore the title: this is less of an "audition" than a cabaret.
By NICHOLAS SCHROEDER | March 23, 2011

Tiny Showcase grapples with a market gone big

Print It
Jon Buonaccorsi stands alongside a large, rectangular table and plays with a series of flat, wooden pieces that, when assembled, make for an arty little pizza shop that might look sharp on your mantle.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | March 23, 2011

Nuclear Failure

When safe enough doesn't cut it
"Most people today," writes political philosopher John Gray, "think they belong to a species that can be master of its destiny. This is faith, not science. The unfolding disaster at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station sorely strains that faith, as did the 1979 crisis at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant and the 1986 catastrophe at Chernobyl in the Ukraine.
By EDITORIAL | March 18, 2011

By | January 01, 0001

What the Miyake family eats

Visiting a chef at home
Finding out your daughter's classmate's father is this city's most eye-opening chef makes you feel special.
By LINDSAY STERLING | March 09, 2011

Review: Kuroneko

Poe meets Oedipus Rex, in glorious Nippon
In Kaneto Shindô's 1968 baroque Japanese period piece, samurai run wild as ignoble marauders.
By GERALD PEARY | October 26, 2010

Review: Ichigo Ichie

Beyond tempura and teriyaki
Do you know anyone who still thinks that a meal at a Japanese restaurant means starting with a cup of miso soup, continuing with a California roll, and settling for teriyaki or tempura for the main course? If so, send them to Ichigo Ichie, which is to a quiet sushi bar as strolling Tokyo’s bustling Ginza is to meditating in a temple.
By BILL RODRIGUEZ | September 07, 2010

Cultural studies in Newport

'Surf Island' and 'The Japan Craze' at Newport Art Museum
Jason Evans's bread and butter is commercial sports photography, shooting the likes of Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez, and tennis stars Roger Federer, Venus Williams, and Lindsay Davenport.
By GREG COOK | August 11, 2010

Dutch courage

David Mitchell's Jacob de Zoet revises historical fiction
When you've already written a novel like Cloud Atlas , which travels from 1850 to the apocalyptic future and back again, writing a historical novel might be redundant.
By PETER KEOUGH | June 22, 2010

Slideshow: Drainspotting in Japan

Remo Camerota's photographs of manhole covers in Japan, where 95% of municipalities take pride in their artistic drains.
A collection of artistic Japanese manhole covers
By REMO CAMEROTA | June 07, 2010

Photos: Japanese Mascots

Japan's love of kitsch and cuteness in all aspects of life, as expressed by their mascots.
Meet the mascots from Edward Harrison and John Harrison's book Idle Idol.
By EDWARD HARRISON AND JOHN HARRISON | June 08, 2010

Making waves

Can WRNI supplant the ProJo as the state’s news king?
Rhode Island’s upstart National Public Radio affiliate, WRNI, aims to be nothing less than a major media player here. And in the space of just a couple of years, the station has taken some impressive first steps.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 10, 2010

Review: Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo

Pallid documentary on Japan's insect obsession
The cheeky title conjures up belovedly tacky 1950s Japanese sci-fi films, but Jessica Oreck’s actual effort is a pallid, thinly poetic documentary essay about Japan’s obsession with insects.
By GERALD PEARY | June 01, 2010

High and low culture from Japan

Art of the Hole Dept.
Attention, admirers of quirky kitsch and over-the-top aesthetics: hit PAUSE on that Belle and Sebastian record for a second.
By LANCE GOULD | June 02, 2010

Balls of fire

Porn stars, witch doctors, elephant farts, and the worst soccer team on the planet take center stage at this summer’s World Cup
For one month every four years, the United States — try as it might — can’t impose its vacuous culture on the rest of the planet. The World Cup arrives and the Americans are, at best, an afterthought.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG AND LANCE GOULD | June 01, 2010

Play by Play: May 21, 2010

Theater listings, May 21, 2010
Boston's weekly theater listings
By JEFFREY GANTZ | May 19, 2010

Old haunts

Blithe Spirit at the Lyric; Hot Mikado at New Rep; August: Osage County at the Colonial
It doesn’t take a crystal ball to predict that Blithe Spirit , that cocktail shaker full of dry martini and ectoplasmic mayhem, will amuse. Playwright Noël Coward diagnosed his own gift as a talent to do just that.
By CAROLYN CLAY | May 11, 2010

Review: Babies

Awwww
Director Thomas Balmès’s spare, occasionally stirring documentary toddles to Namibia, Mongolia, the US, and Japan to capture a year in the life of four infants. The San Francisco family comes off at once as a gross cliché of Western privilege, complete with roof-deck Jacuzzi and baby yoga.
By ALICIA POTTER | May 04, 2010

Buddachen

Jae’s grill is reborn with pan-Asian zen
The Web site says “modern Asian bistro” and the other description they’ve put out is “ultra trendy modern Asian cuisine.”
By ROBERT NADEAU | May 05, 2010

At the G.I. Joe Convention: The Baroness and a ‘slice of Americana’

Gatherings
Roadblock flew in from Miami, and Tunnel Rat took the train from Jersey. But it was Baroness, aka Penelope Pappas, who got the cameras clicking at the 17th annual G.I. Joe Collectors’ Convention.
By ELIZABETH RAU | May 05, 2010

Transformations

Young Frankenstein at the Opera House; The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead in Lowell
As fans of the film are aware, that precipitous crag atop which the castle of Young Frankenstein sits is a Catskill. But in The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein (at the Opera House through May 2), the mountain is shrouded less in 1930s-horror-movie gloom than in Vegas glitz.
By CAROLYN CLAY | April 27, 2010