Japan

Corrupted - Garten der Unbewusstheit

Japanese doom metallers' moody follow up to El Mundo Frio

18 Oct 2011

Osaka’s enigmatic Corrupted have been shape-shifting their doom-laden and dystopic sound with each release over the past 15 years, to refer to them as a sludge band in their current phase seems bone-idle. Garten der Unbewusstheit (Garden of Unawareness…

Cold Fish

Dark but overlong Japanese serial killer horror from director Sion Sono

15 Apr 2011

Sion Sono has had a varied and intriguing career directing hair extension horror Exte and the award winning four hour Love Exposure. Here he returns with a dark serial killer character study told from the perspective of Shamoto (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) who…

Japan bassist Mick Karn dies

Music Gossip

5 Jan 2011

Japan bassist Mick Karn has died aged 52. The Cypriot musician, who revealed in June last year that he had been diagnosed with advanced-stage cancer passed away at his home in London yesterday (04.01.11). A statement on his website said: "It's…

Ryuichi Sakamoto interview

Piano man

13 Nov 2009

His collaboration with David Byrne on the score to The Last Emperor scored them an Oscar, but as Neil Cooper discovers, the pianist and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto is happiest keeping things minimal, but always experimental It may be a quarter of a…

Nagisa Oshima retrospective at Edinburgh Filmhouse

The Pensive Provocateur

2 Sep 2009

A complex figure making sense of a complex, still defeated post-war Japanese society, Nagisa Oshima’s career coincided with the French Nouvelle Vague, and he has proved over the years as provocative a filmmaker as any that came out of France at the end…

Teaching English in Japan

4 Oct 2007

The door slid shut with a bang and all four customers turned and stared. I squeezed my way along the narrow space between walls and stools, perched myself on an empty one and opened my phrase book. ‘Biru...’ Pause to look at book. ‘...

DVD - Fighting Elegy

Fighting Elegy

26 Mar 2007

ACTION Seijun Tokyo Drifter Suzuki has a deservedly cult reputation as a diverse genre filmmaker. Whether he is directing gangster films, youth movies, or erotica, he constantly works to counter any obviousness in the plotting with the pure bravura…