Just In Japan Entertainment News

Rookies," a dramedy about a baseball team in a tough high school, has topped the Japan box office for 2009, according to figures released Friday by Bunka Tsushin entertainment news service. The pic, which was produced Tokyo Broadcasting System based...

Yôjirô Takita's ­bitter-sweet tale of the Japanese funeral trade plays a bit like a formal service ­itself. At the start there is some uncertain shuffling, a few inappropriate giggles; the odd spasm of embarrassment. Then the mood settles and the...

Girl Supernova" is the seventh full-length studio effort from Tokyo-based underground stalwarts PanicSmile. Founded in Fukuoka in the early 1990s, the seminal quartet share 14 new tracks filled with the off-kilter art punk that has established them a small global...

A year of tragic deaths, amusing scandals and a series of increasingly senile looking attempts by the music industry to cling onto its outdated business model — that was 2009. The year was characterized by a fragile facade of continuity,...

Objects on display include marionettes, costumes, materials teaching about the mechanics of puppet gestures and a digest of films of their performances. The Edo Marionette Theater Youkiza is the only remaining marionette troupe from the Edo Period (1603-1867).

When director Toshiaki Toyoda was arrested for possession of 3.9 grams of stimulants in August of 2005, he had just finished "Kuchu Teien" ("Hanging Garden"), a black dramady about a dysfunctional family that has made a ritual of truth-telling, while...

The main difference between this year's four-day, end-of-year, all-Japanese-artist rock festival, Countdown Japan, and last year's is that this year it will only be held in Chiba. For the last three years it was also held simultaneously in Osaka, just...

Prince Hisahito, the 3-year-old son of Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko, will enter the kindergarten affiliated with Ochanomizu University in Tokyo next April, the Imperial Household Agency announced Thursday. While many Imperial family members have been part of the two-year...

Popular model and TV personality Rinka, 36, was named one of Japan’s Fashion Leaders 2009 this week along with actresses Ryoko Hirosue, 29, and Ryo, 36, at an event at Roppongi Hills. Readers of women’s magazines, including “sweet,” “InRed,” and...