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The lives of Japanese literati in the early 20th century were as full of drama and tragedy as any of their novels and poems, which frequently drew inspiration directly from their own experiences. The latest film to make this point is Kichitaro Negishi’s verbally florid and decidedly old-school “Yasuko, Songs of Days Past,” which depicts the real-life love triangle between actor Yasuko Hasegawa (Suzu Hirose), poet Chuya Nakahara (Taisei Kido) and literary critic Hideo Kobayashi (Masaki Okada) in the Taisho Era (1912-26). Scripted by Yozo Tanaka, who worked with Negishi on his film “Villon’s Wife” (2009), the film has the flavor of bygone days in everything from its literary-sounding dialogue to its confluence of bohemian attitudes about sex and conventional gender roles. Source link

Yokohama – A district court on Thursday referred to the family court a case involving a 16-year-old boy charged with murdering his parents in the city of Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, last year. Yokohama District Court Judge Takahira Yoshii said that educative and protective measures are appropriate for the boy. “The incident wouldn’t have happened if he had not been placed in an inappropriate environment by his parents,” the presiding judge said. Yoshii said that the boy “regrets” what he did, and that he needs to receive special education. Public prosecutors had sought a prison sentence of 10 to 15 years against the boy. The judge found the boy guilty of killing his 52-year-old father and 50-year-old mother at their home near Tokyo on Feb. 10, 2024, by stabbing them multiple times in their necks with a knife. He was in his first year of high school at the time. The boy had admitted to murdering his father while claiming that he killed his mother because she had asked him to. The defense argued that this amounted to a case of assisted suicide. Yoshii noted that the mother had gone out to the balcony to seek help, which contradicted the defense’s claim. The defense pointed out that the boy was a victim of severe maltreatment and had become desperate after enduring many years of physical and mental abuse by his parents. The prosecution said the boy, after murdering his father, waited for his mother to return home to kill her due to his strong homicidal intention. Source link

The experience Abdul Hakim Sani Brown had at the Paris Olympics is not one he wants to relive. So instead of replaying the memories in his head, he has redirected his focus to the next Summer Games, which will be held in Los Angeles in 2028. “It’s way behind me. I don’t even think about it,” Sani Brown told The Japan Times. “It’s in the past.” In the summer of 2024, the 25-year-old narrowly missed out on a place in the men’s 100-meter final in Paris. Had he qualified, he would have become the first Japanese sprinter in 92 years to reach the Olympic final in the event. Source link

With modern-day aids, this 13th-century piece of text isn’t as challenging as you may think. Source link

The Chinese president of a company in Tokyo has been arrested on suspicion of having students from China studying in Japan buy Apple computers using a student discount, then reselling the products abroad, Tokyo police said Wednesday. Zhao Zhicheng, a 35-year-old resident of Tokyo’s Itabashi Ward who heads computer retailer Teishin, denies the claims. The Metropolitan Police Department arrested Zhao on an initial charge of having students buy 18 MacBook computers, valued at about ¥5.7 million ($37,900), from the Ginza and Shibuya Apple Stores in Tokyo on May 14, 2024, using the student discount while hiding the fact he planned to resell them. Through the scheme, police believe Zhao was able to obtain around 700 MacBooks and other products, valued at around ¥130 million, while saving about ¥10 million thanks to the student discount. According to police, Zhao handed a few of his company’s corporate credit cards to a Chinese woman affiliated with a crime syndicate known as the Chinese Dragon, who then had the students buy the computers, police said. The woman, who has been indicted for fraud, was arrested in January on suspicion of using Chinese students studying in Japan to buy MacBooks for resale. The students who bought the computers were allegedly made to bring them to Teishin the same day they were purchased. The computers were then believed to have been sent abroad for resale through a different company in Japan, police said. Zhao allegedly had the same students visit multiple stores in order to buy more computers, they said. Translated by The Japan Times Source link

Mike Sunda, 36, is a creative strategist and co-founder of the studio Push Japan. A former writer for The Japan Times, he served as executive producer on the award-winning music video for Megan Thee Stallion’s “Mamushi.” 1. What was your relationship to Japanese culture in your younger years? Even growing up in a diverse city like London, Japanese culture wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous or as visible as it is today. My exposure came from niche fragments that I discovered either serendipitously or just through a general curiosity: Takashi Miike films on late-night cable TV; Mad Capsule Markets music videos on MTV2; puroresu (pro wrestling) DVDs I ordered online. 2. Can you share a highlight from your academic pursuits? I was lucky to study under many great teachers, but the most influential was professor David Slater at Sophia University. He gave me the opportunity to research buraku caste discrimination at the Shinagawa slaughterhouse, which turned into two of my most referenced articles for The Japan Times and the BBC. Source link

SEOUL – A motorcade carrying impeached South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol arrived on Thursday at the Seoul Central District Court where the embattled leader is due to attend the first hearing of his criminal trial over insurrection charges. TV footage aired by local broadcasters showed justice ministry vehicles leaving the Seoul Detention Center where Yoon is being held before arriving at the court where lines of police buses were parked outside to ensure security. The court will also hold a hearing to review the legality of Yoon’s detention as requested by his lawyers earlier this month. Source link

LONDON – Russia, like U.S. President Donald Trump, covets Ukraine’s natural resources — and on the ground, its forces are closing in on a giant lithium deposit. Trump said this month he wants Kyiv to hand over large quantities of its critical minerals in return for U.S. military support, prompting Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy to declare, “Let’s do a deal.” Yet as Washington and Moscow prepare for negotiations aimed at ending the three-year-old war, the reality is that it’s Russian President Vladimir Putin who’s taking increasing control of Ukraine’s riches. Source link

Democracy may be in decline around the world, but it’s on the rise in Japanese movie theaters. “Hypnosismic — Division Rap Battle — Movie,” which goes into wide release Feb. 21, is billed as Japan’s first interactive movie, in which the audience votes en masse to determine the outcome of the story. The interactive feature is the latest event in the “Hypnosismic” media mix franchise, which kicked off in 2017 with music, manga, a smartphone game, anime series and live concerts. “Hipumai,” as fans call it, centers on groups of stylish male rappers from neighborhoods around Tokyo and Japan at large who engage in rap battles using special hypnotic microphones. The fanbase (about 90% of which is young women, a rep tells me) attends live events wearing LED-lined gloves lit up in colors representing their favorite group, including Buster Bros!!! (Ikebukuro), Fling Posse (Shibuya) and Bad Ass Temple (Nagoya). Such was the case at the premiere of the “Hypnosismic” film on Feb. 5, attended by members of the press and about 300 fans chosen via lottery. Before the screening, longtime “Hipumai” fans and journalists alike were instructed to download a smartphone app developed by Kino Industries, the company behind the tech that powers interactive films like this one (their first film, the English-language interactive thriller “Late Shift,” was released in 2016). After an introduction by the film’s cast and director Takanori Tsujimoto, all of whom did an admirable job of talking for 40 minutes about a film they weren’t allowed to reveal anything about, the LED-adorned audience was asked to scan an onscreen QR code with their apps, allowing voting on each of the film’s rap battles. Source link

The Osaka District Court sentenced a 28-year-old former hospital employee to life in prison on Tuesday for raping 10 girls between the ages of 8 and 12 and injuring them as a result. Tomoya Yanagimoto was convicted after he pleaded guilty to breaking into the girls’ homes or the common areas of their apartment complexes and raping them between March 2016 and May 2022. “What you did is despicable and beyond the realms of maliciousness,” presiding Judge Hiroki Ito said as he handed down the sentence. Life imprisonment is the maximum penalty for the crime of rape resulting in injury. According to the ruling, the majority of the girls were alone when Yanagimoto attacked and threatened them with a box cutter while saying, “Shut up, or I’ll kill you.” “He targeted girls who were meant to be growing up nicely and wounded the very foundations of their being,” Ito said. “Quite a lot of planning went into these attacks,” the judge said, noting that Yanagimoto had spent long periods watching the girls’ residences to confirm their daily habits before attacking them. The terror and mental damage inflicted upon the girls are beyond imagination, with some still unable to talk about what had happened even years later, while others have experienced stunted development, Ito said. “The scope of the crime is such that it cannot be contained in a definite term sentence,” he said. Translated by The Japan Times Source link