• Tue. Apr 15th, 2025

Japan Subculture Research Center

A guide to the Japanese underworld, Japanese pop-culture, yakuza and everything dark under the sun.

Kaori Shoji

Kaori Shoji is a film critic for the Japan Times and write about fashion and society as well. 欧米の出版物に記事を執筆するフリーランス・ジャーナリスト。The Japan Times、The International Herald Tribune、Zoo Magazineへ定期的に記事を寄稿している。
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BABU Skateboards and Makes Art But You Can’t See His Face

Feature photo ©︎Shu Nakagawa BABU is a street artist based in Kitakyushu City, Fukuoka. He skateboards in the post-earthquake disaster areas like Fukushima and Noto Peninsula. He makes art from…

Art and DEI Get Cozy at the agnès b. Gallery in Aoyama” 

These are weird times when everyday, the news brings yet another series of incredulous, synapse-shredding headlines. One can’t be so naive as to believe that art will step in and…

Going Gently Into That Good Night May Not Be So Bad

‘Teki’ means enemy.  The 77-year old protagonist Gisuke Watanabe in Teki Cometh (Japanese title: Teki) can’t quite figure out the exact identity of that enemy but he’s aware it’s coming to destroy him.…

Performing Kaoru’s Funeral

"Performing..." is also a funny, melancholic and classic Japanese love story. Classic because within the traditional Japanese relationship, a man and woman only realize the depth of their love for…

The Race To Run Tokyo: Who’s going to be the next governor of the megapolis?

Will The Empress Continue To Reign? Probably.

 

In Ichigatsuno Koeni Yorokobiwo Kizame (International title: Voice), a young woman named Reiko (Atsuko Maeda) professes to her boyfriend-for-hire that she had been sexually abused as a child. Reiko had been six years…

Boy Idols And Dostoevsky Come Together in Bad Lands

Neri has a room in one of the labyrinthine apartments in the notorious Nishinari district of Osaka. This is where homeless and day laborers co-exist in precarious harmony and where…

What This Means (a short-story about love and marriage in Japan during the pandemic)

And then she would pretend to pout which was another cue for me to massage the back of her feet, and then we'd head off to the bedroom or just…

An Honest Portrait of a Japanese B*tch

Japanese women are angry. If you didn't already know this you probably shouldn't be reading a review of The Ripple because you won't be interested in a film about older,…

The Unbearable Pathos Of Poop (Okiku’s World film review)

oop is the main thing that remains in the mind after watching Okiku's World. Lots and lots of poop. Ninety-nine percent of the film was shot in black and white which…