Horikita, Fujiwara star in drama special about Tokyo bombing

NTV is producing a two-night drama special titled “Tokyo Daikushu,” which is a phrase referring to the bombings on Tokyo during World War II. The story will focus on two young pairs and their painful love.

The main couple will be a woman (Maki Horikita) whose father’s factory is bombed and a man (Tatsuya Fujiwara) who stops her when she tries to rescue her father from the fire. They meet again a few years later when the woman is working as a nurse and the man is brought in as a patient with a heart condition. The second couple is a Korean man (Eita) and another nurse (Yuki Shibamoto).

The drama has been in planning for two years. Involved in the project are art director Takeo Kimura, who was fortunate enough to escape the bombings, and essayist Kayoko Ebina, who lost her family in the bombings.

NTV will broadcast the drama on March 17-18.

Source: Tokyograph.com | Image Source: Sanspo.com

The vision of Yuusaku’s Matsuda, is filmed with Tatsuya Fujiwara

“Fujiwara feels the scale, which today is not bound with we would like to aim toward the star movie”, the Sakamoto sequential Osamu director which is said.

It exceeds dimension, “springtime of life fighting scene”

Sakamoto Osamu director films production “Chameleon” is advanced with Fujiwara Tatsuya starring. As for the script, the work of vision of 30 years ago which are written because of the popularity of Matsuda Yusaku. In the Maruyama Noboru one of Sakamoto director and the script house which are challenged to the reappearance of the star movie of the past years we inquired about the enthusiasm at location site.

Waste factory of Saitama prefecture, Heda city. The actors, including Fujiwara show deep emotion, so Maruyama stares photographing deeply.

Maruyama it is the work which is finished writing in 48 hours 1978 before the debutting, as “a man of Chameleon” in the substitute crop of Matsuda starring “amusement” series 2nd work “homicide amusement”. As for requesting the Kurosawa Mitsuru producer of the foster parent Matsuda.

Sakamoto, director commented, “the actor who is suitable for this work is the person who today is not bound. I was moved by the star characteristic of Fujiwara, but still non consciousness the place is funny. I would like finding that “.

The fact that it becomes climax is action. “The charm which exceeds amorousness and dimension in the movement is made to feel?” that, although putting emphasis on person modelling, “only in the cinema we would like to cause the incident which it cannot encounter”, that you are enthusiastic. As for release early summer.

Source: Yomiuri.co.jp | Translated (badly) by: Pan

The Rising Sun Comes Up Early

The Kennedy Center, which has in past years saluted Japan during flowering fruit-tree season, is readying a smorgasbord of the country’s culture. Notable within next month’s “Japan! Culture and Hyperculture” are the many stylistic alloys, fusing Eastern and Western; the traditional and the avant-garde; the artistic and the technological.

Alicia Adams, the Kennedy Center’s vice president for international programming, speaks of Japan as a locus of aesthetic “collision.” Kenji Matsumoto, who consulted on the festival from his post at the New York branch of the Japan Foundation, agrees. “Japanese culture is very hybrid,” he says, adding that, indeed, these days “there is no such thing as essentially Japanese culture — or essentially American culture — because we are living in an interconnected world.”

The festival, Feb. 5 to 17, will showcase 467 artists and a number of robots, and sample — among other fare — anime, 8-bit pop music, taiko drumming, top-spinning, manga, Mikimoto pearls, a kyogen “Comedy of Errors” and, yes, Midori.

Lending the proceedings an intermittently sci-fi feel will be the robots, who should feel at home in this showbiz venue. Tracing the lineage of such automatons back to the clockwork manikins of the Edo period, Tokyo-based scholar Timothy N. Hornyak, who served as the festival’s robotics adviser, says, “Robots have been, essentially, performing artists in Japan for centuries.”

Movie star Tatsuya Fujiwara adds extra glamour to a visually haunting production by Yukio Ninagawa, a director famed for his takes on Shakespeare. Experimental writer Shuji Terayama’s reworking of a noh play (a dance-drama genre), “Shintoku-Maru” broods on loss, lust and vengeance. Feb. 7-9 at 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 9 at 1:30 p.m. Opera House. Performed in Japanese. Tickets start at $15.

Source: Washingtonpost.com

Yukio Ninagawa’s Shintoku-Maru

Renowned for his spectacular interpretations of Shakespearean classics, Olivier Award-winning director Yukio Ninagawa “is one of the most consistently inspirational directors in the world” (Financial Times). For JAPAN! culture + hyperculture, Ninagawa brings the U.S. premiere of Shintoku-Maru to the Opera House on February 7-9. A blend of drama, music, and spectacle, this mesmerizing tale based on a Noh play is a coming-of-age story about a young man who is haunted by the memory of his departed mother and strangely drawn to his new stepmother. The Times of London says, “It is as if some gorgeously exotic gloss on Oedipus and Phèdre had come bubbling out of dreamland.” Performed in Japanese, Shintoku-Maru stars Tatsuya Fujiwara, who, at 15 years of age, won the title role in a talent search for the 1997 London production and was acclaimed for handling “the contradictions and confusions of Shintoku with more than assurance” (Financial Times). Fujiwara will reprise his star-making role after ten years of increasing fame as one of Japan’s hottest young actors, known for his appearances in movie versions of such manga titles as Death Note and Battle Royale.

Source: Playbillarts.com

Kennedy Center Presents Yukio Ninagawa’s Shintoku-Maru Featuring Tatsuya Fujiwara

Known for his productions of Twelth Night and King Lear, written by shakespear, London’s The Guardian once called director Yukio Ninagawa “one of the great image makers of modern theater.”

Love, lust and revenge are intertwined in Ninagawa’s interpretation of an ancient Japanese no play. Starring one of Japan’s best young actor, who’s played in movies such as Death Note and Battle Royale, Tatsuya Fujiwara takes the part of a young man who is troubled by the lingering memory of his deceased mother.

Performances will be held February 7-9 at 7:30 PM with a matinee on the 9th at 1:30 PM.

Source: Transworldnews.com