J.B. Spins

Feudalism was never any fun for the peasants. It was especially hard for the farmers, woodsmen, and iron-workers of Sanchu. They were reg...

The greatest victims of Japanese wartime propaganda were the Japanese people themselves. When the militarist government disseminated apoc...

L. Ron Hubbard would be impressed. The leaders of the God’s Water cult come from the advertising industry and they explicitly refer to th...

Think of it as a hikikomori Rocky , but we are definitely talking about the original, gritty and down-to-earth film—not the flashier sequ...

There is nothing more tiring than depression. Nobody illustrates that better than Terako. She sleeps away most of her days, waiting to ac...

Shortly after his 1989 source novel was published, author Yasushi Sato took his own life. Clearly, it did not sufficiently cheer him up. ...

Kingo Shimura is sort of like a one-man 47 Ronin. He even references them himself. Unfortunately, Shimura outlived his times as well as h...

Japanese cinema has always excelled at domestic dramas, with the Yasujiro Shimazu’s classic Shomin-geki films even predating the masterwo...

Everybody ought to understand the horoscope has absolutely no value as a daily planning tool. Nevertheless, two losers will prove it ever...

Newton Minow would be appalled by Haruko. Her only meaningful relationship is with her television. Granted, he is newly sentient, but the...

Takashi Hirayama’s long term plan largely consists of cashing his dole checks and playing pachinko. It is pretty pathetic, but he doesn’t...

In early September of 1945, most Japan thought WWII was over, but not the residents of Karafuto (now Sakhalin) Island. They were still be...

Louis Armstrong was New Orleans to his core, but the first place he truly felt at home was Queens, New York. Japanese traditional hot jaz...

This underdog 1930s team is sort of like the New York Cubans and other early African American baseball teams. Everyone loves them now, bu...

The Odakyu Electric Railway’s “Romancecar” is not exactly a Love Boat on rails, but it is known for its attentive service. Nobody upholds...

Think of it as something like Bernard Christensen’s Häxan , but in color and with even more sex. While the notorious Danish silent was ba...

The Japanese dirty movie business has a reputation for being more extreme than its American counterparts, but its boundaries with the leg...

The Rock & Roll Brothers want to be neo-punk rockers, but they don’t have much Iggy Pop or Sid Vicious in them. Frankly, bubblegum po...