J.B. Spins

Tora-san, the traveling salesman and prodigal half-brother, was a comic staple of Japanese cinema from 1969 to 1995. All forty-eight films w...

Even though Matsuko Kawajiri always has a song in her heart, one would never expect to find her in a movie musical. Her world might have bee...

Kyoichi Kagenuma might not be much, but if you are terrorized by your dreams, he is the one person you can turn to. Of course, he would much...

Evidently in the future, technology will make fairy tales come true—at least the scary parts. For 160 patients who have contracted a lethal ...

Japan’s defeat in WWII was a bitter pill to swallow, but the fall of old order represented opportunity to many, including Japanese women. Of...

Five young people sharing living quarters might sound like a familiar comedic set-up, but at least the apartment is realistically small. Whi...

Yojin Mizuki might be a young man, but he acts like a kid who could use a dose of Ritalin. Oddly enough, pesticide seems to have the same ef...

Nostalgia—it’s a killer. Poor, hapless Aoyagi learns that the hard way. One minute he is listening to Beatles covers with an old college fri...

This is not a Japanese Sweet Valley High . However, it has murder, madness, revenge, peer pressure, and AIDS—all your basic middle school st...

In Fifteenth Century Japan, heroic masseurs roamed the land, living by their wits and hands. At least such is the case for Oguri, the protag...