The Japan Society Review

By Ito Shun Cosmic Birds comprised twenty mechanical assemblages dancing in the ghostly offices and spaces of the old Municipal Bank located in the very heart of Birmingham. The site of the show contributed to the [...] Review by Dominika Mackiewicz

By Susan Southard This work joins an increasing number of books about the enormity of suffering undergone and delivered by the Japanese more than 70 years ago. Southard’s motivation to research the story of the hibakusha [...] Review by Elizabeth Ingrams

By Alex Kerr From the first page readers find themselves guided through the author’s extraordinary journey through vivid accounts of traditional Japanese life, from the landscape of Shikoku to the dressing rooms of Tokyo’s [...] Review by Harry Martin

Directed by Tetsuya Nakashima This film festival of independent Japanese cinema, run from a small gallery space on Brick Lane, is a great example of how a group of friends can get together and produce a vibrant, successful cultural event. Review by Annabelle Sami

At the beginning of After Hiroshima British soldiers come across the ruined city, four months after the dropping of the bomb. One soldier recounts the harrowing experience, of the shadows burnt into the [...] Review by Annabelle Sami

By Suzuki Atsuto What to do when the dolphin you are ‘keeping’ in a fish tank at home ‘evolves’ – introducing himself as meat-eating Putin, born to parents from the Sea of Okhotsk? The play is hilarious, full of surprises and [...] Review by Susan Meehan

Japan Now, an all-star panel with writer Ian Buruma, journalist Richard Lloyd Parry, and Professor Shimazu Naoko, and chaired by Christopher Harding who pulled together conflicting view points and provocative [...] Review by Jenny White

By Yokoyama Hideo 1989 saw Japan move to the Heisei era. In the closing days of Shōwa, the novel’s first victim, seven-year-old Amamiya Shoko, was kidnapped and killed. The ascension of a new Emperor underlined the failure of [...] Review by Charlotte Goff

By Soji Shimada In 1930s Tokyo, an eccentric artist is found dead by his seven residing female relations, inside a room that appears to have been locked from the inside. With the body is discovered a note, detailing a plan to [...] Review by Chris Corker

Directed by Tetsuya Nakashima Despite its English-language title, “Kamikaze Girls” actually has nothing to do with war, pilots or even women taking on traditionally masculine roles. The literal translation of its Japanese title is ‘Shimotsuma [...] Review by Simon Cotterill