Film Review: Boys For Sale – Bai Bai Bōizu

Premiered in the UK as one of the official selection at the 25^th Anniversary of the Raindance Film Festival 2017.

What might at first seem like a potentially titillating documentary on male prostitution in the Shinjuku 2-chome area of Tōkyō, reportedly the largest urban gay area in Asia, becomes something fascinating and shocking in equal parts. One wonders as the documentary progresses at what point the historical Japanese openness and acceptance of male-male sex as a necessary part of human life became something to be frowned upon and kept hidden. Adrian ‘Uchujin’ Storey, who

Film Review: Mifune – The Last Samurai

A celebration of the greatest actor from the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema!

Doing the rounds of this year’s film festivals and screened at this year’s British Film Institute’s London Film Festival is ‘Mifune: The Last Samurai’, a new documentary directed by the Oscar winning Director Steven Okazaki (‘Days of Waiting’, ‘Unfinished Business’), produced by Toshiaki Nakazawa (‘13 Samurai’, ‘Hara Kiri: Death of a

Film Review: KanZeOn – A Celebration of Buddhism And Music

Flows like a stream of serenity, gently and naturally going from one sequence to the next!

Zen Buddhism has influenced many Japanese art forms, including the tea ceremony, calligraphy, martial arts and music. It is the latter in which KanZeOn, another word for Kanon the Buddhist goddess of compassion, she who hears the cries of the world, and written as