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Michihito Fujii was born in Tokyo and graduated from the Nihon University College of Art Screenplay course. While studying at the university, he started to write scripts and began his activities as a director. His first feature-length movie was ”Oh! Father”, based on the same-named novel by Kotaro Isaka. His film, “The Journalist” received 6 Japan Academy Prize nominations and won three, including Picture of the Year, Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role and Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role.

On the occasion of “A Family” screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival, we speak with him about shooting a movie about and researching the yakuza, his opinion about the rather harsh, current anti-yakuza law, the cycle of violence, his cooperation with Go Ayano and other topics.

Why did you decide to shoot a film about the yakuza? What is your opinion about its state through the years and now?...

After “Fake” and the portrait of Mamoru Samuragochi, Tatsuya Mori deals with another rather interesting personality, that of journalist Isoko Mochizuki, who has already inspired a feature film before this documentary, namely the multi-awarded “The Journalist“.

“i: Documentary of the Journalist” is screening at Nippon Connection 2020

The majority of the documentary has Mori following Mochizuki with his camera, as she partakes on many press conferences and researches the most important stories of Japan in 2019. In that fashion, her non-stop work has her deal with the transfer of the Us base in Hinoko, Okinawa, the Moritomo Gakuen scandal, which involved Shinzo Abe’s wife, and Shiori Ito’s charges of rape towards Noriyuki Yamaguchi, and the scandal of the cover up that followed. Her research of these cases, which include following Shiori Ito in the various events she participates to communicate her case, interviews with people involved, and questions to the various political offices,...

In its now 43rd edition the Nippon Academy-shō Association recognized Asian productions with the Japan Academy Film Prize, an award commonly referred to as the Asian equivalent to the Oscars. The award show, which took place at the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa in Tokyo, Japan presented some of the best productions from the Asian movie industry with productions such as Shinsuke Saito’s “Kingdom” receiving four nominations and Hideki Takeuchi’s “Fly me to Saitama” topping the list with 12 nominations.

Here is the list of the winners of last night’s award ceremony:

Picture of the Year: “The Journalist” by Roh Deok

Director of the Year: Hideki Takeuchi (“Fly me to Saitama”)

Animation of the Year: “Weathering with You” by Makoto Shinkai

Screenplay of the Year: Yuichi Tokunaga (“Fly me to Saitama”)

Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role: Tori Matsuzaka (“The Journalist”)

Outstanding Performance by an...

“The Journalist,” Michihito Fujii’s drama about a young female reporter who investigates a scandal that extends to the highest reaches of Japanese politics, won the Best Picture prize at the 43rd Japan Academy Awards ceremony, held in Tokyo Friday.

Due to concerns about the spread of coronavirus, no guests were invited and no media were on site to cover the ceremony at the Grand Prince Hotel New Takanawa.

Based on Isoko Mochizuki‘s non-fiction book, “The Journalist” was a surprise box office hit last year, breaking an industry taboo against dramatizing real-life political controversy in commercial films.

Shim Eun-Kyung, who played the Korean-Japanese reporter, took the Best Actress prize. Meanwhile, Tori Matsuzaka, who co-starred as a conflicted elite bureaucrat the reporter uses as a source, was named Best Actor.

Japan’s biggest hit in 2019, Makoto Shinkai’s “Weathering With You,” scooped Best Animation honors, while the group Radwimps, which...

Questioning the role of the traditional media seems to be a global phenomenon at the moment, particularly in the countries that comprise the “First World”. The questions raised, from the Us to Japan and in many countries between, usually reveal answers that highlight the press as another pole of the national-level corruption, along with organized crime, the “capital”, the authorities, and politicians. Michihito Fujii presents his take on the issue, through an approach that unfolds much like a Korean thriller.

“The Journalist” is screening at Japan Cuts 2019

The story, which is based on reporter Isoko Mochizuki’s book “Shinbun Kisha”, revolves around two individuals. Yoshioka is a Us-educated Tokyo reporter working for Toto Newspaper, whose father’s destroyed journalism career and subsequent suicide is the driving force behind her zeal to pursue the truth at any cost. Takumi Sugihara is a bureaucrat and careerist who works for the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office,...

And Your Bird Can SingNorth America’s premier program of contemporary Japanese cinema returns this week as the Japan Society’s thirteenth annual Japan Cuts series comes to New York City. This year’s program includes 26 feature films, almost entirely by young filmmakers and/or directors largely unfamiliar in the West. I caught about a third of the series this year: dramas about alienated urban youth And Your Bird Can Sing, Blue Hour, and Demolition Girl; Francophile comedy Jeux de plage; a pair of social problem films in the throwback comedy The Kamagasaki Caudron War and the tastefully bland The Journalist; an unclassifiable avant-garde musical relic of the 1980s, Legend of the Stardust Brothers; and a pair of films by this year’s Cut Above award winner Shinya Tsukamoto, Killing and Bullet Ballet. The urban youth film is always reliable festival territory, and some of the best films to come...