In Deep with Snack Bars - Outside in Lost in Academia
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Japan Times
4 hours ago
- Japan Times
Time to go: Japan pro board game player retires at 98
Japan's oldest professional player of the board game go retired on Wednesday at age 98, saying that she can no longer handle "six hours without a break." Go is a strategy game considered to be even more complex than chess and involves players placing black and white stones at points on a square wooden table. Kazuko Sugiuchi turned professional in 1948 and won her first title 11 years later, before going on to win the prestigious Women's Meijin Championship four times in a row. Eighth dan go player Kazuko Sugiuchi during a match in Tokyo in January last year | THE NIHON KI-IN / VIA JIJI She became Japan's oldest professional player in April last year, breaking the record previously held by her late husband, Masao. She is set to be promoted to the rank of ninth dan after retiring, becoming the first woman to reach that level. She said the grueling sessions at the board were the reason why she is calling it quits. "I have always worked hard with the belief that go is an art and a lifelong pursuit, but I have decided that playing six hours without a break is no longer possible," NHK reported her as saying. "I would like to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who has shown me kindness over the 80 years since I first aspired to be a go player." Go is especially popular in Japan, South Korea and China, and was played at the Asian Games in Hangzhou in 2023.
Japan Times
9 hours ago
- Japan Times
‘Fires on the Plain': Haunting imagery in restored 1959 war film stands the test of time
When I interviewed Kon Ichikawa in 2000 for a retrospective of his work presented by Cinematheque Ontario (now known as TIFF Cinematheque), he told me that his World War II masterpiece 'Fires on the Plain' (1959) would never be made today. 'If I were to take it to a production company, they would turn it down flat,' he said. Seeing the film's new 4K restoration, which is currently on release, made me understand why that statement still holds. Based on Shohei Ooka's 1951 novel of the same name, the film, shot in stark black-and-white, strips away the heroism of the usual war movie and the moralism of the typical antiwar movie. (Indie veteran Shinya Tsukamoto made his own, similarly bleak version of 'Fires on the Plain,' released in 2014, but had to self-finance the film after unsuccessfully pitching the project to film companies.) 'Fires on the Plain' tracks the wanderings of a tubercular Japanese soldier, played by a rail-thin Eiji Funakoshi (who fainted on the set after starving himself for two months to prep for the role) as he struggles to survive during the Japanese army's retreat from the island of Leyte in the Philippines early in 1945. Weakened by disease and stumbling down hillsides with arms flapping, Pfc. Tamura looks both pathetic and faintly ridiculous. And when his squad leader berates him for returning to his unit after a short stay in a military hospital ('You're coughing blood ... you think your TB is cured?'), he gazes at him with doe-eyed resignation. But instead of being the film's designated victim, Tamura turns out to be wily and lucky enough to escape American bombs and bullets, while scouring the countryside for sustenance and comrades who can ease his fear of being alone in a hostile land, with sudden death a constant threat. There is a grandeur in the tall columns of smoke he sees in the distance — 'fires on the plain' that have been set by farmers — but he knows he can trust no one, including the Filipinos who regard him and other Japanese soldiers with everything from screaming terror to seething hatred. Scarier, finally, are the fellow soldiers Tamura encounters on the long trudge to Palompon, a seaside town from where they expect to evacuate. The first are three stragglers from another company, who look at him with wolfish eyes when he reveals he has salt, a scarce and desperately desired commodity, but after sharing it with them, he senses that they are trustworthy, at least for the moment. Not so with Nagamatsu (Mickey Curtis) and Yasuda (Osamu Takizawa), soldiers from his unit he meets farther along on the march. The former is even more emaciated than Tamura, while the latter is a glint-eyed older man with a bad leg who has the compliant Nagamatsu trade Yasuda's carefully guarded tobacco for food and hunt for what both men call 'monkey meat.' Tamura begins to suspect that they see him as their next 'monkey.' Working from a script written by his wife, Natto Wada, Ichikawa filmed this story with touches of his trademark dark humor and visual beauty, but 'Fires on the Plain' depicts Tamura's journey with a reality-grounded detail and primal psychological depth that makes it a one-of-a-kind feature in his lengthy filmography. More than six decades after its release, the film still incites compulsive viewing, like dreaming of one of the oldest scenarios of our species — kill or be eaten — with a modern war supplying the subtext and a master director the ever-haunting imagery. But it is Funakoshi's eyes, with their softness that can instantly harden into rightful suspicion, that have stayed with me the longest.
NHK
20 hours ago
- NHK
Keeping cool in the monkey pool
To beat the summer heat, a monkey-only pool has opened at Takasakiyama zoo in Oita. Visitors can watch Japanese macaques cooling off — with baby monkeys stealing the show. Staff hope the sight brings a little relief to humans, too.
