The Outsiders (Mori to Mizuumi no Matsuri, 1958)
Japanâs sparsely inhabited northern island of Hokkaido is a land of rugged, majestic landscapes with an icy winter climate. Its frontier status has made it a natural setting for such man-against-the-elements action movies as the Kurosawa Akira-scripted
Jakoman and Tetsu (1949), in which a heroic member of a fishing outpost rallies his co-workers against the gang of a one-eyed outlaw.
Fukasaku Kinji remade the film in 1964 with Takakura Ken, the âClint Eastwood of Japanâ, replacing Mifune Toshiro as the titular Tetsu. Takakura then starred in the ten-film
Abashiri Prison series (1965-1967) as one of a group of yakuza jailbirds who continue their gang rivalries within prison walls while periodically making their escapes across the islandâs snowy hinterland.
Japanese cinema is typically viewed as a masculine domain. Until the 1980s, the studio systemâs structure presented a formidable barrier for women hoping to enter the industry in a creative capacity. Barring Japanâs first woman director, Sakane Tazuko, who made a single feature in 1936, the long-lost
Hatsu sugata, the few who chalked up a directing credit generally hailed from an acting background.
Only in the past decade have Japanese women filmmakers made real headway. Their swelling ranks and the acclaim, both domestic and international, for such names as Nishikawa Miwa (Dear Doctor, 2009;
Dreams for Sale, 2012), Tanada Yuki (
Moon & Cherry, 2004;
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The Japan National Tourism Organization announced that the number of foreign visitors to Japan plunged year on year by 87.1% in 2020, to a total of 4,115,900. This is the lowest number since 1998, when 4.1 million international visitors came to Japan, and far lower than the number in 2011, when numbers slumped to 6.2 million in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake.
The number of annual foreign visitors had risen for seven consecutive years from 2013, setting an all-time record of 31.9 million in 2019. The government had set a target of 40 million annual visitors by 2020, the year when the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics were to have been held. But the spread of COVID-19 infections in 2020 led to the tightening of entry to Japan in February, and from April the country was essentially closed to foreign visitors. As a result, the number of foreign visitors last year was only one-tenth of the government’s target.
Klook Completes US$200M in Additional Funding
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New capital a confidence boost for Klook as the leading travel technology player in the region
Funds to accelerate the digital transformation of merchants with the development and roll-out of Klook-powered merchant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions
HONG KONG, Jan. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire/ Klook, a world-leading travel and leisure booking platform, today announced that it has raised US$200 million in additional funding. The Series E round was led by Aspex Management, an investment fund focused on Asia Pacific, in addition to other new investors. Sequoia Capital China, Softbank Vision Fund 1, Matrix Partners China, and Boyu Capital, who are existing investors, also participated in this round of funding.