A year of zen practice at Antaiji Temple in Japan. Many non-Japanese gather at this Soto school zen temple to do zazen 1,800 hours per year and live the zen ideal of self-sufficiency.
Himself
0.0A documentary film that includes footage of past Olympics held in different countries with an particular emphasis on the activities and successes of Japanese athletes and how they are currently (circa 1963) improving themselves.
5.6A Zen priest in San Francisco and cookbook author use Zen Buddhism and cooking to relate to everyday life.
Street art, creativity and revolution collide in this beautifully shot film about art’s ability to create change. The story opens on the politically charged Thailand/Burma border at the first school teaching street art as a form of non-violent struggle. The film follows two young girls (Romi & Yi-Yi) who have escaped 50 years of civil war in Burma to pursue an arts education in Thailand. Under the threat of imprisonment and torture, the girls use spray paint and stencils to create images in public spaces to let people know the truth behind Burma's transition toward "artificial democracy." Eighty-two hundred miles away, artist Shepard Fairey is painting a 30’ mural of a Burmese monk for the same reasons and in support of the students' struggle in Burma. As these stories are inter-cut, the film connects these seemingly unrelated characters around the concept of using art as a weapon for change.
0.0Megumi Odaka (小高恵美) idol VHS tape, Megumi the Campaign - Idol Roke Zenkoku Jyuudan, 1989. She is best known for the role of Miki Saegusa in six Godzilla films from 1989 to 1995.
10.0Buddhist monks open up about the joys and challenges of living out the precepts of the Buddha as a full-time vocation. Controversies swirling within modern monastic Buddhism are examined, from celibacy and the role of women to racism and concerns about the environment.
6.7A journey into the unique, often bizarre, world of Japanese cat culture. Cat themed cafes, bars, temples, cat islands, cats with human jobs, cat friendly businesses, and the origins of the iconic beckoning cat statue.
0.0Following in the footsteps of his father, Folco Felzani embarks on an epic journey on foot in search of Mustang, the last lost kingdom, in northern Nepal. The story of a king without a kingdom. The adventure of a son without a father.
0.0This is the story of Kaori Kawabuchi, a samurai sword performer, singer and motion capture actor. An inspiring woman keeping alive ancient traditions and spirituality in modern Japan.
0.0In 1981, a Buddhist monk teaching at the University of Madison, Wisconsin, made the bold request of the Dalai Lama to come and perform a rare ritual, never before done outside of India or Tibet: the Kalachakra, among the highest of the Buddhist tantric teachings. In just a few months, with a team of dedicated students, and cameras rolling, they constructed a temple and organized an event for over a thousand spiritual seekers, in a cornfield outside Madison. The incredible footage was tucked away in the Smithsonian vaults, until now. What unfolds is the story of a powerful ritual, its impact on the people that made it happen, and the meaning behind this ancient initiation.
9.0By mid-1945, Hitler is dead and the war has ended in Europe. Halfway around the world, however, the fighting is still going strong on a small island in the Pacific. Okinawa was the site of the last battle of the last great war of the 20th century, with a casualty rate in the tens of thousands. Through it all, military cameramen risked their lives to film the conflict, from brutal land combat to fierce kamikaze attacks at sea. See the footage they captured and experience this intense battle the way the soldiers saw it -- in color.
1.0This film is about Japanese women, escape, glamour and dreams. The Takarazuka Revue is an enormously successful spectacular where the all-women cast create fantasies of erotic love and sensitive men. It is also a world for young girls desperate to do something different with their lives. In return for living a highly disciplined and reclusive existence, they will be adored and envied by many thousands of Japanese women. They will look, act and behave like young men while having no real men in their lives. Dream Girls explores the nature of sexual identity and the contradictory tensions that face young women in Japan today.
8.0Using never-before-seen footage, Japan's War In Colour tells a previously untold story. It recounts the history of the Second World War from a Japanese perspective, combining original colour film with letters and diaries written by Japanese people. It tells the story of a nation at war from the diverse perspectives of those who lived through it: the leaders and the ordinary people, the oppressors and the victims, the guilty and the innocent. Until recently, it was believed that no colour film of Japan existed prior to 1945. But specialist research has now unearthed a remarkable colour record from as early as the 1930s. For eight years the Japanese fought what they believed was a Holy War that became a fight to the death. Japan's War In Colour shows how militarism took hold of the Japanese people; describes why Japan felt compelled to attack the West; explains what drove the Japanese to resist the Allies for so long; and, finally, reveals how they dealt with the shame of defeat.
0.0This first installment of The Little Travelers set in Japan is a true pearl in the sea of children s media! It is filled with tender moments between the two sisters, Chantel and Nakia, and their new Japanese friends that demonstrate to viewers, young and old, how cultural understanding can flourish and ideally move us closer to world peace. What an incredible job the film does in sharing the very different customs, foods, and living arrangements. I wanted to live in Japan with the girls! There are moments in the video that I laughed with pure delight when Nakia and Chantel tried to walk in their wooden sandals or fell asleep on the train. There were equally exquisite moments when the sisters played among the blossoming cherry trees or visited the tranquil religious shrines. I can t wait to see where the girls visit next. --Patti Connolly, Educator
10.0Made in Japan, Last Room is both fiction and documentary. The occupants of the love-hotels and capsule-hotels tell their own intimate, dreamlike stories, interspersed with journeys through the archipelago's landscapes. Soon, these personal stories resonate with a collective history: that of Gunkanjima, the abandoned ghost island of Nagasaki, and then that of Japan as a whole.
8.0In the last fifty years the culture of Zen has spread far beyond Japan. Zen centers and zen retreats have sprung up throughout America and Europe. When Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen, brought Zen to Japan from China 800 years ago, it quickly took root and became an integral part of Japanese life. Yet what do we know about zen practice in Japan today? The Zen Mind is a fascinating journey across Japan to explore zen in its natural habitat.
7.1What is peace? What is coexistence? And what are the basis for them? PEACE is a visual-essay-like observational documentary, which contemplates these questions by observing the daily lives of people and cats in Okayama city, Japan, where life and death, acceptance and rejection are intermingled.
0.0The protagonists of the film are the Zainichi Korean women living in Kawasaki. They were tossed about by the war, and after many trips to and fro across the sea in search of a place to live, they finally arrived in Kawasaki, where they have lived modestly and vigorously.
A modern geisha travels through Japan trying to find a job as entertainer, and ends up by finding love and a job as ama, a pearl diver.
0.0TOKYO Ainu features the Ainu, an indigenous people of Japan, living in Greater Tokyo (Tokyo and its surrounding areas), who are and actively in promoting their traditional culture in a metropolitan environment away from their traditional homeland, Hokkaido. Shedding a common assumption that all Ainu live in Hokkaido, the film captures the feelings, thoughts and aspirations of Ainu people that who try to follow the Ainu way no matter where they live.
7.9The Cove tells the amazing true story of how an elite team of individuals, films makers and free divers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate the hidden cove in Japan, shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The shocking discoveries were only the tip of the iceberg.
