ryuganji: film news from japan

Ryuganji exists to help break Japanese film news that hasn’t already appeared in English, as well as to help point out other current material elsewhere on the net.

It began without much forethought back in February of 2006 as a way of keeping track of information I posted to various forums and email discussion lists. I started out with the low maintenance, low hassle Simple PHP Blog, and the old site is still visible here. Now I’m using Wordpress, which is a bit trickier to figure out but a lot more versatile. The design is optimised for Firefox, so if you’re using a different browser, I’m sorry if it looks like the internet equivalent of the Devilman movie.

There’s no commercial imperative driving me to write, so this site will remain ad-free. Then again it’s really just a big free plug for the Japanese film industry, so if some generous studio head wants to remunerate me for cranking out a bunch of propaganda about their latest crappy manga adaptation, my Paypal account is ready and willing. I’m also open to writing and translation work offers, so interested parties can contact me here.

This blog has one author - me - and although I’m not looking to bring in other writers, submissions of news, links or other info of interest to fans of Japanese cinema are warmly welcomed (and you will be properly attributed). Go ahead and link to or quote from any of this site’s articles (it’s not as if I can do anything to stop you anyway) - just do the standup thing and make sure you mention you got it from Ryuganji.

If you’re wondering where I got the name from, let’s just say it’s a homage to one of my favorite filmmakers, Ishii Sogo.

Just so you know: I’m from New Zealand, live in Japan and work two jobs, so I don’t make any promises about posting frequency. You can keep up with new additions to Ryuganji via the feed, which includes all posts and links to external articles. Check out the links section for other places to satiate your curiosity.

Any questions? Post them in the comments section below.

Maido ookini!

Don Brown
www.ryuganji.net