Cruel Story of Youth / Naked Youth (青春残酷物語)

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  • 青春残酷物語 (Cruel Story of Youth / Naked Youth)

8/15/26 (Sat)

Oshima Nagisa’s sensational 1960 sophomore effort proved a major hit for Shochiku, a far cry from its staid family fare at the time. The cruelty in the title is no joke. In line with the nihilistic Sun Tribe films that were popular at the time with all the usual images (motorboats, Hawaiian shirts, nightclubs, apathetic men, casual sex, abortions), but showing the seamy side of society rather than aimless middle class (though the main character did identify Beethoven from a few notes). Stylistically in line with New Wave French films with its jumpy camerawork and discordant images; Oshima specifically cites Breathless as an inspiration. This film sparked what is known as a Japanese New Wave, though he dismisses the phrase as a mere signal for sex and violence – which is certainly true in his case.

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Exit 8 (8番出口)

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  • 8番出口 (Exit 8)

7/8/26 (Wed)

A young man on a subway, listening blankly on his earphones to the incessantly repetitive “Bolero”, sees a guy lashing out at a woman whose baby is crying but does nothing to help her. He alights at a station and gets a call from his girlfriend, who tells him she’s pregnant. She is frightened and trying to decide whether to abort it. He tells her that he’ll go right away to the hospital.

Heading for Exit 8, he becomes caught in an endless loop of corridors. A sign informs him that he can only go forward if there are no anomalies – but it’s up to him to decide what is and isn’t an anomaly. If he fails, he will be sent back to the start, where he must go through the process again.

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The Truth

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  • The Truth

6/27/26 (Sat), West End

The truth can be a slippery thing in Florian Zeller’s ever-adroit hands, nowhere more hilariously as in this four-person farce of betrayal, cross-betrayal, suspicion, guilt, and lies of little-white and other varieties. Zeller is at the top of his game in this early (2016) work, translated expertly as always by Christopher Hampton.

A man has been having an affair with his best friend’s wife, unbeknownst to either his own wife or his friend – or so he believes. The lies he tells to hide his misbehavior, the lies others tell to spare each other’s feelings, the lies we tell to fool ourselves – all come crashing down as one storyline undercuts the previous one right until the final seconds.

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Springwood

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  • Springwood

6/27/26 (Sat), London

An historical drama by Richard Nelson reimagining the visit of newly crowned King George IV and his wife to FDR’s home in upstate New York in 1938. That, the first US visit ever by a British monarch, was intended as an extension of the king’s coronation tour to Canada, but as war loomed in Europe, he was tasked with winning FDR’s sympathy for England’s cause – a delicate task he was neither mentally nor diplomatically prepared for.

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Grace Pervades

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  • Grace Pervades

6/25/26 (Thurs), West End

There was little fanfare over David Hare’s latest show despite the presence of Ralph Fiennes (who I last saw years ago on a train in Harajuku just an hour before his Coriolanus in Akasaka). The reviews were more respectful than inspiring, and the clumsy title was no help. But the timing worked for me, so I went for it.

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Cyrano (West End)

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  • Cyrano

6/24/26 (Wed), West End

This is one of my favorite plays of all time and features one of my favorite actors, Adrian Lester, so it was high on my list of shows to see on this trip. Sadly it fell victim to all the bad habits that London theater has fallen into. I had assumed when Lester was announced that Cyrano’s issue would be not with his nose but with his black skin. That is, I could imagine lily-white France being scandalized by a black soldier at the time à la Othello, and Cyrano, for all his bluster, being super self-conscious about his skin, convinced that Roxanne could never accept him as he is. That would have been a trenchant comment on our times and given the show an entirely new relevance. The scene where the rude man comments unwisely on Cyrano’s nose could have been transformed into something more shocking – and imagine the quips that Cyrano could have come up with. (Peter Dinklage did something similar in the role with his diminutive size.)

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The Price

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  • The Price

6/14/26 (Sun), London

I caught this acclaimed London revival of Arthur Miller’s 1967 work on its final day. Victor, who gave up his scientist dreams to take care of his late father, is selling off the father’s furniture. The father was once wealthy, employing chauffeurs and rowing, but fell into hard times with the Depression and never recovered. Their prior wealth is symbolized by a large harp that hovers in the back, which their long-gone mother used to play. A furniture broker, an elderly Jewish man from the old country fittingly named Solomon, agrees to buy the entire lot for a fixed price. Just as he is about to pay Victor, the latter’s estranged younger brother Walter enters. Walter abandoned the father and family and became a successful doctor. He has not seen his elder brother in 18 years. Fireworks emerge as the brothers challenge each other over the paths that they have taken, the lies that have sustained them – and the price that each has paid.

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Hana Yori Tango (花よりタンゴ)

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  • 花よりタンゴ (Hana Yori Tango)

5/26/26 (Tues)

The late Inoue Hisashi’s 1987 comedy was being performed by his theater group Komatsuza for the first time in 22 years. It’s another of his plays obliquely criticizing events surrounding the war. He said in a program note that for all the patriotic cheering from all sides during the war, he could find no one afterwards who would admit responsibility for it. The title is a pun on the Japanese idiom hana yori dango (rice cakes before flowers), that is, prioritizing the practical over the aesthetic. The substitution of tango for dango rice cakes suggests that he sees culture or spirit as necessary sustenance to make it through the war-driven devastation.

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Samurai Vengeance (木挽町のあだ打ち)

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  • 木挽町のあだ打ち (Samurai Vengeance)

8/21/26 (Fri)

The Japanese title of Minamoto Takashi’s entertaining period flick, based on a best-selling book, translates to Revenge at Kobikicho, referring to a former district that boasted one of Edo’s three great Kabuki theaters, the Moritaza (near today’s Kabukiza). I was taken by the odd spelling of the word “revenge” in the title, only later realizing its significance. The English title as usual throws in “samurai” for marketing purposes, but the only real samurai swordfight in the film is not what it seems. This is, in fact, less a warrior bloodfest than a comedy-mystery.

The setting is 1810. A woman coming out of a crowded performance at the Moritaza – playing, as it happens, the ultimate vendetta drama Chushingura (The 47 Ronin) – is suddenly approached in the snowy streets by a ruffian. The “woman” turns out to be a samurai, Kikunosuke, in disguise, and the ruffian, Sakubei, is the one who killed the man’s father back in rural Mino (today’s Gifu). Kikunosuke throws off his bright red kimono to reveal a warrior’s outfit and sword underneath. People quickly gather to watch a real-life revenge drama, and the theater obliges by turning its spotlights (did those exist in 1810??) onto the fighters. After a vigorous battle, Kikunosuke emerges with the attacker’s head and declares loudly that he has achieved his vendetta. It seems odd that the hunted would seek out his hunter or that they would coincidentally meet on the streets in faraway Edo, especially given Kikunosuke’s disguise. But that doesn’t seem to occur to anyone amid all the excitement. When this scene repeats itself at the end of the film, we see it in a whole new light (shades of One Cut of the Dead).

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Noh: Sugamozuka: The Tidings of Spring (巣鴨塚 ハルの便り)

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  • Noh: 巣鴨塚 ハルの便り (Sugamozuka: The Tidings of Spring)

8/15/26 (Sat)

Photographer/artist Sugimoto Hiroshi commissioned this provocative Noh piece, which debuted last year, about Itagaki Seishiro, a general in the Imperial Japanese Army who oversaw the occupation of Manchuria and its conversion to a puppet state. He was later convicted of war crimes and executed as a Class A criminal at Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison. The performance is being held on the 81st anniversary of the war’s end.

Sugimoto had some time ago discovered an extended poem written impressively in ancient Chinese by Itagaki during his postwar imprisonment that provided an insight into his motivation and actions, with a healthy dose of self-justification. Itagaki contends that Japan took over Manchuria in order to save it from the corrupt Chinese government, which was bringing the people only misery. He aimed to build a US-type federation under his ideal of Five Races Under One Union (五族共和) in which the region’s five major ethnic groups (Manchus, Han Chinese, Japanese, Mongols, Koreans) could live in harmony. That is, the Japanese colonization of the region and establishment of Manchukuo was an act of altruism on behalf of the Manchu people.

That may very well be true, but Lenin and Mao could make the same claim on behalf of their actions. Continue reading →