5/5/22 (Thurs)
Naruse Mikio’s 1951 film is the first of his six adaptations of novels by Hayashi Fumiko (e.g., Late Chrysanthemums, A Wanderer’s Notebook), an author known for her bleak female-centered works. This novel was actually an unfinished work, but Naruse ably fills in the gaps. The film is said to have launched or revived the shomingeki genre that concentrated on the lives of the common people.
4/30/22 (Sat)
Imai Tadashi’s 1950 film, inspired by a French novel, is a silly piece of sentimental fluff with a slight antiwar twinge. It was apparently a big commercial hit in its day and won the first Blue Ribbon Award as Best Film (Imai’s works won the top prize five times in the award’s first ten years) along with the Kinejun and Mainichi Awards. History has come down in favor of its rival Rashomon, and it is known now primarily for a romantic scene in which the man, loathe to leave his lover’s home, runs back and kisses her passionately from the other side of a window. A favorite of both audiences and critics, Imai is often called the forgotten director in the shadow of Kurosawa, Ozu and other contemporaries, and I did enjoy his Kiku and Isamu. So, having found this online, I figured it would be worth a watch.
It wasn’t. Continue reading
10/17/21 (Sun), Umewaka Noh Theater (Tokyo)
Talk about determination. Ono no Komachi, the legendary beauty, is stalked by a nobleman not just to the grave but beyond. Continue reading
3/20/22 (Sun), Umewaka Noh Theater
The shows today were both cerebral Buddhist-inflected pieces appealing more to Noh lovers than general audiences. The theater was limited to 50% capacity and didn’t even manage to fill that, a sharp contrast with the packed house at the Kanze Noh Theater a week earlier even allowing for Kanze’s more audience-friendly program. I wonder if the undue precautions at some locations actually make audiences more fearful and deter them from coming.
3/16/22 (Wed)
Imamura Shohei’s directorial debut of 1958 is a rather silly comedy about a traveling theater group. Not much of the later provocative Imamura on view here, though he does concentrate on the lower classes in a struggling troupe that mixes popularized versions of classical pieces like Chushingura with titillating girlie shows to bring in unsophisticated rural audiences. In a sign of the future Imamura, it features numerous loud outbursts among the actors and crowds, leering audience members and peeping Toms, pilfering of money and geese, a reference to eating dogs, actors picking their noses, and an impressively vicious catfight between two actresses, among other delights. But this was all in a broadly comic mood.
3/5/22 (Sat)
Imamura Shohei’s hard-hitting 1979 film is based on the case of an actual serial killer in Japan active in 1964 just before the Olympics. The title is taken from Deuteronomy, where it is God who insists on that honor (“Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, says the Lord”). But it is not clear here what the main character is taking vengeance against. Continue reading
3/22/22 (Tues)
Spirited Away, the worldwide anime hit, has been retooled as a major stage show by British director John Caird of Les Mis fame. It’s always a thorny business bringing films to the stage since few producers have the creativity or guts to stray too far from familiar material, as way too many Broadway duds have proven in recent years. This one was particularly tricky since they’re dealing with an animated feature involving supernatural elements. Anime/manga has been a rich vein for producers here to mine, such as the hugely successful Kabuki version of the One Piece epic and a musical rendering of video game phenomenon Token Ranbu. It is now its own genre, known in local parlance as 2.5D shows. But Spirited Away is based not on a series but on a single highly popular film – it reigned for years as Japan’s biggest-selling movie by far of any genre (until eclipsed by another anime last year) – with iconic characters and scenes that its legions of fans will be eagerly awaiting. The trick for a long-running success is how to balance between lovers of the film and audiences less familiar with the material if at all.
That’s not necessarily a problem in Tokyo: the show is only being done here for four weeks (followed by a national tour) and boasts familiar stars. That ensures a full house for the brief run – tickets were quickly snatched up – and the high-for-Tokyo ticket price of ¥14,500 should guarantee a profit despite the elaborate staging (they were going for over 10 times that price on online resale sites). Given the familiarity of the movie and the family-friendly material, I’m at a loss why they didn’t book this for a longer run, especially with the money they’ve put into it. I have to assume they’re aiming for a future production in London or New York considering the creative staff – in addition to director/adaptor Caird, non-Japanese handled the music arrangement, orchestrations, art design and puppetry design (in the land of classic puppet theater). That would make this a trial run of sorts. The Japanese theater world works in strange and mysterious ways.
3/13/22 (Sun), Kanze Noh Theater (Ginza)
The pairing of these two lively crowd-pleasers was almost completely sold out despite the state of semi-emergency in Tokyo at present. The only reminder of the fading pandemic was the ubiquitous masks, though I noticed a lot of exposed noses, which I’m going to take as progress. Continue reading
2/7/21 (Sun)
Scattered Clouds (also known as Two in the Shadow), Naruse’s last film, is a 1967 drama starring Hayama Yuzo and Tsukasa Yoko set in then-contemporary Tokyo. Continue reading
1/27/21 (Tues)
Oshima Nagisa’s fictional 1999 film conjures up a story of nanshoku (male-on-male sex) in the famed Shinsengumi samurai corps in 1865, just three years before the collapse of the shogunate. A certain amount of fooling around can be expected among samurai given the not-unknown phenomenon throughout Japanese history of male-on-male sex (not exactly homosexuality) as documented in novels, popular Kabuki plays and shunga prints. Within the Shinsengumi, at least as portrayed here, boy love was looked down upon not because of morals but from concerns over discipline and was basically ignored if held in check. The film is also known in English as Taboo, but something like Forbidden would be more accurate; gohatto literally means “against the law” or in this case “against the samurai code”. Putting historical figures like Hijikata Toshizo and Kondo Isami in this context seems unfair to their memories, but I guess that’s Hollywood (well, the Japanese equivalent).
2/20/21 (Sat)
A superior film. Ozu’s 1935 work is his last surviving silent film, made well into the sound era. The jobless Kihachi (a wonderful Sakamoto Takeshi) wanders around a barren landscape with his two young sons looking for work, often having to choose between dinner and shelter. The kids help out by catching dogs and turning them into the pound for a small reward. Kihachi eventually runs into an old friend (Iida Choko, also terrific) who helps find him a job. Kihachi then runs into a woman he had met at the shelter, who has a young daughter. He starts falling for the woman and helping as best he can. When the daughter becomes sick, he turns to stealing to help. In the end, he asks the old friend to take care of the children as he prepares to turn himself in. The friend is devastated at not lending him money earlier, not realizing his noble intentions. We see him at the end walking in the empty landscape, presumably toward the police.
1/16/21 (Sat)
Naruse’s bleak 1954 film about failed marriages, based on Kawabata’s novel. Continue reading
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