Rainbow Hill (虹立つ丘, Toshio Otani, 1938)

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The cheerful life of a brother and sister in Hakone is disrupted by an unexpected revelation in Toshio Otani’s heartwarming drama, Rainbow Hill (虹立つ丘, Niji Tatsu Oka). In some ways, displaying an affluent quality of life perhaps unrealistic for the Japan of the late 30s, the theme is really family is and the importance of blood relations as one family is broken so another can be restored in a moment of healing and reconciliation with the traumatic past.

Shot predominantly on location at the luxury Gora Hotel in Hakone, the film revolves around a young girl, Yuri (Hideko Takamine), who works in the hotel’s shop while her bother Yatahachi (Akira Kishii) is also works at the hotel as a porter. The pair are incredibly close and would do anything for each other, though Yatahachi is also forced to conduct a romance somewhat clandestinely. He generally waits for Yuri to go to sleep before meeting his girlfriend, Fuji (Chizuko Kanda), who works in a local amusement centre. Yuri, however, is getting older and doesn’t always want to go to sleep early, which is the first note of discordance in their relationship in implying that Yatahachi’s childcare responsibilities stand in the way of marriage. Fuji, however, is also very fond of Yuri and sometimes looks after her when Yatahachi is not able to. 

The second note of discordance is when Yatahachi is dismissed from the hotel for having deserted his post after hearing that Yuri has fallen off a cliff and running off to save her. Though this is quite a valid reason for abruptly leaving work without permission, Yatahachi does not explain to his boss but only accepts his fate stocially while accepting that it was wrong of him to leave and that his actions caused the hotel reputational harm. Important guests were due from Manchuria and were apparently forced to carry their own bags. 

Another hotel guest who has become friendly with Yuri, Mrs Hayakawa (Sachiko Murase), who is staying at the hotel to recover from an illness, complains to the manager and gets Yatahachi reinstated with a promotion. Frequent guests the Hayakawas have some clout at the hotel, as perhaps do their friends the Mizutanis whose bag Yatahachi ends up tearing when asked to open it after the little boy loses his key. The film doesn’t really draw much of a contrast between the worlds of the people who stay in this luxury hotel and those who work in it, save that Yuri is full of tales of Mrs Hayakawa’s Western-style Tokyo home where she apparently has two dogs the size of Yatahachi. The pair, by contrast, live in quite a nice, if humble, traditional home and appear to have a good standard of life. 

Yuri is, however, somewhat drawn to Mrs Hayakawa who seems to fulfil the missing maternal role in her life by giving her gifts and taking her on outings. It’s not until Mrs Hayakawa visits her home and sees a familiar doll that she begins to suspect she could be the daughter from whom she was separated during the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923. The question then becomes whether it is right to disclose Yuri’s true identity and take her away from the brother with whom she has been so close. In another sign of his goodness, Yatahachi presumably found Yuri amid the chaos. Lacking any means of identifying her and believing that her parents were likely dead, he raised her himself as his sister. Though sensitive to the situation, the Hayakawas want her back. With them Yuri would have more opportunities and a better quality of life as a wealthy young woman in the capital, but it would also break Yuri and Yatahachi’s hearts. That Yuri agrees to go with them while Yatahachi accepts he must let her go to her biological parents hints at the importance of bloodlines and the necessity of familial restoration that acts as a means of laying the traumatic event of the earthquake to rest. Mrs Hayakawa’s malady is cured on having found her missing daughter, though she still vows to return to the hotel in the spring so Yuri and Yatahachi can be reunited. This also paves the way for a marriage between Fuji and Yatahachi as the pair look forward to welcoming Yuri’s return together.

An early leading role for Takamine, the film also features cameos from a series of other Toho stars as the hikers who rescue Yuri after she falls off the cliff, while Akira Kishii performs a few songs including a Japanese version of Home on the Range enhancing the film’s international feeling. It is perhaps unexpectedly breezy for the time period and basks in the lives of the super rich at a time when others are struggling to get by, but nevertheless offers a bittersweet and heartwarming tale of familial reconciliation and renewed hope for the future.

Mysterious Thirteen Nights: Chapter 2 – The Dish Mansion at Hell’s Bancho (怪奇十三夜 第二回 番町皿屋敷, Teruo Ishii, 1971)

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Class differences and the arbitrary codes of the samurai society come between a couple in love in Teruo Ishii’s take on the classic ghost story The Dish Mansion at Hell’s Bancho (怪奇十三夜 第二回 番町皿屋敷, Kaiki Jusan Ya Bancho Sarayashiki). Produced as part of the Mysterious Thirteen Nights TV series, this version of the tale focuses more on love across the class divide and general unfairness of the world around the lovers rather than the lord’s rashness and unforgiving cruelty.

At least, the real issue is that Hatamoto Harima has refused an offer of marriage from the influential Abe family because he is still clinging to the impossible idea of marrying Okiku, a young woman working as a maid at the estate. As she says, the class difference between them is too great. No matter how much Harima may say that they are the same and all that matters is that they love each other, he is not actually free to make this decision. Even if he wanted to go so far as to renounce his samurai status, his family would likely not allow it and use any means possible to stop him, including murder.

What they do instead is frame Okiku for breaking one of a set of precious plates gifted to the family by Ieyasu after the battle of Sekigahara. Okiku counts the plates as instructed, only to realise that there is one missing. Two of the other servants say she broke it, though Okiku swears she has no knowledge of whatever happened to the plate. Harima is shaken, believing the testimony of the two servants who were particularly close to him, yet thinking that Okiku has done this deliberately as a means of reducing the status of the Aoyama family and thereby dissolving the class difference between them so they can be together.

He does not seem to mind this kind of manipulation and even appears grateful that Okiku has forced his hand, planning to give up his status to be with her. When his scheming retainer Jinnai, however, tells him that it was all a trick Okiku has played to test his affections because she doesn’t really trust him, Harima loses his temper at this apparent act of betrayal. Despite saying that, at the end of the day, it’s a just plate and he’s not the sort of person who would let someone die over it, Harima ends up killing Okiku in a fit of range. Her body falls into the nearby well where she is said to have broken the plate. 

The fact is that this is a plot put in motion to force Harima into accepting the proposal from Abe for the good of the clan who fear refusing him will only ensure his rage. Okiku had become an obstacle to Harima’s marriage in drawing him away from his duty to the clan in favour of his personal feelings, so they removed her by trying to split the couple up. As a member of the samurai society, Harima is actually less than fishmonger’s sister to decide his romantic destiny. Even Okiku’s brother Iwakichi extends a degree of understanding to Harima on learning that he has killed his sister after telling him that Okiku meant to leave the castle because she too thought he would be happier with Abe’s daughter and no longer wished to stand in his way. Iwakichi understands that it was the samurai world that wielded the sword that killed Okiku, telling Harima only that he should live in Okiku’s memory as this is doubtless what she would have wanted.

Harima, however, goes on a rampage avenging her death, killing off most of the retainers that betrayed him, though he is not driven “mad” by Okiku’s vengeful spirit as in many similar films but makes a righteous decision to attack the corrupt samurai society. Even so, the film ends in a climatic sword fight taking place during a thunderstorm in which Okiku’s ghost appears among the men Harima is trying to kill. Ishii’s use of slow motion and surreal imagery such as the plates bleeding as Harima destroys them further add to a sense of supernatural dread, The conclusion then takes on a poetic quality as Okiku and Harima become a pair of butterflies, suggesting that their love was only possible outside of the human world free from the barriers of social class. That this classless society has not quite come about suggests that the film is also talking to a contemporary audience facing similar issues during the era of high prosperity while leaning in to a tragic tale of frustrated romance rather than condemning the hero’s rashness or the inherent cruelty of samurai society outside of its obsession with status.

The Fang in the Hole (穴の牙, Seijun Suzuki, 1979)

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After killing a suspect in a shootout at a bar, a policeman finds himself haunted by the dead man’s vengeful spirit in Seijun Suzuki’s made for TV noir Fang in the Hole (穴の牙, Ana no Kiba), adapted from a story by Takao Tsuchiya and scripted by Atsushi Yamatoya who also wrote Branded to Kill. Undergoing a process of transformation, a once earnest cop slowly takes on the persona of the man he killed while driven out of his mind by his ironic transgression.

Shida (Yoshio Harada) is a sleazy yakuza wanted for killing his boss. With his face splashed across the papers, he takes refuge in a bar with an old girlfriend, but for whatever reason she declines his requests stay with him. In any case, the bar’s owner (Yasuyo Matsumura) contacts police detective Togura (Makoto Fujita), also a regular of the bar, who arrives to arrest Shida. Shida, however, draws a gun on Togura who shoots him in the head leading him to become impaled on a nearby stained glass window, spraying blood all over har hostess Miyuki (Junko Inagawa).

There may be a central irony in the idea of a policeman shooting a suspect, not least because it makes him the same as Shida. It’s this kind of transgression that hangs over Togura as he struggles to deal with the aftermath of having killed a man and is haunted by Shida’s vengeful spirit. Suzuki bathes the entire film in an eerie green that lends it a supernatural air, as if Togura had entered a slightly different world as he falls deeper into this barbed hole that leads all the way to hell. He slowly seems to take on some of Shida’s characteristics, becoming fixated on Miyuki and later being caught with a series of erotic photos that make him seem sleazy and exploitative. Both Miyuki and the bar owner paint him as a dirty cop and sex pest misusing his authority to intimidate and exploit.

Yet to begin with, Togura had seemed to be an ordinary family man, reminding Miyuki that he doesn’t want to do anything to jeopardise his career and pension. He calls his wife from the bar and lies that he’s working late so likely won’t be home, but perhaps there’s something in Togura that also resents his ordered life and is looking for an escape from conventionality. The more he tries to beat Shida’s curse, the deeper he falls into the trap that’s been set for him only to exclaim that he’s climbed out of Shida’s hole at the very moment of his downfall.

Togura’s transformation is completed when he considers taking the missing money from a case he’s been investigating rather than reporting its whereabouts having already been kicked out of the police force. Losing the cigarette lighter with his name engraved on it that had been given to him by sympathetic colleagues is symbolic of a less literal kind of lost identity. He comes to believe that it fell into the hole with the bodies of the dead criminals and that he will now be implicated in their deaths. The conclusion, however, hints at cosmic irony as the film’s title takes on a new meaning in the presence of a neighbour’s magpie dog.

Nevertheless, whether the haunting is real or a manifestation Togura’s guilt and suppressed desires, Suzuki’s eerie ghost effects take on a theatrical quality as the kuroko open the shoji behind Togura to expose a hellish space resembling a dank basement with water pouring from above while Shida’s ghost towers over a defeated Togura foreshadowing his eventual fate. The fact that the police never found the bullet that killed Shida which is said to have rattled around his brain and then exited from the same hole it entered by suggests that in reality it was always heading straight back at Togura. Surreal and haunting, Suzuki’s noirish tale has a stickiness about it as Togura sinks deeper into madness and discovers that he cannot, in fact, climb out of the pit of his moral transgressions.

Last Days of the Samurai (琴の爪, Hiromichi Horikawa, 1957)

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Adapted from the final part of Mayama Seika’s cycle of kabuki plays recounting the story of the 47 ronin, Hiromichi Horikawa’s Last Days of the Samurai (琴の爪, Koto no Tsume) follows the avengers in the days after the Ako raid as they await their fate knowing that they will likely be condemned to die. Essentially a romantic tragedy, the tale focuses on Jurozaemon Isogai (Senjaku Nakamura) whose samurai resolve seems a little too solid to the men’s leader, Kuronosuke Oishi (Matsumoto Hakuo I), who worries that it may be an all too vulnerable artifice. 

Jurozaemon is the most dispassionate or perhaps pessimistic of the men. Though the ronin are held in high regard by the people, the opening scenes see street vendors cashing in by renaming their products such things as “Loyal Retainer Rice Cakes” along with a young man being arrested for committing a similar act of revenge, and the men are assured that the shogunate is urgently searching for an excuse to pardon or exile them, Jurozaemon is certain they will die. He thinks their jailor, a kind man named Den’emon, was only trying to boost their morale and that the fact they have been sent flowers by the powers that be is coded message designed to let them know that their death sentences have already been issued.

While the other men express their anxieties, Jurozaemon alone remains stoic, which is what worries Oishi. He fears this may be an act of bravado on Jurozaemon’s part designed to mask his internal conflict and that, therefore, if they are called on to commit ritual suicide, his resolve may crumble and embarrass them all in death. It’s the question of Jurozaemon’s resolve that is at the heart of the play as it faces a challenge from a young woman, Omino (Chikage Ogi), to whom he had once been engaged. Jurozaemon laughs off the affair and tells Oishi that Omino means nothing to him. He says that he only agreed to marry her for strategic reasons in service of their revenge plot and points out that Oishi did the same with several women himself. Oishi does not deny this, but does admit that even if his primary reason for associating with them was not romance, he did enjoy their company. He wonders if Jurozaemon is playing down his feelings for this woman and if they will eventually cause him to waver in reluctance to leave this mortal life behind.

In one sense, neither Oishi nor Jurozaemon express regret for using women in this way, but, at the same time, the almost crazed devotion of koto-player Omino forces them to reckon with the ethical dimensions of their actions. Unable to understand why Jurozaemon suddenly walked out on her, she demands to be let into the compound to see him. It’s imperative to her that she find out what his true feelings really were, if he ever really loved her or was only using her for his mission of revenge. Unable to gain entry, she eventually convinces her father’s friend Den’emon (Ganjiro Nakamura) to sneak her in dressed as a boy, but unfortunately, her disguise fools no one. Nevertheless, on learning that they are to die, Oishi relents and has Jurozaemon brought to her, perhaps hoping to answer the question for himself. Jurozaemon, however, treats her coldly and says that he was only using her. It seems that he does this as a means of protecting her, hoping that she will go on to lead a long and happy life with someone else rather than join him in his ritual suicide. 

The question is therefore answered to the point of perfection in that Jurozaemon is unshaken in his samurai resolve while allowed the poetic expression of his human feelings in having kept one of Omino’s koto picks on his person until the moment of his death. Horikawa keeps the deaths off screen with only a retainer calling out the names of those who are to die, lending them an elegiac quality that restores their righteousness rather than condemning the absurdity of their deaths. One of Toho’s 60-minute “Diamond” B-movie series, the film mixes an ironic humour in the men’s consternation realising they don’t actually know how to commit seppuku because none of them have ever seen it, to the sudden emergence of 47 ronin merchandise, with the gentle melancholy of tragic romance and the effects of these men’s obsessive revenge on those they’ve left behind.

Tokyo Nightfall (トーキョーナイトフォール, Yuto Shimizu, 2026)

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Struggling to deal with his feelings of grief and guilt following his younger sister’s suicide, a young man finds himself at an end of the world party for those who want to end their lives in Yuto Shimizu’s melancholy urban drama Tokyo Nightfall (トーキョーナイトフォール). The Tokyo these young people inhabit is one of loneliness and futility in which there is no real hope for future and the past holds only painful memories. 

The bleakness might best be demonstrated by Anna’s (Utano Aoi) reply that her happiest moment in life was her parents’ divorce. The pair hint at a childhood marked by domestic violence, but any hope they might have had for a better future was cut short when Anna witnessed the suicide of a friend of her brother Amenashi (Iori Abe) who jumped from their eighth floor flat. This even seems to have changed Anna who relates that it wasn’t so much the horror or the blood but the fact that she saw a person turn into an object in real time. It made her feel as if being alive wasn’t all that important. 

Working a soulless job as a delivery driver where his clients are often similarly withdrawn or hostile, Amenashi blames himself for Anna’s death and wonders if there was something more he could have done to prevent it while drawn into the same kind of darkness she was. Amenashi’s friend, Hattori (Taiga Hironaka), even states that he is worried about him because his erratic behaviour reminds him of that of Anna shortly before she died. It seems that the party he goes to a gathering for those planning to end their lives where they can have one last night of fun before they go.

Amenashi goes to the party, but is followed by his friends Hattori and Nozu (Kosuke Tanaka) who don’t quite know what the party is, but just want to find their friend. While Nozu, otherwise a comic relief character giving lewd and disgusting answers to the questions put to him, Nozu too sets out to enjoy the night even bonding with a young woman, but is also drawn into the darkness of the evening and reconsiders his own life. Others in the club react with irritation, telling Hattori he should respect his friend’s decision and has no business being here. Haunted by visions of Anna, Amenashi remains uncertain not quite knowing whether to live or die. Another guest at the club tells him that he should forget about this cold world and stay with them, dragging him over to the side of death, while Hattori does him best to encourage him to live.

The video camera sequences play out as a kind of will as Anna, Hattori, and Nozu look back over their lives. Shimizu sometimes replays the same video only to let the conversation run to add more information that changes our impressions of what’s gone before. Speaking about their happiest and saddest moments, the friends paint a bleak picture of familial disconnection and loneliness but are saved only by their bond with each other as Hattori names his happiest moment as spending time on the roof with them.

The irony is that may not be enough. The ghost of Anna tells Amenashi that neither choice is wrong and the film is non-judgemental about the idea of suicide, perhaps feeling that those who make the deacon to leave should be allowed to do so while Amenishi wrestles with himself about the right thing to do. Others may have the decision taken away from them, but he does at least have the power to decide his own future. Hattori had told him that there may be no point in thinking. People are full of contradictions and don’t even understand themselves. “We are here for each other,” Nozu adds, offering the only possible source of salvation in a world that otherwise seems hopeless and devoid of possibility. As Amenashi cycles around the city, he looks on at young couples and is struck by a sense of urban disconnection and loneliness, but does perhaps begin to rediscover something of the will to live in the power of friendship and the memories of those he’s lost, if perhaps only too late.

Tokyo Nightfall screened as part of this year’s Raindance Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Unluckiest Girl in the World (Ryosuke Hayazaka, 2026)

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Sachiko Yamanoura feels herself to be the unluckiest person in the world. Her unluckiness may tens towards the superficial in that she has terrible luck with men and is the sort of person who always manages to step in gum and pick the tako-less takoyaki, but her perception of it seems to be impacting her quality of life This is partly because she has an odd conception of the world in which she believes that fate is decided by gacha capsule toys and therefore exercises very little agency over her life to the extent that she is continually unable to break up with her financially exploitative boyfriend who not only forgets her birthday, but chooses that particular day to bring another woman back to their flat.

It’s this romantic dimension that occupies most of Ryosuke Hayazaka 50-minute drama as Sachiko is abruptly hit by car and wakes up in an afterlife where a smartly suited version of herself invites her to choose a new lover for her next life from the Gacha Life machine. It apparently contains only men she is compatible with and therefore allows her to experience what it would actually be like to date them as a sort of advanced mental fantasy. What quickly becomes clear, however, is that none of these men are very good options for her and even the ones who looked good on the surface had hidden issues. She briefly considers dating her 45-year-old boss who did actually remember her birthday and otherwise appears to be kind and considerate, but it turns out that he is already married and fleeing domestic responsibility after his wife has given birth to their first child.

The real issue is that she’s still dealing with the fallout from the abrupt disappearance of her fiancé three years previously who left alone to travel the world the morning after proposing to her. When he suddenly reappears, she considers picking up where they left off but is continually insecure that he will suddenly disappear again. A popular influencer host, meanwhile, offers the opposite sort of comfort in making it his business to tell her what she wants to hear in soft and non-threatening tones while all the while planning to exploit her by recruiting her as a member of his cult-like pyramid scheme selling lucky water. A student she interviews at her company similarly claims that luck is his special skill, but when she considers dating him, she finds out that he’s overtly close with his mother and she’d need to pass an interview with her first if she wanted to be his girlfriend.

A series of speed dates provide a little more real life detail as Sachiko is subjected to the obviously married guy, the bully who insists no one else is going to want to date her, the guy who wants an open relationship, and the evangelistic polygamist who wants her join him in a new era. She certainly does seem to be unlucky in drawing all these men none of whom seem to be very viable prospects for a long-term relationship or even genuine romantic connection. But at the same time, it’s entrusting her life to luck that put Sachiko in this position. If she accepted that luck was something she could make for herself rather than continually accepting an unsatisfying status quo and basically allowing all these men to treat her badly, she might be able to find a degree of satisfaction in her life that may or may not include romance. 

Each of the rounds included the option to “pass”, but really Sachiko had that all along without really realising. Eventually she realises she doesn’t really need to pick any of these men and is free to stop drawing gacha rather than constantly waiting for the machine to spit out the winning ball. Shot in a 1:1 frame to mimic an Instagram reel, the film has a youthful, contemporary vibe informed by current dating mores and though it may present a rather bleak view of the prospect of romantic fulfilment in a chauvinistic society does at least allow the heroine to recover herself esteem and finally break up with her no-good boyfriend, refusing to let luck rule her life and finally taking control of her own destiny. 

The Unluckiest Girl in the World screened as part of this year’s Raindance Film Festival.

The Furious (火遮眼, Kenji Tanigaki, 2025)

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A gang of child traffickers kidnap the wrong man’s daughter in Kenji Tanigaki’s non-stop action thriller, The Furious (火遮眼). Once again set in a fictional South East Asian nation, the film sees two men team up against a world of corruption as the last line of defence rescuing kidnapped kids and returning them to their families but in return incurring the wrath of the powers that be who are all too happy go along with traffickers for the financial benefits it offers.

Wang Wei (Xie Miao) is living in South East Asia while seemingly unable to return to China for unclear reasons with the implication that he is some kind of fugitive. His young daughter Rainy (Yang Enyou), who lives with her grandmother on the Mainland, has been staying with him for the summer and constantly begs Wang either to return to China with her or let her stay here with him. Wang rejects both of these options while insisting that Rainy learn kung fu so that she is able to defend herself in his absence, though she claims that she actually hates it and sees her training only as a means of being able to spend time with her father. 

In some ways, and a little uncomfortably, Wang’s desire to train his daughter for independence is depicted as a rejection of his paternal responsibilities while Rainy rejects it in favour of a more traditional femininity, reusing to get her hair cut short out of fear her classmates will make fun of her. It’s after an argument about the haircut that Rainy is lured by the traffickers having stormed out of the hairdressers while the neighbourhood aunties stop Wang going after her, assuring him that she’s just at that age and needs some space to blow off steam. Rainy’s skills might not be enough to protect herself against the traffickers and may even in a way endanger her when she actively tries to fight adult men much bigger and stronger than herself, but do perhaps give her confidence to continue trying to escape.

Wang, meanwhile, tries to report Rainy’s kidnapping to the police but finds them entirely uninterested with the police chief actively telling him that his complaint is unimportant. Seeing a large wall full of missing child posters convinces him that if he wants his daughter back, he’ll have to get her himself. The film suffers from the decision to have a large part of the dialogue in English with several lines unconvincingly dubbed which is likely intended to play into the idea of this place being a melting pot of cultures and languages in addition to a hub for a crime network stretching across Asia with incidental dialogue from the trafficking gang offered in Tagalog. The implication is then that fail son-in-law Paklung was sent to the US for an international education but is unable to integrate into this gangster society, engaging in the taboo activity of child trafficking and causing his father-in-law to suggest making him the fall guy. Paklung, however, cannot accept this rejection and goes on a sociopathic rampage that ironically destroys the future he had dreaming of.

On the other hand, the resolution lies in a defiance of authority as an earnest police woman gains the courage to turn against the corrupt police chief partly thanks to rising public resentment generated by the disappearance of a reporter who was investigating the trafficking ring and live streams from her husband Navin who is trying to find her. Frustrated father son relationships become something of a theme with giant-baby like henchman Ho also seeking revenge for the death of his father, killed by Paklung’s arrow-wielding minion, Tak (Yayan Ruhian). 

The fact is that no had really cared much about these children because they were poor and were viewed as disposable, though it is surprising in a way that the gang wouldn’t just give up Rainy rather than go to the bother of dealing with Wang. Though he had refused to go back and help the old woman in the opening sequence, telling Rainy that it was none of their business, Wang’s sense of responsibly is reawakened by Rainy’s desire to go back and save the other kids while extending a hand of friendship towards the boy who tricked her in the knowledge that he didn’t really have much choice either and lacked the courage to resist because he was alone and was only trying to survive. The brutal and frenetic action sequences reflect the nihilism of the world of the world around them in which Wang and Navin face attacks from all sides and seemingly immortal opponents while mustering all of their strength and ingenuity to protect those closet to them.

Trailer

Heaven Sent (神様のくれた赤ん坊, Yoichi Maeda, 1979)

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A young couple facing a relationship crisis due to differing views about a potential pregnancy find their connection further strained when a stranger arrives with a little boy who may be the man’s biological son in Yoichi Maeda’s lighthearted road trip dramedy, Heaven Sent (神様のくれた赤ん坊, Kamisama no Kureta Akanbo). A remake of the 1957 film Shukin Ryoko directed by Noboru Nakamura, the film explores both the changing social dynamics of the era of high prosperity and a lack of resolution with the post-war past as the heroine searches for the lost hometown of her early childhood along with the realities of her late mother’s life that had remained unknown to her.

In an arrangement that was still a little unusual in the late 1970s, Sayoko (Kaori Momoi) and Shinsaku (Tsunehiko Watase) are a cohabiting couple who are not legally married. Sayoko is an aspiring actress, while Shinsaku has a part-time job as part of a cheer squad for public events as he tries to kickstart a career as a manga artist. A mini crisis has presented itself in the fact that Sayoko thinks she may be pregnant and wants to have the baby while Shinsaku very much does not, largely it seems because he is immature and irresponsible so does not want to be burdened with the expense and labour of caring for a child. All of which adds to the irony when a woman arrives at their door with a small boy, Shinichi, explaining that his mother has abandoned him to go abroad with another man leaving instructions that he should be delivered to his father who might be any one of the five men she has listed on her goodbye note. Shinsaku is only one who lives in Tokyo, so the woman has decided to leave the boy with him and have done with it.

There is something quite sad about the fact that no one really wants this little boy while seemingly trying to avoid the reality that he ultimately end up going into care if no one accepts responsibility for him. All of these men admit they slept with his mother, Akemi, who was a bar hostess, and therefore theoretically could have fathered her child, but all reject any sense of obligation or that the fact of their sleeping with her could have any kind of consequences. All of them seem to have reasons why now would be a particularly bad time for an illegitimate child to surface from being in the middle of a political election campaign to the news being broken on the day of their wedding to another woman. The soon to be married man even makes a series of misogynistic excuses within earshot of Shinichi to the effect that “no one would take a woman like that seriously,” and that as Akemi slept with pretty much everyone there’s no way to know if the child his. 

These misogynistic views are reflected in Sayoko’s simultaneous quest to rediscover her childhood hometown as she chases a memory she has of a shining pagoda, only to be told that her mother worked in a place called “Ono Castle” which turns out to have been a brothel. This is presumably how her mother saved the money to open the hair salon Sayoko grew up in and the reason that they moved away from that first hometown so that her mother could move on to a new life having escaped the stigma of being a former sex worker. Finding this out has quite a profound effect on Sayoko, not that she disapproves or is ashamed but comes to a new appreciation of her mother’s suffering that she knew nothing of before. While Shinsaku considers hiring a sex worker, the couple having temporarily broken up, Sayoko too is propositioned as a sex worker and ends up having a very strange experience with a young man desperate to lose his virginity. 

For much of the journey as they take Shinichi to visit each of his prospective fathers, the couple are on parallel paths only later coming together again when Shinsaku gives in and says Sayoko should have the baby even though by that point she has discovered is not pregnant after all. Part of the reason she wanted the baby was that her career had not been going well and a part of her wanted to try the traditional route of finding fulfilment within the domestic space as a wife and mother, reflecting the way these attitudes are still current, though Shinsaku is not in a position to support a wife and child financially and shows no signs of being willing to take on the responsibility of being the sole bread winner. Sayoko does, however, suggest she would rather leave him and raise the baby alone if he objects so strongly. Her mother made it work, after all, and the Japanese economy is at least in a much better place even if women’s rights have not improved all that much.  

Despite physically resembling the child and sharing some of the same mannerisms along with left-handedness (which he tries to correct), Shinsaku too rejects the idea of his paternity and is desperate to push the responsibility onto someone else while simultaneously extorting “child support” hush money from the potential fathers. Demonstrating once again how women are expected to deal with men’s irresponsibility, the last potential father has passed away and his widow has already adopted several children whom he may have fathered with other women. Yet as they travel together, the pair being to bond with Shinichi and go off the idea of parting with him, experiencing a moment of growing up themselves in envisioning a different kind of future and coming to a mutual decision about the idea of expanding their family.

The Lightning Sword (抜打ち鴉, Bin Kato, 1962)

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A wandering samurai comes to the rescue of a young boy in search of his father in a jidaigeki adventure from Bin Kato, The Lightning Sword (抜打ち鴉, Nukiuchi Garasu). Starring Tomisaburo Wakayama in an early leading role still billed as Kenzaburo Jo, the film takes place in a slightly liminal space following those who have already fallen from the samurai world, some of whom may be able to return and others not. They are all, however, in search of something from absent fathers to runaway sisters and lost loves.

Shinjiro is on the road looking for the man for ran off with his younger sister Fumie with whom he has now lost touch, Tokunosuke (Shigeru Amachi). Unbeknownst to him, they cross paths at a roadside food stall, but Shinjiro is distracted by the presence of a little boy no more than seven or eight apparently travelling alone in search of his father now that his mother has died. On hearing this story, another man, Takuro, gets up so abruptly he leaves his sweets behind. Fearing that this man plans to rob the boy, Shinjiro goes after him and the three of them ending up going in search of Takichi’s father together.

Takuro’s intention to rob a small boy of all the money he has in the world, which admittedly seems to be quite a lot as his mother sewed koban into his kimono before she died, bears out the venality and cruelty of this rather cut-throat world. Nevertheless, Takuro is not all bad despite swiping Shinjiro’s (empty) wallet instead and is motivated to try helping a young woman escape from a brothel though he had no relationship with her and ends up losing a finger for his pains. The antagonist Tokunosuke, meanwhile, has apparently sold Shinjiro’s sister into sexual slavery and used the money for his own amusement such as drink and other women. Nevertheless, he appears to regret his decision and is filled with self-loathing as if his poor conduct were a kind of self-harm. He is minded to redeem Fumie and sells his own life to yakuza boss Tokusaburo to get the considerably large sum of 25 ryo to do so.

Even Tokusaburo is not completely heartless though ruled by greed and ambition. When Shinjiro arrives and shows him the letter from Takichi’s mother, Tokusaburo admits that he is the man named in it but denies that he ever knew her and insists he is not the boy’s father. He does this in part because he has married the daughter of his current boss and is planning not only to take over the gang but knock out their rivals and assume control over the area. To do this, he goes so far as to kill another woman he had been in a relationship with but betrayed to marry the boss’ daughter because she threatens his path to success.

But, on the other hand, denying his son seems to be something painful for him. As he says after killing Oharu, if he has denied his son to take over the gang, killing her is no big deal. He does finally acknowledge Takichi, but only when dying as a final means of making amends when it’s clear that he has failed in his ambitions. Shinjiro, meanwhile, is kindhearted and compassionate. Even on meeting Tokunosuke, he realises that he does not want to kill him because it would bring his sister pain. He protects the boy though it does not benefit him in any way, and also rescues the brother of a woman he seems to have fallen in love with but had to leave due his important revenge business. Having rescued his sister, he leaves her with Oryo and resists the cruelty of this world by forming a new family outside it. Though the events it depicts may be bleak, the film is lighthearted rather than nihilistic and allows simple human kindness and decency to triumph over venal usurpers like Tokusaburo. Elegantly lensed as one would expect of a Daiei production, the fight scenes are also impressive in terms of scale and choreography, though its real power lies in its essential good-heartedness and compassion even for its villains.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Memorizu (メモリィズ, Miiku Sakanishi, 2026)

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Trying to calm a nervous groom, ageing photographer Makoto (Issei Ogata) tells him that he also took his grandfather’s wedding pictures in a moment that speaks of several kinds of continuity all at once. Yet why is that we take photos? Is it for ourselves, as a kind of proof of existence “to remember we were here,” or so that we can share these moments with others and create shared memories to paper over the rift of absence?

The weight of nostalgia hangs heavy over Makoto’s photography studio, but the irony is that it’s son-in-law, Yuta (Tasuku Emoto), who’s come to look after him while he recuperates after breaking a leg, and therefore has no particular attachment to this place or the landscape given that it is not the place where he grew up. Nevertheless, this sense of distance is perhaps why Yuta finds himself taking photos on his smartphone and documenting his daily live in the peaceful rural environment as a means of keeping in touch with his wife, Yuki (Moeka Hoshi), and daughter, Hana, who were supposed to be coming with him but had to cancel at the last moment.

These photos are often spontaneous and sparked by the desire to share a moment or re-experience it later, whereas the photographs taken at Makoto’s studio are more deliberate. Someone has made a decision to have their photo taken either for a prosaic reason such as an application form, or because they too want to mark an important event like a wedding or the birth of a child. These are not events that anyone is likely to forget, but the physical object of the photograph becomes a repository for the emotions the subjects and photographer were feeling at that moment which might otherwise me transitory but can now be re-accessed through film.

The same can be true of the photos and videos Yuta takes on his phone which enable a kind of time lapse communication between himself and his family in which one can be both present and absent at the same time. Yet there’s an implication that the ease with which we take photos in the present day has diluted has their potency. Yuki calls up the photo app on her phone is ad plunged into a sea of images, mainly of her young daughter, so many that she will likely never open most of them again while the vastness of the archive might discourage looking at any of them at all beyond the already visible thumbnail. 

Even so, there’s a degree of poignancy in Makoto getting out the slide projector to show Yuta old pictures of his later wife and Yuki as a child as we see the same images recreated by the adult Yuki and Hana making exactly the same trip with the images appearing in Yuta’s mind like photographs. As Shiori and the young Yuki move further and further away from the camera, there’s a sense of continuing in these repeated images like a film negative running through a projector as one generation slowly replaces another. Though Shiori is already gone, her presence is felt through its absence in the empty seat next to Makoto as he remembers the time they saw a burning field, or her coat still hanging on the wall now on its own as Makoto has given his jacket to Yuta.

The gift of the jacket furthers Yuta’s identification with Makoto, though as one might expect the situation is a little awkward to begin with. Nevertheless, as he settles into the relaxed pace of rural life, the pair begin to bond and develop a familial relationship of their own. Sakanishi bookends the film with scenes of open windows, the first that of a ferry looking out onto the sea. Its rounded corners give it the aesthetic of film while the scene constantly changes to explore how various people react to it. Some look out on the sea as they eat, others more or less ignore it or get on with their work. The closing shot, meanwhile, is a timelapse photo through Makoto’s bedroom window capturing the changing seasons. The lesson is perhaps that the human eye is also a camera and that our lives our made up of these small, barely memorable moments that can nevertheless amount to something greater than ourselves. 

Trailer (English subtitles)