Category: Japan

Blue Ribbon Awards Announces Winners for 63rd Edition

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The Blue Ribbon Awards, presented by film critics and writers in Tokyo, has announced the winners for the 63rd edition which honours films released in 2020. Fukushima 50, a tense dramatisation of the efforts to mitigate the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, takes Best Film while Ryota Nakano takes home Best Director for The Asadas, Masami Nagasawa picks up Best Actress for her second consecutive year reprising her role in The Confidence Man JP, and Tsuyoshi Kusanagi takes Best Actor for his role as a transgender woman. Owing to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, there will be no physical ceremony for this year’s awards.

Best Film  

Fukushima 50 – Setsuro Wakamatsu draws inspiration from Ryusho Kadota’s nonfiction book to pay tribute to the workers who stayed behind during the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Best 10

Presented in no particular order.

  • True Mothers – heartbreaking drama from Naomi Kawase in which a young couple adopt a baby only for the birth mother to resurface
  • The Asadas – latest from Ryota Nakano starring Kazunari Ninomiya inspired by the life of photographer Masashi Asada.
  • Underdog – boxing drama from Masaharu Take.
  • Ito – Heisei love story inspired by the classic Miyuki Nakajima song, directed by Takahisa Zeze, and starring Nana Komatsu & Masaki Suda
  • Theatre: A Love Story – A self-obsessed writer slowly destroys the joy and hope of a woman he claims to love then turns it into art in Isao Yukisada’s dark romance
  • Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train – record breaking movie of the hit TV anime in which a boy in the Taisho era tries to heal his younger sister after she is turned into a demon
  • Wife of a Spy – 8K wartime drama from Kiyoshi Kurosawa in which Yu Aoi tries to stop her husband Issey Takahashi from blowing the whistle after witnessing atrocity in Manchuria.
  • The Voice of Sin – Shun Oguri stars as a reporter investigating a 30-year-old unsolved case.
  • Fukushima 50 – Setsuro Wakamatsu draws inspiration from Ryusho Kadota’s nonfiction book to pay tribute to the workers who stayed behind during the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant.
  • Midnight Swan – ex-SMAP member Tsuyoshi Kusanagi stars as a transgender woman who takes in a little girl neglected by her parents.

Best 10 Runners up

Presented in no particular order

  • A Beloved Wife – An unsuccessful screenwriter is henpecked by his understandably irate sake-guzzling wife in this autobiographical take on a toxic marriage.
  • Kyou Kara Ore Wa!!: The Movie – big screen outing for the TV drama adaptation of the high school delinquent manga by Hiroyuki Nishimori directed by Yuichi Fukuda..
  • The Confidence Man JP: Princess – sequel in which the gang of scammers try their luck in Malaysia
  • Any Crybabies Around? – a young man flees his family in embarrassment after going viral for getting drunk and being naked at a festival only to return two years later to make it up to them.
  • First Love – boxing drama from Takashi Miike
  • Mother – Masami Nagasawa stars as an abusive mother who pushes her teenage son towards murder.
  • Mishima: The Last Debate – documentary focussing on Yukio Mishima’s address to the students at the University of Tokyo in 1969
  • Minoriyuku – drama about an apple farmer who was born with a stammer and dreams of becoming a comedian.
  • Mio’s Cookbook – Haruki Kadokawa period drama in which a woman who lost her parents in a flood discovers a talent for cooking.
  • Yowamushi Pedal – live action adaptation of the popular high school bicycle racing manga.

Best Director

  • Eiji Uchida (Midnight Swan)
  • Naomi Kawase (True Mothers)
  • Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Wife of a Spy)
  • Nobuhiro Doi (The Voice of Sin)
  • Ryota Nakano (The Asadas)

Best Actor

  • Shun Oguri (The Voice of Sin)
  • Tsuyoshi Kusanagi (Midnight Swan)
  • Koichi Sato (Fukushima 50)
  • Kazunari Ninomiya (The Asadas)
  • Mirai Moriyama (Underdog)

Best Actress

  • Yu Aoi (Wife of a Spy)
  • Mana Ashida (Child of the Stars)
  • Hiromi Nagasaku (True Mothers)
  • Masami Nagasawa (Mother / The Confidence Man JP: Princess)
  • Asami Mizukawa (A Beloved Wife)

Best Supporting Actor

  • Satoshi Tsumabuki (The Asadas / I Never Shot Anyone)
  • Ryo Narita (The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese / Ito)
  • Masahiro Higashide (The Confidence Man JP: Princess / Wife of a Spy)
  • Gen Hoshino (The Voice of Sin)
  • Ken Watanabe (Fukushima 50)

Best Supporting Actress

  • Sairi Ito (Theatre: A Love Story / Step / Junihitoe wo Kita Akuma / Hotel Royal)
  • Nana Eikura (Ito)
  • Haru Kuroki (The Asadas)
  • Becky (First Love)
  • Aju Makita (True Mothers)

Best Newcomer

  • Daiken Okudaira (Mother)
  • Sakurako Konishi (First Love)
  • Nao (Mio’s Cookbook / Stigmatized Properties)
  • Misaki Hattori (Midnight Swan)
  • Hio Miyazawa (his)
  • Nana Mori (Last Letter)

Best Foreign Film

Parasite

Foreign Film Best 10

13 because of multiple ties. Presented in no particular order

  • Never Look Away
  • 1917
  • Judy
  • Bombshell
  • Little Women
  • Tenet
  • Onward 
  • House of Hummingbird
  • Parasite
  • The Farewell
  • Ford v Ferrari (AKA Le Mans ’66 in some territories)
  • Midsommar 
  • Wonder Woman 1984

Foreign Film Best 10 Runners Up

Presented in no particular order

  • Mr Jones
  • The Painted Bird
  • Abe
  • Cats
  • The Kindness of Strangers 
  • Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey  
  • A Rainy Day in New York 

Sources: Eiga Natalie, Sports Hochi

Hello World (ハロー・ワールド, Tomohiko Ito, 2019)

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“Hello World” is a phrase familiar to many as the first line of text given to a new program. It signals firstly that the code is functioning correctly, but also expresses a sense of excitement and positivity as if a new entity were standing on the shores of an unfamiliar land eager for adventure. Tomohiko Ito’s sci-fi-inflected anime carefully places the phrase not at its beginning but at its conclusion, affirming that the hero has managed to step into himself, discover his place, and come to an understanding that grants him a sense of agency and possibility in a brand new world that is in a sense of his own creation and choosing. 

Before all that, however, Naomi Katagaki (Takumi Kitamura) is a textbook “regular high school boy” who fears he is just an extra in his own life quietly reading away at the back of the classroom and last in line in the dinner queue. Reading a self-help book on becoming more assertive helps less than he might have hoped, but two changes are slowly introduced into his life albeit passively the first being he is press-ganged onto the library committee and the second that he is approached by a strange man who claims to be himself a decade older. Future Naomi (Tori Matsuzaka) claims not to have come from another time but from “reality”, explaining that the world Naomi currently inhabits is a simulacrum designed to perfectly preserve the city of Kyoto as a digital archive housed inside supercomputer Alltale which has infinite memory. His older self tells him that he is fated to fall in love with classmate Ruri (Minami Hamabe) but she will then be killed by a lightning strike at a festival in three months’ time. Though their actions will have no effect on the “real” world, Future Naomi claims it’s enough for him to “save” Ruri even if it’s only virtually seemingly caring little that he will in fact be completely ruining the Chronicle Kyoto project by introducing a note of the inauthentic perfectly primed for the butterfly effect. 

In any case, what Naomi eventually discovers is that you can’t always trust “yourself” especially if you’re apparently merely data and therefore perhaps infinitely expendable. Young Naomi doesn’t seem particularly fazed by the revelation that his world is not “real”, and is perhaps overly trusting of his new mentor’s guidance following his instructions to the letter in accordance with the “Ultimate Manual” he’s been given to facilitate his romance with Ruri whom he originally claims not to fancy because like many immature teenage boys he only likes “cute” girls like transfer student Misuzu (Haruka Fukuhara) who literally sparkles while Ruri is like him a wallflower obsessed with books, shy and with an aloof, slightly intense aura. What Future Naomi offers him is pure male adolescent fantasy wish fulfilment in gifting him both the means for romantic success and literal superpowers in the form of the Hand of God which allows him to conjure objects from the digital world and will apparently help to save Ruri from her cruel fate.

The universe, however, has other plans. Soon enough he’s being chased by the forces of order, Homeostasis System Droids, trained to eliminate and correct inconsistencies in data appearing as oversize policemen in kitsune masks. Nothing in Naomi’s world makes much concrete sense, even as he’s been told he’s the creation of a simulacrum. Why would Future Naomi fetch up three months before the accident to train him rather than simply altering code, why would someone bother to create these universal super powers, and what exactly are the connections between this world and the “real” from which Future Naomi claims to have come? Some of this might well be explained by a final twist which turns everything we thought we knew upside down, implying perhaps that the gaps and contradictions we see are down to the vagaries of analogue rather than digital memory mixed with trauma both physical and emotional. Nevertheless, it turns out that Naomi’s mission is less to save Ruri than to save himself twice over, allowing Future Naomi to find an accommodation with the traumatic past while essentially giving birth to a “new world” of adulthood in which he is the fully actualised protagonist rather than the bit-playing extra he’s always believed himself to be. 

Featuring character designs by Kyoto Animation stalwart Yukiko Horiguchi, Hello World’s 3D animation fusion of 2D reality and the digital realm makes for interesting production design as Naomi’s world eventually crumbles around him in multi-coloured pixel while he’s chased by giant neon hands under an angry red sky. Nevertheless, its wilful incoherence often proves frustrating even if its myriad plot holes might be explained in part by the final revelation which itself introduces another note of bafflement in its parting scene. Asking some minor questions about the collection, use, and storage of personal data, archival practice, the limits of digital technology, and the nature of “reality”, Hello World is nevertheless a coming of age romance at heart in which the hero saves himself twice over while learning to rediscover a sense of wonder in future possibility.

Hello World streamed as part of the 2021 Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Osaka Asian Film Festival 2021 Announces Complete Lineup

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The Osaka Asian Film Festival will return for its 16th edition as a physical event to be held in the city from 5th to 14th March. In line with coronavirus precautions, the festival will take place without guests or Q&As while a small selection of films previously screened at OAFF will also be available to stream online in Japan from 28th February. This year’s opening gala is the Ann Hui documentary Keep Rolling while Yuya Ishii’s The Asian Angel makes its World Premiere bringing the festival to a close on 14th March.

Bhutan

  • Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom – a frustrated teacher is dismayed to learn he’s being sent to a remote mountain outpost but is eventually won over by the kids. Review.

China

  • A Song for You – a nomad dreaming of becoming a folk singer encounters a young woman resembling the goddess of music who tells him he must record an album in this indie drama from Dukar Tserang.
  • Leap – Peter Chan’s New Year volleyball drama starring Gong Li as a legendary woman’s Olympic team coach.
  • A Summer Trip – warm hearted drama from Feng Keyu in which a grumpy old Korean war vet and his rebellious grandson go on a road trip in the days before the Beijing Olympics.

Hong Kong

  • Elisa’s Day – a policeman is forced to face a mistake he made 20 years previously while investigating a crime of passion.
  • Hand Rolled Cigarette – debut feature from Chan Kin-long starring Gordon Lam as a former soldier turned triad who bonds with a young South East Asian street thief.
  • Keep Rolling – documentary focussing on the life and career of director Ann Hui. Opening night gala.
  • The Way We Keep Dancing – artists and dancers come together to put on a show in protest to the increasing gentrification of the former Kowloon industrial district where they live.

Indonesia

  • Affliction – horror film from Teddy Soeriaatmadja in which a grieving wife tries to uncover the secret behind her mother-in-law’s decline.
  • Lovely Man – 2011 drama from Teddy Soeriaatmadja in which a young woman with strong religious views comes to the city in search of her estranged father who is now a transgender woman. Streaming online.

Japan

  • (C)Yukari Sakamoto
    (C)Yukari Sakamoto
  • Along the Sea – drama from Akio Fujimoto following three young Vietnamese women who end up undocumented after leaving a training programme in Japan.
  • The Asian Angel – drama from Yuya Ishii in which a recently widowed novelist takes his young son to live with his brother in Seoul only to find his brother had exaggerated the degree of his success.
  • B/B – graduation film from Kosuke Nakahama in which a woman with multiple personality disorder is interviewed by police in connection with the killing of a convenience store owner in a 2020 which has also seen the Olympics cancelled due to corruption and a failed poison gas attack by a new religion.
  • Born in Hiroshima – personal documentary in which the director, born in Hiroshima but from Peking, charts his roots through the story of his izakaya-running family with whom he lived until the age of three.
  • Come and Go – A detective investigates the connection between the discovery of an old woman’s skeleton and a series of real estate scams by interviewing the local residents many of whom are migrant workers from other areas of Asia.
  • For Rei – A confused young woman begins to gain a degree of self-acceptance after facing the image of her absent father in Yukari Sakamoto’s indie drama. Review. First screened last year now streaming online.
  • Goto-san – drama following a young man living and working in a manga cafe who falls in love but then loses his job and place to live when the cafe is closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Green Jail – documentary focussing on an old woman who is the last survivor of forced labourers trafficked from Taiwan to work in Okinawa’s “Green Jail” during the colonial era.
  • itomichi – latest drama from Satoko Yokohama (The Actor, Bare Essence of Life) in which a young woman skilled in playing the Tsugaru-shamisen starts working in a maid cafe in order to get over her shyness.
  • JOINT – yakuza drama in which a man gets out of prison and enlists two old friends to start a business selling data for telephone fraud to the yakuza only to find himself trapped in the criminal underworld.
  • Love and the Grand Tug-of-war – love story between a young man who’s staked his youth on the local tug-of-war, and a medical student from Korea.
  • A New Wind Blows – latest indie film from Yutaro Nakamura focussing on romantic confusion.
  • Over the Town – ensemble drama from Rikiya Imaizumi following a young man who rarely leaves Shimokitazawa where he works in a vintage clothing store whose life changes when he’s asked to appear in an indie film.
  • OZU – third in Zon Pilone’s trilogy of films focussing on Sadao Yamanaka, Setsuko Hara, and Yasujiro Ozu.
  • POP! – collaboration between The Man Who Was Eaten screenwriter Masashi Komura and musician Aru-2
  • Sweet Bitter Candy – strange sad tale of a young woman on the cusp of adulthood and a misfit man from Yutaro Nakamura.
  • yes, yes, yes – story of a family’s destruction and rebirth from Akihiko Yano.
  • Young Birds – youth drama at which a trio of students at Digital Hollywood University, one Japanese, one Chinese, and one Thai, team up to complete their graduation movie.

Korea

  • Beyond You – latest from Alone/A Fish director Park Hong-min in which a man confronts the daughter of his first love who thinks he might be her father.
  • The Slug – whimsical time-shifting drama in which a young woman is haunted by the image of her traumatised childhood self.
  • Three Sisters – drama starring Moon So-ri, Kim Sun-young and Jang Yoon-ju as a trio of sisters returning home for their father’s birthday only for their younger brother to start causing trouble.

Mongolia

  • Black Milk – two sisters find their bond frustrated by cultural differences when one returns after many years of living in Germany.

Philippines

  • Here and There – love story about a young couple who meet remotely amid the coronavirus pandemic.
  • KINTSUGI – romantic drama in which a Filipino man travels to Japan to expand his pottery business and falls in love with the Japanese heiress of a pottery factory.

Singapore

  • Tiong Bahru Social Club – a young man goes on a comical journey through a data-driven project to create the happiest neighbourhood in the world.

Taiwan

  • Born to be Human – drama in which a 14-year-old boy discovers he is intersex.
  • Get the Hell Out – An idealistic former MP and a hapless, besotted security guard attempt to fight their way out of a zombiefied parliament in Wang I-Fan’s absurdist satire. Review.
  • Gwan Gung Vs. Aliens – newly restored 1976 SFX drama in which an ancient general is reincarnated to fend off an attack from laser-wielding giant aliens. Streaming online.
  • Hotel Iris – adaptation of Yoko Ogawa’s novel shifted to Taiwan and starring Masatoshi Nagase as a translator who develops a twisted relationship with a young woman working at the hotel.
  • The Rice Dumpling Vendors – An arrogant businessman rediscovers what’s really important after he unfairly throws out his wife and is cheated out of his riches by a wily mistress in Hsin Chi’s male melodrama Taiyupian. Review. Streaming online.
  • Wrath of Desire – latest drama from lesbian filmmaker Zero Chou in which a traumatised judge struggling with her Catholic upbringing and brother’s suicide enters a rebound marriage with a genderless young man in fear of her feelings for a woman she sent to prison for killing a man who broke into her home.

Thailand

  • The Con-Heartist – a woman whose boyfriend ran out on her saddling her with his debts is targeted by a conman but convinces him to help her swindle her ex instead!
  • P-047 – 2011 drama in which a locksmith and a novelist develop a hobby of breaking into people’s homes not to steal but to temporarily experience the lives of others. Streaming online.

Vietnam

  • ROM – The residents of a rundown slum awaiting demolition stake everything on lucky numbers in Trần Thanh Huy’s gritty portrait of modern Saigon. Review.
  • Sister Sister – psychological drama in which a TV presenter takes in a young runaway only to discover she has ulterior motives.

The Osaka Asian Film Festival runs from 5th to 14th March at venues across the city (coronavirus regulations permitting) with a selection of films screened in previous years also available online from 28th February. Full details for all the films as well as ticketing links are available via the official website. You can also keep up with all the latest details by following the festival on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.

The Water Magician (瀧の白糸, Kenji Mizoguchi, 1933)

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“As long as I breathe, I’ll remember my debt to you” avows a young man to his unexpected benefactor becoming one of many claiming they will never forget her kindness though in his case he actually means it. Kenji Mizoguchi would later become known for tragic tales of female suffering, but his central themes were established early on and very much in evidence in 1933 silent The Water Magician (瀧の白糸, Taki no Shiraito) in which a truly good woman tries to use her independent success to improve the lives of those around her but finds herself cruelly betrayed by a greedy and self-interested patriarchal society. 

Tomo Mizushima (Takako Irie) goes by the stage name Taki no Shiraito, which means something like white threads of the waterfall, particularly apt seeing as she is a “water magician” with a troupe of itinerant players. A beautiful woman who can make the water dance, she has her share of followers and is financially independent if subject to the vagaries of the show business existence. Her life changes one day when she is travelling in a horse-drawn coach that is embarrassingly overtaken by a fast running rickshaw man. The passengers are irate, wondering what they’re paying for, while the driver ignores their pleas not to spare the horses. Tomo decides to use her feminine appeal and then her financial power to convince him to speed up, but he ignores her too until he eventually decides to gallop forward recklessly while the passengers shake inside until the coach’s axle finally snaps and leaves them stranded. A gallant young man, the driver grabs Tomo and throws her on his horse to get her to the next town. She faints on the journey and only comes round after the coachman has left but discovers herself in possession of a complicated law book she assumes is his.  

Tomo cannot stop thinking about the dashing young man, only identified as “Kin” (Tokihiko Okada). She is surprised to reencounter him asleep on a bridge though he seems not to remember her. After finding out that he is an unluckily orphaned former samurai who was fired from the coach for breaking the axle and endangering the passengers, she resolves to use her financial power to help him achieve his dreams of studying law in Tokyo. Tomo does this because she is in love and asks for nothing in return except a future promise of romantic union to which the young man does not exactly agree but does take her money and vows to live up to the faith she has shown in him. 

Alone once again Tomo tries to contend with the world around her while dreaming of Kinya, sending him her savings for his upkeep while the troupe continues to suffer especially during the traditional dry spells of the heavy winter. The troupe’s leader makes the decision to get involved with dangerous loanshark Iwabushi (Ichiro Sugai), a huge hulking man with a mean look and lecherous temperament. While Tomo dreams of Kinya, two romances mirror each other in the failed relationship of the cruel knife thrower Minami (Koju Murata) and his terrorised wife Gin (Kumeko Urabe), and the innocent young love of the beautiful Nadeshiko (Suzuko Taki) and the barker Shinzo (Bontaro Miake). Gin also borrows money from Tomo which she was reluctant to surrender because she saved it for Kinya, claiming she needs it to visit her sick mother in Tokyo and vowing once again never to forget Tomo’s kindness but later skipping out with a stagehand to escape Minami’s control. Nadeshiko and Shinzo, however, are forced to flee on learning that Minami plans to sell her to Iwabushi to settle his private debts. The couple regret leaving Tomo who has always supported them in the lurch, but she helps them escape, ushering them out the back towards a waiting boat and handing them still more money asking only that they be happy and stay together always. 

That’s not perhaps a power that’s in their keep, but the youngsters keep it as best they can and eventually attempt to protect her in the way she has protected them. The world, however, is cruel. With work thin on the ground Tomo finds herself unable to go on funding Kinya as she’d promised, and is only shamed by his well-meaning letter explaining that he’ll try to find a way of supporting himself until his studies are finished so she needn’t worry. She cuts a deal with Iwabushi and sells her body on Kinya’s behalf, but he is in league with Minami who sets his goons on her to retrieve the money seconds after she’s obtained it. 

Her hopes are at least repaid on discovering that her love is true to his word, has never forgotten her, and is well on the way to achieving his dreams as person of note. “Chance and fate, that’s all there is” Kinya had lamented on their second meeting, but he couldn’t know how right he’d be. Tomo’s dreams are fulfilled only their negation. Kinya must do his duty even if it does her harm, yet he too feels responsible and wants to share her burden though that, ironically, would only destroy everything for which she has sacrificed so much. “The river flows on as it always has and always will” the Benshi adds in solemn contemplation of this romantic tragedy, somehow inevitable in its cruelty. Tomo finds herself at the mercy of her times in which money is all, goodness is a weakness, and love too fragile to survive. The woman who made the water dance floats away on a river of tears, a victim of a cruel and unforgiving society.

Kinema Junpo Announces 94th Best 10 for 2020

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Prestigious cinema magazine Kinema Junpo has released its always anticipated “Best 10” list for films released in 2020, the 94th edition. Top prize goes to Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Silver Lion-winning Wife of a Spy while the late Nobuhiko Obayashi takes the Best Director award for his final film Labyrinth of Cinema which comes in second on the Best 10 list.

Best 10

1. Wife of a Spy (スパイの妻＜劇場版＞)

Originally commissioned for 8K TV, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s wartime drama stars Yu Aoi as the titular wife who finds herself working against her husband, Issey Takahashi, when she discovers that he intends to blow the whistle after observing something he shouldn’t have while working in Manchuria. An awards season favourite, the film also picked up the Silver Lion at the 77th Venice International Film Festival.

2. Labyrinth of Cinema (海辺の映画館－キネマの玉手箱)

A poetic advocation for the transformative power of art, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s final film takes a surrealist odyssey through the history of warfare as three youngsters chase the image of Japan in the labyrinths of cinema. Review.

3. True Mothers (朝が来る)

Festival darling Naomi Kawase adapts Mizuki Tsujimura’s novel in which a childless couple adopt the baby of a teenage mother only for her to return some years later and attempt to reclaim her child.

4. Underdog (アンダードッグ)

Two-part boxing drama from Masaharu Take (100 Yen Love) starring Best Actor winner Mirai Moriyama as a dejected featherweight fighter who’s never made it to champion finding himself faced with a TV comedian (Ryo Katsuji) giving it a go in the ring and a cocky up-and-comer (Takumi Kitamura) who can’t shake his violent past.

5. The Real Thing (本気のしるし<劇場版>)

First aired as a 10-part TV drama then edited down to 233 minutes for theatrical exhibition, the latest from Koji Fukada (Hospitalité, Harmonium, A Girl Missing) adapts the manga of the same name and stars Win Morisaki as a bored salaryman whose life changes after he saves a mysterious woman, Kaho Tsuchimura, from an oncoming train.

6. 37 Seconds (37セカンズ)

Written and directed by the single-named Hikari, vibrant drama 37 Seconds stars Mei Kayama as an aspiring mangaka with cerebral palsy striving to escape the overbearing caring of her well-meaning mother while trying to gain experience to make it in the world of erotic comics. Review. Streaming via Netflix in many territories!

7. The Voice of Sin (罪の声)

Mystery drama adapted from the novel by Takeshi Shiota starring Shun Oguri and Gen Hoshino as a reporter and tailor respectively who each find themselves investigating an unsolved murder from 30 years previously.

8. A Beloved Wife (喜劇 愛妻物語)

Semi-autobiographical comedy drama from screenwriter/director Shin Adachi exploring the toxic marriage between an unsuccessful screenwriter and his resentful, dipsomaniac wife (Best Actress winner Asami Mizukawa). Review.

9. Living in Your Sky (空に住む)

Shinji Aoyama returns to cinema screens for the first time in seven years following 2013’s Backwater adapting the novel by Masato Odake. Mikako Tabe stars as an editor at a publishing house who loses her parents suddenly and moves into a luxury apartment block managed by her uncle where she strikes up a romance with a movie star (Takanori Iwata) living a few floors above.

10. On the Edge of Their Seats (アルプススタンドのはしの方)

Indie drama adapting a popular play first performed by a high school theatre group and set on the bleachers of a high school baseball game.

Best 10 International

  1. Parasite
  2. House of Hummingbird
  3. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
  4. Little Women
  5. The Painted Bird 
  6. Dead Souls
  7. Ford v Ferrari (Le Mans ’66)
  8. Pain and Glory
  9. 1917
  10. Tenet

Best 10 Documentaries

  1. Why You Can’t Be Prime Minister (なぜ君は総理大臣になれないのか)
  2. Prison Circle (プリズン・サークル)
  3. Hana no Atosaki: Mutsu Baasan no Aruita Michi (花のあとさき ムツばあさんの歩いた道)
  4. Mishima: The Last Debate (三島由紀夫vs東大全共闘 50年目の真実)
  5. Ongaku House Melody-Go-Round (音響ハウス Melody-Go-Round)
  6. Jose Mujica: Sekai de Ichiban Mazushii Daitoryo kara Nihonjin e (ムヒカ　世界でいちばん貧しい大統領から日本人へ)
  7. Tane wa Dare no Mono (タネは誰のもの)
  8. An Ant Strikes Back (アリ地獄天国)
  9. Reiwa Uprising (れいわ一揆)
  10. Montage of Hong Kong (香港画)

Individual Awards

Best Director: Nobuhiko Obayashi (Labyrinth of Cinema)

Best Screenplay: Ryusuke Hamaguchi / Tadashi Nohara / Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Wife of a Spy)

Best Director (international): Bong Joon-ho (Parasite)

Best Actress: Asami Mizukawa (A Beloved Wife / Runway)

Best Actor: Mirai Moriyama (Underdog)

Best Supporting Actress: Aju Makita (True Mothers)

Best Supporting Actor: Shohei Uno (The Voice of Sin / The Real Thing / A Beast in Love / 37 Seconds / Child of the Stars)

Best Newcomer (actress): Serena Motola (Voices in the Wind / Life: Untitled)

Best Newcomer (actor): Daiken Okudaira (Mother)

Readers’ Choice Best Director: Mitsutoshi Tanaka (Tengaramon)

Readers’ Choice Best Director (international): Bong Joon-ho (Parasite)

Readers’ Choice Award: Saburo Kawamoto – Eiga wo Mireba Wakaru Koto (映画を見ればわかること)

Special Award: Teruyo Nogami (producer)

Source: Kinema Junpo official website.

Big Shots Die at Dawn (顔役暁に死す, Kihachi Okamoto, 1961)

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“Assassins make the world an unfit place to live in” according to a random gas station attendant clueing our errant hero in to the fact his small-town home is now a “den of yakuza” and unlikely tourist hotspot. An early, delightfully absurdist yakuza romp from Kichachi Okamoto, Big Shots Die at Dawn (顔役暁に死す, Kaoyaku Akatsukini Shisu) is part Nikkatsu parody, part ironic western, and all cartoonish fun as a prodigal son returns to find his father murdered and his uncle on the throne. Sound familiar? 

Jiro (Yuzo Kayama) has been working for the forestry commission in Alaska and has not returned to his small-town home of Kuraoka in some time which is why he didn’t even know his father, the mayor, was dead let alone that he was apparently assassinated in a manner which strongly anticipates the Kennedy assassination though the film was released in 1961. He also had no idea his father, a widower, had remarried and his family home is now occupied by his stepmother Hisako (Yukiko Shimazaki), a former secretary who scandalously lounges around in her underwear all day. His uncle Imamura (Eijiro Yanagi) is now the mayor, and as he explains to him, the town is a hotbed of gangster activity apparently a consequence of his attempt to turn it into a tourist hotspot. In trying to find out who killed his father, Jiro finds himself quite literally in the middle of a petty yakuza gang war aided and abetted by corrupt police. 

Quite clearly influenced by American cinema, Big Shots Die at Dawn situates itself in the new frontier of small-town Japan in which a war is being fought over the spoils of the post-war era. Uncle Imamura’s legacy is apparently a children’s theme park with the distinctly pregnant name Dreamland. Apparently a man who just loves the children but was unable to have any of his own, he’s also opened a pre-school for the local kids. Meanwhile, in the yakuza-backed casino, obsessive gamblers brush their teeth at the tables while local kingpin Goto (Akihiko Hirata) attempts to fend off the incursion of the rival Handa gang. Jiro’s return puts the cat among the pigeons as both sides attempt to use him as a way to take out the other.

The dark heart of small-town Japan is however present in the greed and double dealing which extends even to the police, a corrupt officer offering to sell Jiro a key piece of evidence he had concealed in the hope of profit. Just about everyone tries to sell the evidence to someone else at one time or another, leveraging an idea of justice alongside greed and self-interest. Meanwhile, Yoshiko (Kumi Mizuno), a quasi-love interest and former girlfriend of a fallen foot soldier, reports that she gave the police valuable evidence that her fiancé’s death wasn’t a suicide but they ignored her.

Jiro’s come to clean up the town, but the showdown takes place incongruously in the children’s theme park complete with its cutesy mascot characters and adverts for chocolate in the background making plain that these venal gangsters are really just boys playing war, taking pot shots at each other from tiny trains. What could be a dark comment on a loss of innocence is more cartoonish irony from Okamoto who shoots in extreme closeup with intentionally humorous composition and slapstick choreography. Nevertheless the message is unmistakable as we piece together the connections between small-town government and organised crime underpinned with a rather creepy all for the kids justification. 

Then again, the world has its share of misogyny, everything coming down to the incursion of transgressive femininity as one duplicitous woman manipulating her feminine wiles becomes the common link between each of the warring factions, as if this is all her fault and Jiro’s return is a way of clearing up the pollution her arrival provoked. Nevertheless as even he says, his father, and implicitly his father’s generation, must share some of the blame. Filled with stylish action sequences, car chases, self-consciously cool dialogue, and scored with a mix of moody jazz and dreamy childlike melodies, Okamoto’s cartoonish takedown of the zeitgeisty youth movie is very much in keeping with Toho’s spoofier side but chock full of charm even if its hero’s particular brand of smugness occasionally borders on the insufferable. 

That Night’s Wife (その夜の妻, Yasujiro Ozu, 1930)

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Most closely associated with his late career family dramas, Yasujiro Ozu has acquired a reputation for geniality which may in a sense be slightly unfair. He was always an astute chronicler of his times, often choosing to view them through the frame of family, and was never as blind to the issues of the day as some would have it. Ozu’s ‘30s work, that which survives at least, is in a sense fiercely political in its critique of the inequalities of the depression-era society. One of his early crime movies, the silent That Night’s Wife (その夜の妻, Sono yo no Tsuma) insists that justice must be done but does so with compassion in its full and total empathy for a man driven to extremes by the depth of his paternal love. 

Indeed, the early part of the film is tense noir chase as the hero, desperate father Shuji (Tokihiko Okada), attempts to evade a police dragnet to make his way home after robbing a bank to get money to pay for his sick daughter Michiko’s (Mitsuko Ichimura) medical care. Meanwhile, loyal wife Mayumi (Emiko Yagumo) has been patiently waiting at home tending to the child who refuses to sleep because she only wants her father and constantly asks where he is. Shuji eventually makes it back and tells his horrified wife what he has done, agreeing that he will turn himself in to the police once Michiko is well, but he’s already out of luck. The taxi he darted into was being driven by an undercover cop (Chishu Ryu) who installs himself in the apartment but agrees to wait until the doctor comes in the morning before taking Shuji in. 

Out of keeping with the rest of Ozu’s career but very much in the vein of his depression-era silents, That Night’s Wife concerns a poor but happy family mustering what little resources they have in the face of despair. Filled with tension as the policeman waits impatiently, the camera pans around the one room apartment where the family live and finds it to be a homely, bohemian space, apparently an artist’s studio with foreign film posters and travel souvenirs hanging from the walls. By all indications a starving painter, Shuji is a poor man brought to ruin by accidental tragedy. His daughter is deathly ill and doctors cost money. We can see that, by the standards of the time, he is a very hands on father beloved by his little girl and is obviously willing to sacrifice himself and his future to ensure her survival

It’s Mayumi, however, to whom the film’s title refers and in her role as wife rather than mother. The doctor (Tatsuo Saito) worries that she has not slept in the last few days, how could she when her child is so ill, but it’s she who eventually picks up the gun to protect the family by disarming the policeman and, essentially, keeping him hostage until the morning when, she claims, Shuji will willingly go with him after confirming Michiko’s survival. The world is turned upside down, no one quite plays the role they’ve been assigned. The loving father, an effete artist, turns unconvincing master criminal, the loyal wife gangster’s moll, and the policeman a calm and compassionate guardian deeply moved by the family’s predicament but also knowing that the law must be served. 

In a typically Ozu touch, the policeman pretends to be asleep with the intention of letting Shuji escape, but he once again makes an atypical choice. He refuses to run, swearing off “crazy ideas” but unrepentant in his crime. Shuji determines to pay his debt to society so that he can return home as a redeemed father and hold his daughter as a man unburned by his transgression. The message isn’t so much that crime doesn’t pay as that crime must be paid for. Shuji is acquitted in the moral courts of the audience’s hearts and not even the policeman blames him for what he has done which is all he could do as a father in an oppressive and indifferent society. A strange complicity develops between the two men who are restored to their original roles, both acknowledging that of the other and sorry for what they each know must happen next but already resigned. The father saves his family only through accepting his exile from it, but unlike Ozu’s wandering fathers of the 1930s, seems destined to return after redeeming himself in the eyes of a society which had long since abandoned him. 

Currently streaming in the UK via BFI Player as part of Japan 2020. Also available to stream in the US via Criterion Channel.

Lady Sen and Hideyori (千姫と秀頼, Masahiro Makino, 1962)

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Son of cinema pioneer Shozo Makino, Masahiro Makino is most closely associated with the jidaigeki though he also had a reputation for highly entertaining, innovatively choreographed musicals some of which starred post-war marquee singing star Hibari Misora. The somewhat misleadingly titled Lady Sen and Hideyori (千姫と秀頼, Sen-hime to Hideyori), however, is pure historical melodrama playing fast and loose with the accepted narrative and acting as a star vehicle for Misora to showcase her acting talent in a rare dramatic role in which she neither sings nor engages in the feisty swordplay for which her otherwise generally lighthearted work at Toei was usually known. 

Lady Sen (Hibari Misora) is herself a well-known historical figure though Hideyori (Kinnosuke Nakamura) will not feature in the film beyond his presumed demise (his body was never found leading to various rumours that he had actually survived and gone into hiding) during the siege of Osaka in 1615. Born the granddaughter of Tokugawa Ieyasu (Eijiro Tono) who would later defeat the Toyotomi to bring Japan’s Warring States era to an end, Sen was sent to the Toyotomi as Hideyori’s future wife at seven years old (he was only four years older than she was and 21 at the presumed date of his death) and therefore perhaps far more Toyotomi that Tokugawa. In contrast to other portrayals of Sen’s life which centre on her understandable identity conflict and lack of agency in the fiercely patriarchal feudal society, Misora’s Lady Sen is clear in her loyalty to her husband whom she dearly loved and feels her father and grandfather who were directly responsible for his death are her natural enemies.  

Old Ieyasu and his son meanwhile do at least appear to care about Sen’s welfare, loudly crying out for a retainer to save her during their assault on the castle offering unrealistic rewards to any who manage a rescue. Unfortunately, however, having retrieved his granddaughter Ieyasu immediately marries her off to someone else demonstrating just how little control Sen has over her own destiny and how ridiculous it might be that she should have any loyalty to the family of her birth. His decision backfires on two levels, the first being that Dewa (Tetsunosuke Tsukigata), a lowly retainer responsible for Sen’s rescue from the falling castle, has taken a liking to her himself and fully expected to become her husband as a reward. While originally annoyed and hurt to think that perhaps she has rejected him because of the prominent facial scarring sustained while he was rescuing her, Dewa finally realises he just wants her to be happy only to be offended on realising that they’ve rerouted her bridal procession past his home which he takes as a personal slight. Nevertheless, in contrast with real life (Sen’s marriage to Honda Tadatoki was apparently amicable and produced two children though only one survived to adulthood) Sen’s relationship with her new husband is not a success, in part because she resents being used as a dynastic tool and in part because she remains loyal to Hideyori. In consequence, she makes full use of her only tool of resistance in refusing to consummate the marriage with the result that her new husband, Heihachi (Kantaro Suga), slowly drinks himself to death. 

Her other act of rebellion is however darker, striking down an old man who made the mistake of telling her with pride how he informed on retreating Toyotomi soldiers after the siege. Determining to become an “evil woman” she deliberately blackens the Tokugawa name by killing random commoners, chastened when confronted by a grieving widow but banking on the fact her relatives will not move against her and will therefore gradually lose public sympathy for failing to enforce the law against one of their own. The spell is only broken by the arrival of a former Toyotomi retainer (played by Misora’s frequent co-star in her contemporary films Ken Takakura) who reminds her of her loyalty to her husband’s legacy and prompts her retreat into religious life as a Buddhist nun mirroring the real Lady Sen who entered a convent after her second husband died of tuberculosis. Like most of Misora’s film’s Lady Sen ends with a softening, a rebuke to her transgressive femininity which in this case has admittedly turned worryingly dark her murder spree apparently a form of resistance to the entrenched patriarchy of the world around her and most particularly to her continued misuse at the hands of her father and grandfather. Despite the absence of large-scale musical numbers, Makino makes space for a fair few dance sequences along with festival parades and well-populated battle scenes but makes sure to place Misora centre stage as if countering the continual marginalisation of Lady Sen and all the women of feudal Japan. 

Clip (English subtitles)

The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (虎の尾を踏む男達, Akira Kurosawa, 1952)

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Like many directors of his age, Akira Kurosawa began his career during the war sometimes working on what were effectively propaganda films yet perhaps attempting to skirt around the least palatable implications of the task at hand. The Men Who Tread on the Tiger’s Tail (虎の尾を踏む男達, Tora no O wo Fumu Otokotachi) is an example of just that, repurposing a well known historical incident from its noh and kabuki roots and subtly undercutting it with a dose of irreverent humour unwelcome to those who liked historical tales because of their nationalistic connotations. This was not, however, the reason the film found itself out of favour so much as an ironically personal issue in which Kurosawa had apparently irritated one of the censors by pointing out his ignorance of cultural tradition leading him to conveniently leave Tiger’s Tail off the list of titles in production resulting in the American Censors rejecting it for being an unknown, illegal film which is why it languished on the shelf for seven years after filming was completed in 1945. The Americans may not have liked it much either given their aversion to period drama which they feared encouraged the kind of thinking incompatible with the democratic era, but like many of Kurosawa’s samurai dramas it has a rather ambivalent attitude to feudal loyalty both admiring of nobility and despairing of its austerity. 

Set in the late 12th century, the action takes place during a period of warfare in which warrior Yoshitsune (Iwai Hanshiro X) has returned a victory for his brother, the ruler. His brother Yoritomo, however, feels as if his victory has perhaps been too good and he is therefore a threat to him. Yoritomo accuses his brother of sedition and puts a purge in motion, leaving Yoshitsune with no option other than to flee. With six of his best retainers, he escapes dressed as an itinerant Buddhist monk and tries to make his way to neutral territory in the North. To get there, however, they need to pass through a series of checkpoints which is why they’re currently accompanied by a cheerful fool in the form of a lowly porter (Kenichi Enomoto) supposedly guiding them along a secret path through mountain forests. 

The porter is a new addition to the story added by Kurosawa for reasons of expediency and comic relief, yet his intrusion is also one which deeply angered the more nationalistic of the censors who resented the director’s irreverence towards a key historical event. Like many other of Kurosawa’s bumbling peasants, he’s both contemptuous and in awe of the world of the samurai, offering down to earth common sense takes on the politics of the day. He has already heard all about the Yoritomo/Yoshitsune drama and recounts it in the manner of a soap opera, quite reasonably asking if a quarrel between brothers could not have been sorted out with a good old-fashioned private fist fight rather than a state mandated manhunt which is also quite inconvenient for ordinary people in addition to being somewhat heartless. 

The samurai, not wanting to break cover, can only look sad and lament the cruelty of their codes, yet it’s precisely in the subversion of their ideology that they are able to escape. They have already transgressed, some with shaved heads and all already in the clothes of a monk. The porter looks at Yoshitsune, apparently a successful warrior, and remarks on his delicate physique and seeming femininity. Eventually he says too much, realises that the men are the fugitives everyone’s looking for and is suddenly afraid, forgetting for the moment that they need him to get out of the woods and knowing that samurai think nothing of killing “insignificant nobodies” like him. Nevertheless they do not kill him, but on hearing that there are lookouts on the horizon aware of Yoshitsune’s presence, they ask their lord to change places with a peasant, wearing his worn out clothes and carrying his heavy pack though the weight of it perhaps betrays him. As the porter points out, he does not have the look of a man used to trekking through the mountains and his delicate legs are already shaking under the unfamiliar strain. 

When the band is intercepted by loyal retainer Togashi (Susumu Fujita) who has been instructed to stop all priests in case Yoshitsune comes his way, Benkei (Denjiro Okochi), a real monk if also a warrior with a talent for bluff, manages to talk his way out of Togashi’s questioning, improvising an entire prospectus on the spot to convince him that they really are collecting money to repair a temple, quickly explaining that his robes are ornate because even ascetics have fashion sense. It’s not entirely clear if Togashi simply believes him, or if he too is wilfully subverting the code having recognised Yoshitsune and decided to help him escape. Might that not, in a certain sense, be the better way of serving a lord, preventing him from making a huge and painful mistake in killing his own brother out of a misplaced sense of paranoia? 

In any case, Benkei talks his way out of trouble only for a minor retainer to intervene, insisting that the porter is too pretty and bears a striking resemblance to Yoshitsune. Reacting quickly again, Benkei does the unthinkable. He strikes his lord and loudly berates him as if he really were a lazy porter failing in the duties for which he has been paid. The real porter becomes upset, placing himself in between Benkei’s staff and Yoshitsune’s body, either out of empathetic identification or horror in the betrayal of feudal loyalty. Benkei knows he must now be believed, no one would ever do what he has done because it is a complete and total negation of the samurai code. Yet in breaking it he saves his lord, which is all that really matters. Yoshitsune later forgives him, because he is a good lord after all and how could he not. But as Benkei was keen to keep pointing out, this isn’t the only checkpoint they must pass and their journey is without end, all they can do is “continue without rest”, taking this brief moment of unexpected levity provided by apology wine from Togashi and the hilarious antics from the porter before setting off once again. As for the porter, he is soon abandoned, left on one side of the samurai divide as the curtain closes on this brief strange tale. 

Currently streaming in the UK via BFI Player as part of Japan 2020. Also available to stream in the US via Criterion Channel.

The Scarlet Camellia (五瓣の椿, Yoshitaro Nomura, 1964)

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Little known outside of Japan, Yoshitaro Nomura is most closely associated with post-war noir and particularly with adaptations of Seicho Matsumoto’s detective novels, yet he had a wide and varied filmography directing in several genres including musicals and period dramas. The son of silent movie director Hotei Nomura, he spent the bulk of his career at Shochiku which had and to some degree still has a strong studio brand which leans towards the wholesome even if his own work was often in someway controversial such as in the shocking child abuse drama The Demon or foregrounding of leprosy in Castle of Sand. Part of the studio’s series of double-length epics, 1964’s Scarlet Camellia (五瓣の椿, Goben no Tsubaki) is nevertheless an unusual entry in Nomura’s filmography, adapting a novel by Shugoro Yamamoto essentially setting a policier in feudal Japan and perhaps consequently shot largely on stage sets rather than on location. 

Nomura opens with artifice as Shino (Shima Iwashita) stares daggers at an actor on the stage but later returns to his rooms every inch the giggling fan before finally offing him with her ornate silver hairpin leaving behind only the blood red camellia of the title. The first in a series of killings later branded the Camellia Murders, we later realise that the actor had to die because of his illicit relationship with Shino’s mother whom he brands a “nympho” and as we later discover had several extra-marital lovers. Extremely close to her father who, as we’re told, perished in a fire while resting in the country due to his terminal tuberculosis, Shino is apparently on a quest for revenge against the faithless men who humiliated him though her feelings towards her mother seem far more complex. 

Indeed, Shino regards her mother’s carrying on as “dirty” and seems particularly prudish even as she wields her sex appeal as a weapon in her quest for vengeance. Yet it’s not so much the free expression of sexuality which seems to be at fault but excess and irresponsibility. Shino resents her mother primarily for the ways in which she made her father suffer, off having fun with random men while he shouldered the burden of her family business which, Shino might assume, has contributed to his illness. Aoki (Go Kato), the Edo-era policeman to whose narrative perspective the second half turns, advances a similar philosophy in that there’s nothing wrong with having fun, he has fun at times too, but people have or at least should have responsibilities towards each other which the caddish targets of the Camellia Killer have resolutely ignored. He can’t say that he condones the killer’s actions, but neither can he condemn them because her motivations are in a sense morally justifiable. 

Realising the end is near, Shino indulges in a very modern serial killer trope in leaving a note for Aoki alongside one of her camellias in which she claims that she is exacting vengeance for “crimes not punishable by law”. There was nothing legally wrong in the way these men treated her mother or any other woman, but it is in a sense a moral crime. “You’re a woman and I’m a woman too” she later tells another scorned lover, a mistress thrown over by her patron with two small children after he tired of her, as she hands over a large sum of money and encourages her to return to her family in the country. Shino’s quest is essentially feminist, directed against a cruel and patriarchal society in which the use and abuse of women is entirely normalised, yet it is also slightly problematic in her characterisation of her mother as monstrous in her corrupted femininity for daring to embrace her sexuality in exactly the same way as her male counterparts though they, ironically, mainly seem to have been after her money rather than her body. 

Shino’s mother’s death is indeed regarded as “punishment from heaven” presumably for her sexual transgressions and neglect of her family, rejecting both the roles of wife and mother in a ceaseless quest for pleasure. Yet even in her resentment, Shino’s ire is directed firmly at the men taking the last of her targets to task when he justifies himself that women enjoy sex too and are therefore equally complicit by reminding him that he gets his moment of pleasure for free but the woman may pay for it for the rest of her life. Just as Shino’s mother neglected her family, the men harm not only their wives in their illicit affairs but cause concurrent damage to the mistresses they may later disown and the illegitimate children they leave behind. Abandoning the naturalism of his contemporary crime dramas for something much more akin to a ghost film with his eerie lighting transitions and grim tableaux of the skewered victims, Nomura crafts a melancholy morality tale in which the wronged heroine turns the symbol of constrained femininity back on the forces of oppression but is eventually undone by the unintended consequences of her quest for vengeance even as she condemns the architect of her misfortune to madness and ruin.