Category: Japan

Wicked Priest 2: Ballad of Murder (極悪坊主 人斬り数え唄, Takashi Harada, 1968)

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The Wicked Priest returns for a second instalment but once again finds himself confronted with imperfect paternity in The Wicked Priest 2: Ballad of Murder (極悪坊主 人斬り数え唄, Gokuaku Bozu: Hitokiri Kazoe Uta). This time directed by Takashi Harada, the series begins to embrace its anarchic nature in the sometimes cartoonish exploits of its hero who largely just wants to have a good time but is inconveniently called to missions of justice while silently stalked by ghosts of the past in the form of spooky monk Ryutatsu (Bunta Sugawara) whom he blinded in a fight at the end of the previous film. 

Now a lonely wanderer, Shinkai (Tomisaburo Wakayama) comes across a fleeing yakuza with a small boy in tow and steps in to help. As he discovers, the man, Rentaro (Asao Koike), is a former gangster whose wife has passed away leaving him the sole parent to Seiichi, a little boy of around six. Rentaro wants to turn himself in to the police so he can fully sever his ties to the underworld and start again along a more honest path to raise his son right, but needs to deliver him to his father, a jujitsu instructor, before he can. Somewhat surprisingly, Rentaro suddenly asks Shinkai, a man he’s never met before, to take Seiichi to his grandfather before rushing off supposedly to give himself over to justice. When Shinkai arrives, however, Iwai (Hideto Kagawa), the grandfather, refuses to let them in having disowned his son over a local scandal some years previously. 


As in the first film the major theme is paternal disconnection, Rentaro caught between wanting to be a good father to his son and seeking his own father’s approval. Fatherless himself, Shinkai cannot understand nor condone Iwai’s stubbornness in refusing even to look at his small grandson but resolves to care for him himself until his grandfather changes his mind or for as long as he is needed. Meanwhile it turns out that Rentaro was once involved with the evil gang, Godo, who have been causing trouble in the town by trying to muscle on the local cockfighting scene. 

Godo have also been force recruiting some of the local men to increase their dominance while schmoozing with a corrupt politician, Kadowaki (Hosei Komatsu), hoping to make cockfighting a local speciality, even going so far as to kidnap a young woman known to Shinkai and gift her to him. Shinkai manages to rescue her after dressing up as a head priest and subtly suggesting to Kadowaki that his election prospects might suffer if any rumours were to get out about untoward goings on in his household. Iwai explains that jujitsu is not meant to be a violent art used to tackle evil gangsters but is anyway posited as a kind of local resistance leader standing up to Godo but with little effect other than making himself a target for their ire while left vulnerable in their ability to use Rentaro against him. 

While getting mixed up in a local dispute trying to stand on the side of the little guy while looking after Seiichi, Shinkai’s exploits are often comedic in nature as he continues to play the part of the ironic monk though with real sincerity. Sneaking into a temple and belatedly discovering it to be a convent he becomes captivated by a Buddhist nun who appears to experience some kind of sexual awakening but then becomes fixated on him, insisting on becoming his wife and causing him to hide in a chicken coop to avoid her. On the other hand, his stalking by Ryutatsu takes on an almost spiritual quality as the near silent monk, now even more gaunt than before, shuffles his way towards him. Yet this Ryutatsu is a little more spiritual than before, agreeing to postpone his quest for vengeance unwilling to fight Shinkai with little Seiichi looking on and even at one point stepping in to protect him himself because all children are Buddha. Nevertheless, the film ends with another bloody battle surprising in its intensity with severed limbs and sudden violence as Shinkai ensures that those in the wrong get what’s coming to them, speeding up the wheel of karma by a turn or two to make sure they face justice, of one sort of another, in this world if not the next.  

Wicked Priest (極悪坊主, Kiyoshi Saeki, 1968)

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A bunch of corrupt monks get a lesson in business ethics from one of their own in the aptly titled Wicked Priest (極悪坊主, Gokuaku Bozu). The first in a series of five films starring Tomisaburo Wakayama as a rogue Buddhist monk who enjoys fighting, drinking, and women but deep down has a powerful sense of moral righteousness, Wicked Priest is in its own way another take on classic ninkyo only this time it’s temples acting like yakuza clans rather than actual gangsters with “wicked priest” Shinkai the ironic symbol of nobility. 

Set in early Taisho, the film opens with a prologue set five years before the main action in which Shinkai breaks up a fight between another violent monk, Ryotatsu (an incredibly gaunt Bunta Sugawara), and some yakuza he challenged while they were hassling a young man for supposedly messing with the wrong girl. Predictably, it’s Shinkai who ends up in trouble. Relieved of his duties, he’s exiled to another temple and sentenced to spend a whole year in isolation thinking about what he’s done. Five years later we can see that the conclusion he’s mostly come to is that the religious world is full of hypocrisy anyway and he might as well live his life to the full while he can.

Indeed, the opening scene sees him ironically reciting a sutra with his head between a woman’s legs and preparing to drink holy water from her belly button. The problem here seems to be one of inter-temple politics that sees Shinkai hassled by officious monk Gyotoku (Hosei Komatsu) who objects to Shinkai’s behaviour and to the leniency which is shown to him by head priest Donen (Kenjiro Ishiyama). Of course Gyotoku is later discovered to be the source of corruption, wanting to depose Donen and take control of the temple in part to facilitate a sex ring he’s running that involves live peep shows literally on temple grounds. Shinkai, meanwhile, has a particular dislike for abusers of women and especially for pimps eventually rescuing some of the women indentured by a local brothel and unfairly kept on after redeeming their contracts with bogus loans, and starting a women’s refuge in the temple where they can find “honest” work and eventually lead “normal lives” as farmers or waitresses free of the abuse and oppression they faced in the “hell” of indentured sex work.

Wandering around the town, he saves one young woman newly arrived in Tokyo from falling victim to a scam and being forced into sex work by getting her a waitressing job at a local restaurant. To keep her safe, he jokes with the cafe owner that he’s already slept with her which in the bro codes of the time makes her his woman and owing to his famously violent nature no one else is going to bother her. For what it’s worth, women young and old come to admire him greatly for his gallantry though he never abuses his position. All of his sex partners are at least of his own age and fully consenting even if he is not exactly faithful in love. 

Meanwhile there’s some minor commentary more familiar from post-war gangster films that sees the temple as a refuge for orphaned men. The fatherless Shinkai finds a beneficent paternal authority in Donen and is, he says, “reformed”, if living to a code that seems to be mostly his own but informed by a kind of moral righteousness not found in others at the temple. Having discovered that a wayward young man Shinkai is attempting to save from his life of petty crime exploiting women for his own gain is a son he never knew existed, Donen would have left the temple to fulfil his familial role but is prevented from doing so by the intrusion of temple politics. Unless undertaking specific vows, Buddhist priests are not necessarily expected to practice celibacy and are permitted to marry yet Donen’s father objected to his choice of bride and she left not wanting to disrupt his temple career. Shinkai entrusts the boy to Donen, talking him into accepting a new paternal authority as a means of returning him to the “proper” path while himself swearing that he will leave the temple in order to ensure justice is served against the true “wicked priest” Gyotoku. Directed by ninkyo specialist Kiyoshi Saeki, the film ends in an outburst of bloody violence as Shinkai takes revenge on institutional corruption but once again leaves its hero a lonely wanderer in an unjust world.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Young Black Jack (ヤング ブラック・ジャック, Kentaro Otani, 2011)

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The Black Jack of Osamu Tezuka’s classic manga is a morally ambiguous figure who cultivates an image of callousness through asking for exorbitant sums to cure often desperate people, but in reality will usually treat seriously ill patients if touched by their plight or is content to collect the money from another source ensuring a kind of social justice is done. A spin-off manga written by Yoshiaki Tabata and illustrated by Yugo Okuma, Young Black Jack (ヤング ブラック・ジャック), was published from 2011 to 2019 and was set in the 1960s when Black Jack was gifted young medical student living through a politically turbulent era. 

Broadcast in 2011, this television special meanwhile updates the action to the present day while acting as a kind of double origin story if one set in a more realistic world. As a nine-year-old boy, Black Jack asks his mother to meet him by the Christmas display in a local shopping mall. Not having had enough money to buy his mother a red rose, he patiently sits and draws one under the tree while otherwise oblivious to the news being broadcast on a large screen explaining that there has been a series of bombings in the city and the next target is this very mall. Black Jack’s mother has become mute after a traumatic incident but tries to call out to him only for the pair to be caught in the blast. Touched by their story, the genius doctor Honma (Masachika Ichimura) manages to save Black Jack by transplanting his organs and giving him a skin graft while his mother remains in a coma.

The story then jumps to the present day with Black Jack (Masaki Okada) a medical student with an underground lair where he keeps his comatose mother (who hasn’t aged at all in 15 years) and operates as a backstreet doctor treating undocumented migrants and yakuza. Aside from emphasising his contradictory nature as someone who both treats anyone who requires treatment no matter of their social status yet simultaneously demands incredible sums of money for doing so, associating with these kinds of people also places Black Jack among the lower ranks of society which is something that niggles at snooty doctor Naoki (Yukiyoshi Ozawa). Naoki is sort of betrothed to Yuna (Riisa Naka), the daughter of the chief doctor at a prestigious university hospital who is herself in the middle of taking her final exams to become a doctor. 

Familiar to fans of the manga, Naoki is Black Jack’s opposite number. As he tells Yuna, there are two kinds of doctors. Those who save lives and those who kill. In the manga, Naoki was a doctor traumatised by his wartime experiences who often wants to euthanise the patients that Black Jack is trying to save believing that there is no way to save them. Having encountered Black Jack cooly saving a patient who collapsed in the street, Yuna asks Naoki what he thinks makes a good doctor and he tells her it’s the belief that medical science has no limits and the doctor is omnipotent. Yet he later says just the opposite, telling Yuna that she is being childish and of course there are limits to what medical science can achieve so in effect he’s giving up. Black Jack meanwhile does believe in his own omnipotence, even if that’s not always such a good thing, and is confident he can save any patient even if in the end he cannot save the one most close to him (perhaps because she wanted him to stop trying). 

The film does not however go into very much detail and only gives brief snippets of backstory such as Black Jack’s mother going mute after a shadowy man enters and leaves their home while hinting at potential future stories in his opposition to Naoki who objects to him partly out of snobbishness, and a potential romance with Yuna who has now shifted away from the elitism that coloured her family towards a more altruistic kind of medicine represented by Black Jack even in his aloofness. Nevertheless, the film makes no real attempt to transcend its origins as a television movie, not that it has to, and is hampered by an uninspired script and low production values which contribute to its relatively more naturalistic setting yet sit awkwardly with the more outlandish parts of the narrative such as Black Jack’s keeping his mother in cryogenic status for 15 years or being able to transplant all of someone’s organs at once and in under 10 minutes. Still, as a minor outing for the iconic character it’s entertaining enough for fans of the franchise. 

Curse of the Blood (怪談残酷物語, Kazuo Hase, 1968)

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Vengeful ghosts in Japanese cinema usually originate from some kind of injustice. Generally, they’ve met a bad end through no real fault of their own while the person who killed them continues to prosper, though it’s also true that becoming a vengeful ghost means becoming an embodiment of vengeance which is itself indiscriminate and directed towards an unjust society more than one particular transgressor. In The Ghost of Kasane, for example, the curse extends to target the murdered man’s own daughter rather than just the descents of the man who murdered him.

Loosely based on the same tale, Curse of the Blood (怪談残酷物語, Kaidan Zankoku Monogatari) is indeed rooted in an injustice, but the emotions that create the ghost are greed and pettiness much more than a desire for retribution. A hatamoto lord has borrowed a large sum of money from a blind masseur evidently running a sideline as a loan shark. The monk, Sojun (Nobuo Kaneko), points out the term is coming to a close and the money should be repaid but Shinzaemon (Rokko Toura) doesn’t want to pay. Having just watched Sojun give his wife Toyo a sexually charged acupuncture session, he coldly remarks that he’ll be paying with his wife’s body. Toyo is obviously not really onboard with this plan, while Sojun at first declines only for Shinzaemon to state that he has the husband’s permission so it’s all fine. But Sojun then attempts to pay Shinzaemon with the improbably large sum of money he’s currently carrying, agreeing to sleep with Toyo but stating that the debt and interest will remain unchanged.

In any case, as soon as Sojun begins caressing his wife’s body Shinzaemon brutally cuts him down. He asks his recently returned grown up son Shinichiro (Masakazu Tamura) to help him dump the body in a nearby lake. Shinichiro complies, but it soon becomes evident that he disapproves of his father’s debauched ways and treatment of his mother. Despite being in debt to Sojun, Shinzaemon has a mistress and an illegitimate child with another woman he is also raising in his house. Shinichiro is painted as the good samurai son, one who behaves with the proper decorum and is unlike his father in his sense of righteousness. Shinzaemon even says as much, urging him to study Confucius and martial arts to one day restore the family he has ruined through his moral transgressions. 

But in taking a sword to the mistress, Shinichiro is himself corrupted. She merely seduces him and it seems to be this that pulls him over to the dark side. Some years later, Shinichiro becomes a bandit, conman, and murderer accidentally killing a woman during rough sex and then running off with the stash of gold from the home of the man who had taken him and promised him a respectable future. Then again, the man had run a pawn shop so perhaps he was’t as morally upright as he might seem despite his kindness to Shinichiro while it also transpires that he was extracting sexual favours from the maid, Ohana (Yukie Kagawa), who turns out to be one of Sojun’s two daughters. 

In another strange twist it was Ohana and her sister Suga (Saeda Kawaguchi) that Sojun had cursed when he died. He blamed them for somehow orchestrating his death and was insistent he was taking his money to hell with him, so they couldn’t have any of it. Suga takes him to task, decrying that he wasn’t fit to be a father and tormented their mother to death while otherwise complaining that he’s a sleazy old miser who doesn’t share his wealth with them so she’s taking it and running away. Suga’s determination to take the money is an attempt to seize autonomy, but she ends up using it in much the same way as her father, essentially as means of buying sexual companionship. Unbeknownst to her, she becomes besotted by Shinzo (Yusuke Kawazu), Shizaemon’s now grown-up illegitimate son, and binds him to her through her wealth.

Just like Shinichiro, Shinzo has been corrupted by the world around him and has little sense of humanity or morality. As he says, you’d have to be a fool to be honest in this world. Like his brother he has a caustic voiceover stating what he really thinks in contrast to his meek and obedient exterior, decrying Suga as an ugly old hag and expressing disgust at the idea of sleeping with her but also a willingness to put up with it in order to get his hands on her gold. Money lies at the root of all problems, but less so the need for it than simple greed. Shinzo has unwittingly entered a more romantic sexual relationship with Ohisa (Hiroko Sakurai), who turns out to be his half-sister, but her material desires outweigh his own and they are unable to move forward with their lives because they lack the economic stability to set up home. 

To that extent, money is a means of overcoming the barriers of social class or gender to pursue greater freedom that inevitably becomes a means in itself. Sojun does not appear often as a ghost but haunts all the same, an evil smile on his face each time he manifests and takes pleasure in the sight of those who robbed him of his wealth paying the price. Simply put, he remains jealous of his money and can’t bear the thought of anyone else having it so is determined to drag it all the way to hell. Shinzaemon may have cursed his family through his immoral behaviour, but Sojun is simply annoyed about the money. Then again, perhaps he’s just a product of the world in which he lives in which money is the only way to overcome the oppressive barriers of disability, social class, and gender for to be without it is to be a lonely ghost with no currency or agency in society ruled by a fiercely patriarchal hierarchy. Hase conjures some haunting ghost imagery and uses bouts of solarisation as if the world itself were being bleached by all this cruelty and cynicism, occasionally isolating each of the protagonists in a theatrical spotlight which doubles as a personal hell yet in the end suggesting that there really is no escape from the vengeful haunting of an unjust society.  

The Mourning Forest (殯の森, Naomi Kawase, 2007)

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“There are no set rules,” according to the reassuringly steadfast head of a rural nursing home in Naomi Kawase’s The Mourning Forest (殯の森, Mogari no Mori). Uttering the phrase several times in many different contexts, the words prove truer than they first seem, eventually reassuring the grief-stricken heroine that there is no right way to feel or correct way to mourn, simply a gentle process of accommodation. An unexpected Palme d’Or winner, Kawase’s fourth feature sees her shifting into a more familiar arthouse register yet maintaining her trademark style as two lost souls, one old and one young, search for the “end of mourning” in the beauty of nature. 

The young one, Machiko (Machiko Ono), is a recently bereaved mother who has just taken a job at a local nursing home. We never find out exactly how her son died, in fact we only infer he did from the photo and incense on Machiko’s makeshift altar, but a later conversation with her presumed husband encourages us to assume that she blames herself for his death. Consequently, she perhaps recognises something in the dead-eyed vacancy of one of the home’s residents, Shigeki (Shigeki Uda), who crosses out the middle character, meaning 1000, in her name to make it read the same as his late wife Mako’s. Mako (Kanako Masuda) died 33 years previously, which according to the Buddhist priest visiting the facility means that her spirit will soon be leaving this plane for good, transitioning to the other world to become a Buddha.  

Something in Shigeki, whose name literally means “stimulation” though it is in fact the actor’s own, is awakened by the priest’s pronouncement, encouraging him to embark on a long-delayed journey. The priest too had been responsible for the initial connection between the two grieving souls, giving a perhaps insensitive lecture on the difference between living and existing which lies apparently in the ability to feel alive, something which neither of them perhaps do. For unclear reasons, Machiko agrees to travel with Shigeki to look for his wife’s grave, deep in the forest. Unfortunately they get into an accident on the way and while Machiko goes to look for help, Shigeki wanders off with the consequence that the pair of them eventually end up lost in the woods. 

“I was lost but now I’m here,” Shigeki finally explains, fighting his way through what was assumed to be dementia in his quest to say goodbye to his late wife for good before her soul leaves this world. The pair traverse somewhat difficult terrain, culminating in a painful episode in which Machiko begs the older man not to cross a wild river as if he were determined to cross the styx, or then again perhaps there is another explanation for the rawness of her distress. “We’re alive” they exclaim as they warm themselves by an elemental fire, settling the priest’s question once and for all as they press on in search of a grave and each of making peace with the past. 

As Wakako (Makiko Watanabe) had said, there are no set rules for mourning. Shigeki lived with his grief for 33 years and only found the courage to face it in the knowledge that there was no more time. Yet he reassures Machiko that “the water of the river which flows constantly never returns to its source”. In travelling with Shigeki, Machiko too begins to reckon with her grief, finding a kind of release in his catharsis and witnessing the proof of his long years of devotion suddenly given new purpose. She too is able to lay her mourning to rest in the natural beauty of the verdant forest.

Beautifully capturing the majesty of nature, Kawase shifts away from her trademark style swapping anarchic handheld for stateliness in the stillness of Machiko’s grief while quietly observing the ordinariness of the nursing home even as one resident relates her own grief in having lost a child. Filled with a deep sadness in its melancholy meditation on love, death, loss, and grief, The Mourning Forest is nevertheless a strangely uplifting, elegiac experience in which an old man and young woman find strength in their shared connection as they journey together towards the end of mourning and, perhaps, a rebirth in making at least a kind of peace with their grief and their longing.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Girl with the Fire Banner (唄祭りかんざし纏, Kinnosuke Fukada, 1958)

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Hibari Misora puts out the fires of the Bakumatsu in another musical jidaigeki adventure, Girl with the Fire Banner (唄祭りかんざし纏, Utamatsuri Kanzashi Matoi). Once again co-starring with Chiyonosuke Azuma, Misora plays another feisty young woman taking over the family business from a sickly father only this time the business is the fire brigade and while she calmly points out to those of a differing opinion that firefighting is an equal opportunities, apolitical occupation, she also finds herself at the centre of a coming revolution caught between corrupt Shogunate loyalists and the imperialist advance. 

Set in Edo in the climactic year of 1868 in which the Shogunate ultimately falls, the action opens with a fire at a townhouse owned by a member of the Satsuma clan, the leaders of the imperialists aiming to topple the Tokugawa and restore power to the emperor. While Haru (Hibari Misora) and her top team of firefighters rush to the scene, others actively refuse to fight the fire even going so far as to try to stop her. While she reminds them that it doesn’t matter who the house belongs to they have a duty to fight fire if only to prevent it engulfing the rest of the town, a dashing young samurai turns up and fights off the loyalists before daringly retrieving their firefighter’s banner from a burning roof asking only five ryo in return. The mysterious man soon disappears only to turn up a few days later having attempted to charge them for a new kimono and a shave in order to ask for a job as a fireman. Haru tries to dissuade him, not least because of his samurai arrogance as he explains he’s not come to join at the bottom and serve out the three year probationary period but to lead, but eventually relents only to find him continuing to behave like an entitled twit flouting all of their rules. 

Nevertheless, as someone later puts it, Japan will shortly be a “classless society” or at least samurai privilege is about to dissolve. This appears to be the central preoccupation of the villainous lords who describe themselves as Shogunate loyalists but in reality care only for their own cause. Not content with running an obvious protection racket with local vendors, threatening to burn down their stores if they don’t agree to contribute to their fund for restoring the Shogunate, they’ve also been buying up rifles to sell at inflated prices to “young hotheads” eager to die for the Shogun, and stockpiling rice hoping to profit when the city burns as they assume it will when imperialist troops arrive. Realising that their gambles may not pay off as the Shogunate may be planning to cut a deal and surrender in order to protect the people of Edo, the lords, who are technically in charge of the fire brigades, consider burning the city to the ground themselves under the cover of avenging the Shogunate’s honour. 

Of course, Haru, a firefighter through and through, could never support such duplicity though it’s clear many of the others would have gone along with it if no one had resisted. In contrast to some of Misora’s other Bakumatsu-era movies, the Shogunate and more particularly the loyalists are definitely the bad guys though in a rather strange turn of events we also see real life sumo wrestlers Asashio Taro III and Wakamaeda Eiichiro arrive to stand up for justice by knocking some of the loyalists heads together, returning later armed with giant poles and dressed only in their mawashi loincloths while throwing hay bales followed by the actual cart (!) at the arsonist loyalists before physically holding them back with the firefighters’ ladders. 

Misora, meanwhile, remains largely on the sidelines uncharacteristically elbowed out of the fight by the guys while lowkey falling for Shintaro despite his samurai arrogance. Musical numbers are fewer than might be expected, the title Edo Firefighter song reprised at the end while Misora gets a second love song wistfully sewing a kimono for Shintaro in the company of a cat wearing a fancy ruff. Shintaro gets his own number before handing back to Misora for another reprise of the title song. Nevertheless, the pair manage to salvage Edo from the flames of the revolution purifying the corruption while furthering progress towards a more equal society even if the closing scenes leave us clearly still on the march. 

Moonlight Whispers (月光の囁き, Akihiko Shiota, 1999)

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Well established in Japanese cinema, the teenage romance comes with its own series of genre tropes, the barriers standing between the young lovers usually leaning towards the constraints of a conformist society, class differences, or familial disapproval if not introducing a note of inevitable tragedy in serious illness or physical threat. What the youngsters typically do not do or are actively at times prevented from doing is to begin to accept themselves for all they know that to do so may in a sense result in their exile from mainstream society. Yet this is exactly the conclusion with which Akihito Shiota’s debut feature Moonlight Whispers (月光の囁き, Gekko no Sasayaki), adapted from the manga by Masahiko Kikuni, eventually presents us as the teens come to embrace their unconventional relationship while accepting that others may never truly understand. 

Beginning in conventionality, Shiota opens with the sweet and innocent friendship between kendo enthusiasts Takuya (Kenji Mizuhashi) and Satsuki (Tsugumi). Many seem to think they are a couple, but Takuya is quick to correct his friend telling him that they are merely “sparring partners” even going so far as to hand over a love letter, which he knows to be exactly the same as the letter his friend writes to all the other girls, on his behalf. As expected, Satsuki finds his behaviour insensitive, suspecting that Takuya himself has a crush on her but finally confessing her own feelings while he wheedles that he never said anything because of his sense of inadequacy explaining that just to be near her was always enough for him. Following this brief moment of connection, the couple embark on a “normal” teen romance, Satsuki taking the initiative with Takuya in bed with a cold to consummate their relationship. It does not go particularly well, in part because Takuya has a secret. He’s been secretly stalking Satsuki for ages, likes to break into her locker to smell her gym kit, and has a collection of keepsakes he’s stolen from her in addition to a series of illicit photographs and a tape of her using his family bathroom. The tape proves the last straw for Satsuki who then storms out calling him a freak and starts dating her handsome kendo club senior Uematsu (Kota Kusano) instead. 

What Satsuki hasn’t figured out is that Takuya quite likes it when she’s mean to him, which is why he continues stalking her even after she starts dating the very “normal” Uematsu. Unexpectedly, she begins to discover that she quite likes, if not quite the process of hurting him, then watching him suffer which is why she makes him sit silently in a tiny cupboard while she has “normal” sex with Uematsu on a sofa directly opposite. The relationship between them is one of push and pull, Takuya initially embarrassed and ashamed of his masochistic desires explaining that “god made me wrong” while ironically driving Satsuki towards an awareness of her sadism. On the other hand, the relationship had always been unconventional in its reversal of gender roles, Satsuki quite literally leading while Takuya trails behind. She is the first to openly state her feelings and the first to initiate sex, while Takuya is somewhat feminised in his deference and timidity.

Nevertheless, Satsuki struggles to accept her capacity for sadism refusing to tell Uematsu why she broke up with Takuya but explaining that she wants a “normal” relationship in with someone with whom she would be able to discuss anything and everything honestly the irony being that she might have had that with Takuya but cannot with Uematsu because she is filled with internalised shame about the “perverted” pleasure she gains on witnessing Takuya wilfully degrade himself on her behalf. They are already in an accidental sado-masochistic relationship though they of course do not quite have the words to describe how they feel or what it is that exists between them. Their love inevitably heads to quite a dark place but even so leads to a kind of rebirth in which each fully accepts themselves for who they are along with their designated role within the relationship even if also knowing that others may not be quite so understanding. 

For all of its provocative qualities, there is an underlying sweetness in Shiota’s unconventional romance even as he carefully inverts accepted genre norms the conventional indie background score perhaps ironically undercutting any sense that the relationship is actually as “perverse” as the teens sometimes feel it is even as they each struggle with their respective feelings and desires. Nevertheless he ends on a note of anxious ambivalence as the physically and emotionally wounded lovers remove themselves from mainstream society in order to embrace their authentic selves.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

The Pit of Death (怪談おとし穴, Koji Shima, 1968)

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The building at the centre of Koji Shima’s dread-fuelled horror noir Pit of Death (怪談おとし穴, Kaidan Otoshi Ana) is said to be haunted by the spirits of the many people who died during its construction. In his opening voiceover, anti-hero Kuramoto (Mikio Narita) likens the city to a hornet’s nest, the salaryman drones mindlessly buzzing around the business district as if driven by some supernatural force. In that sense, the office building itself becomes an eerie place, the nexus of the salaryman dream which in the end drags all to hell. 

Largely a retelling of Yotsuya Kaidan for the mid-20th century with a little A Place in the Sun thrown in, the film finds Kuramoto an ambitious man deluded by consumerism and resentful of the classism and snobbishness which limit his prospects as a man who has otherwise been able to pull himself out of poverty. His boss pointedly speaks of his talents which include the ability to speak several languages despite only having attended night school rather than university while it’s unusual for a man of his background to hold this kind of position even if he’s only a secretary and not yet an executive. Nevertheless, his boss clearly sees him as a potential successor and plans to marry him to his daughter (Mako Sanjo) who has in some ways inexplicably developed a crush on him.

But Kuramoto is already in a relationship with typist Etsuko (Mayumi Nagisa). In fact, the reason the boss is so pleased with him is largely down to her in that he asked Etsuko to sleep with their foreign client, Mr Hancock, to seal the deal which she duly did. Kuramoto plans to throw her over in order to pursue his dream of taking over the company so he can look down on those who once looked down on him. He tells Etsuko that the marriage will be in name only, that he isn’t attracted to the boss’ daughter Midori, and their relationship will continue as before only to be confused when Etsuko is not totally on board with the plan. She tells him she’s pregnant with his child though he callously points out it could be Hancock’s and insists on an abortion thereafter determining he must kill her so that he can fulfil his destiny by joining the executive class. 

His desires are obvious when he steps into Midori’s home and gazes at a painting crassly asking how much it’s worth, admitting that he’s the kind of poor person who has a fascination with luxury. His forward propulsion is driven by a fear of poverty, the trauma of the hard life he’s had and the futility he felt in his inability to escape it. Yet it’s also a kind of class rebellion motivated by resentment for the prejudice held against him as a man without means in a highly stratified society. Paradoxically, he will do anything and everything to be accepted as a member of the elite class including murdering Etsuko, the symbol of the working class past he fears will drag him down.

Etsuko does indeed drag him down eventually in her own revenge against his callousness and the double standards of a patriarchal society. Her relationship with Kuramoto seems to be a secret in the office while he uses and discards her when no longer useful to him. She too is trapped within this building of a newly corporatised society but can rise no further alone and is in a fairly bleak position without Kuramoto for she has already thrown away her only bargaining chip by entering a sexual relationship with him. Should she attempt to raise his child alone as a never married single mother, her life would be very difficult indeed if not actually impossible. Nevertheless, she does have real power over Kuramoto in her ability to expose the affair and ruin his chances of career advancement through dynastic marriage destroying any possibility of his future success. 

In Kuramoto’s mind, Etsuko cackles like a witch or evil spirit. Her hair billows out into the wind like a vengeful ghost, though the first few times Kuramoto only imagines her death. He sees himself push her off a roof, only to be surprised to see her still standing over him. Etsuko haunts Kuramoto while alive as an image of his destruction all while he silently plots hers. He plans to use the building against her, hiding her body inside it where he assumes no one will see. In the end, it’s as if this building, an edifice of soulless corporatising capitalism, consumes them both, drawing them in with their unfulfilled desires until they fall into the bottomless pit of post-war ambition. Shima makes frequent use of solarisation and film noir lighting to destabilise Kuramoto’s world as his mental state starts to fracture along with innovative use of split screens to lend the space a sense of eerie continuity but ultimately posits the salaryman society as a kind of death trap beckoning greedy souls towards their demise with an inexorable fatalism.

Lonely Glory (わたしの見ている世界が全て, Keitaro Sakon, 2023)

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A thoroughly unpleasant young woman gradually begins to realise that other people have feelings too and she has no idea what she’s doing with her life in Keitaro Sakon’s indie drama Lonely Glory (わたしの見ている世界が全て, Watashi no Mite Iru Sekai ga Subete). Haruka currently runs a startup geared towards helping people maintain good mental health which is ironic in the extreme because she has no understanding of or regard for the feelings of others. Yet as she says during a role play with an employee, the basic principle of their business is helping people identify their problems which she ironically does on returning home to her estranged family if not entirely for altruistic reasons. 

Before that, however, we see her be unnecessarily harsh during a staff evaluation later justifying herself to the boss that they needed to clear out those who are of no use. To her, the staff member’s feelings were irrelevant, she just informed them of their subpar performance. Her boss isn’t buying it. He tells her that her management techniques are counterproductive and that with multiple accusations of bullying behaviour she herself says she is unwilling to work on (because she doesn’t understand she’s done anything wrong) he has no option other than to ask for her resignation. Unfazed, Haruka decides to start her own startup, but is soon confronted with another crisis on learning that her mother has passed away. 

On arrival at the hospital and despite being the youngest sibling Haruka immediately takes over, seemingly unmoved, and opts for the cheapest funeral plan available. She didn’t come to her father’s funeral and her siblings didn’t expect to see her for this one either, but now she has an ulterior motive in that she wants to sell the family home and business to finance her new business venture despite the fact all three siblings still live there and two of them are financially dependent on the cafe/greengrocers for their living. Haruka is incredibly judgemental about her small-town siblings’ life choices branding them as delusional and generally carrying on with an air of superiority but it’s also true enough that they are all to a degree trapped, unable to move on with their lives while afraid to leave the safety of their childhood home. 

As she says, sometimes people just need a little push which is something that she can give them but it’s never quite clear if she genuinely cares or is motivated solely by the desire to manipulate her siblings into agreeing to sell the house. Divorced sister Miwako is fairly unfussed either way but oldest son Keisuke is consumed with shame in the idea of giving up the family business while Takuji has self-esteem issues and thinks everyone looks down on him for never managing to get a job since he finished university four years previously. Challenged by Keisuke’s much younger farm girl girlfriend Asuka on the nature of success, Haruka replies that it’s having everyone around you admit you were right which lays bare her own insecurity and need to dominate every situation that she’s in. But then ironically enough she does help each of her siblings identify their problems and then gain the courage to begin moving forward. 

The dissolution of the family business and the erasure of the family home becomes in its way liberating, less the glue that bound them together than that trapped them in a perpetual adolescence. Haruka begins to realise she’s not much better than the life coach scammer who sold her vulnerable brother false promises of easy success, and that the way she treats others can have unintended consequences but in the end she’s the one left rootless and bereft of direction after closing the shop. Perhaps that’s her lonely glory, the knowledge that she helped each of her siblings do what she now can’t (or maybe just that she got what she wanted and doesn’t know what to do with it). Told with a down to earth naturalism, Sakon’s indie drama is also a lament for the changing nature of small-town life and a loss of community as the closure of the store robs the locals of another neighbourhood hub ironically leaving Haruka all alone in the now empty space of her family home with a newfound sense of loneliness still searching for the right words and a new direction. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Asakusa Kid (浅草キッド, Gekidan Hitori, 2021)

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To international audiences, Takeshi Kitano has a very specific profile associated most closely with arthouse drama and violent gangster movies yet in Japan he’s best known as a comedian and TV personality. Inspired by Kitano’s memoir, Asakusa Kid (浅草キッド) charts his earliest days from entertainment district elevator boy to manzai star while lionising his earnest mentor Sozaburo Fukami (Yo Oizumi). Yet it’s also a nostalgic look back to a late Showa pre-bubble Japan as Kitano’s idol finds himself falling foul of a changing entertainment industry. 

As the film opens in 1974, “Take” (Yuya Yagira) is one half of a struggling manzai comedy double act touring the country in various variety and cabaret establishments fearing his career may die out on the road before beginning to edge towards success and a high profile TV gig. Two years earlier, however, he’s an awkward college dropout working as an elevator boy at France-za comedy bar burlesque theatre. A local boy, Take has chosen France-za because of his admiration for “Fukami of Asakusa”, longing to make his way into the entertainment world while captivated by Fukami’s cool style, even copying his trademark tap dancing. Fukami soon sees talent in Take and tries to nurture it, but as the pair of them are repeatedly reminded, this kind of comedy is already old-fashioned. Audience numbers at France-za continue to decline while as one of the other girls later reminds him the men who come to these shows are there to see women take their clothes off, not random skits or singing. 

This is brought home to Take when he tries to encourage one of the strippers, Chiharu (Mugi Kadowaki ), to chase her dreams of becoming a singer by convincing Fukami to allow her to fill a 15-minute spot. As Fukami had attempted to warn him, the men appear to enjoy her song and offer rapturous applause but think it’s part of her act and soon resort to catcalls expecting her to take her clothes off. Take’s well-meaning gesture backfires, convincing Chiharu her dreams of singing are over, while Take is also poked into action by the other stripper’s retort that the comedy is only really “filler” between the burlesque acts which is what the customers have come to see. 

Even so, there’s less drama than one might expect in Take’s eventual decision to betray his mentor by choosing manzai and its opportunities for TV success over his by then old-fashioned sketch comedy. The father/son relationship somewhat falls by the wayside as even as a triumphant Take later returns “home” to present Fukami with the prize money for a TV award like a child with a report card full of As, while he gracefully accepts it but is privately filled both with a sense of pride and personal disappointment in being forced to accept that the heyday of Asakusa is over and there is no future in his vaudeville-style comedy acts. Nevertheless, Take appears to attribute much of his success to things he learnt from Fukami from his tap-dancing to his uncompromising attitude. “Don’t be laughed at, make them laugh,” he recalls Fukami telling him, “don’t suck up to the audience, tell them what’s funny,” later refusing to soften his inappropriate jokes about ugly girls and suicide for a more conservative TV audience and finding his edgy comedy an irreverent hit. 

Then again, not everyone is able to achieve their dreams from Fukami who lost the fingers on one hand in the war and finds himself forced off the stage, to Chiharu apparently a regular housewife with showbiz regrets, and Fukami’s wife Mari (Honami Suzuki) exhausting herself trying to help him save his dream of Asakusa. As much as Take might have admired Fukami, others too describing him as a father of contemporary entertainment, he can’t get away from the fact the press is only interested in his funeral if Take attends it. Filled with the nostalgia, the ethereal one shot closing sequence in which the older Take returns to Asakusa and to the past surrounded by the friends of his youth is genuinely poignant in the sudden juxtaposition of a lost world with the contemporary present but perhaps elegises nothing so much as nostalgia in its lament for late Showa breeziness. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)