Alien’s Daydream (地球星人（エイリアン）は空想する, Yoshiki Matsumoto, 2023)

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Who can really say what’s real and what’s not, who gets to decide what’s right and what’s wrong? The journalistic hero of Yoshiki Matsumoto’s Alien’s Daydream (地球星人（エイリアン）は空想する, Chikyu Seijin (Alien) wa Kusosuru) is asked each of these questions when railing against the absurdities of his latest assignment, a possible UFO hotspot in an otherwise remote area of Japan. In addition to the question of whether there is life on other planets, Ito is confronted by questions of press ethics as he begins to wonder if telling the truth is really the right thing to do.

In many ways, Uto’s (Yukichi Tanaka) problem is his rigidity. He doesn’t like injustice, so he stands up to some people bullying a homeless man but then also threatens to report him to the police pointing at the no loitering sign behind him. He something similar while visiting the space museum in the UFO town, abruptly breaking off his interview to confront a young woman and ask her if she has a ticket even though it’s not his responsibility seeing as he doesn’t work there and in fact it’s none of his business. Uto likes to think of himself as a serious journalist and and wants to do real investigations into the things he thinks matter, but is employed by a sleazy tabloid mainly interested in celebrity sex scandals and bits of weird news like the UFO town. 

That’s one reason Uto had little interest in going, but in the end doesn’t have much choice and is surprised to find there actually might be a story in it after all even if not quite the one his boss might be looking for. A local man is claiming to have been abducted by aliens and dumped in a random place some distance from where he was taken, while the girl he interrogated about her ticket, Noa, keeps making cryptic statements about “earthlings”, refers to aliens as her “people” and is fascinated by crop circles.

What he eventually discovers is that Noa may really have been kidnapped a few years ago if by a more terrestrial presence and subsequently brainwashed by a UFO worshipping cult. He realises that to some, including the girl’s mother, the stuff about aliens is a harmless delusion and blessing in disguise that prevents her from remembering what “really” happened. Uto want to write an article stating what how thinks it was, but if he does so there’a chance Noa may find out the “truth” and have her illusions shattered. He goes ahead and publishes anyway, but then realises his central hypothesis may have been incorrect and he’s fingered the wrong man. He then has another dilemma of whether or not to correct his article with Noa’s mother and friends each saying it’s better if he just lets it stand as the truth so that at least Noa won’t be branded a crazy cultist.

It turns out the local UFO lore has a surprisingly long history dating back to the Edo era which has given rise to a series of folk legends. The space museum itself is designed to resemble the pre-modern UFO and is a decidedly strange place where the manager is constantly shadowed by a man in a green alien mask.Yet what Uto is later learns is that we are all perhaps lonely aliens, each from different planets which is why we’re so different from each other. Uto himself often seems somehow alien in his rigidity and black of white way of thinking, a quality perfectly brought out by Yukichi Tanaka’s stiffness and often vacant stare. Noa asks him if he isn’t tire of living his life like that, so needlessly uptight and unimaginative and perhaps in a way he is though he soon turns the equation around on her. Dividing the film into 10 chapters each with a strange and childlike illustration, Matsumoto adds a touch of whimsical absurdity to what could otherwise be quite a dark tale. Uto may have to learn that he isn’t the arbiter of the truth, selling believable lies to a readership looking for something to make life more interesting, but is free to find the truth for himself because it is of course out there for those want to believe. 

Alien’s Daydream screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Camera Japan Announces Complete Programme for 2024

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Camera Japan returns for its 19th edition in Rotterdam 26th to 29th September and in Amsterdam 3rd to 6th October bringing with it another fantastic selection of the best in recent and not so recent Japanese cinema.

Feature Films

  • Afterschool Anglers Club – a bullied teen makes new friends through fishing in Hideo Jojo’s laidback drama.
  • Alien’s Daydream – surreal drama in which a jaded reporter investigates reports of alien activity.
  • All the Long Nights – mismatched colleagues struggling amid contemporary corporate culture find unexpected solidarity in Sho Miyake’s gentle human drama. Review.
  • All the Songs We Never Sang – a young woman finds herself diving into the past after receiving a less than enthusiastic welcome on visiting her mother’s island home in Chris Rudz’s gentle indie drama. Review.
  • Baby Assassins: Nice Days – the Baby Assassins try to have a nice holiday but instead find themslves facing off against a rogue hitman. Review.
  • The Box Man – those who obsess over the Box Man, become the Box Man, in Gakuryu Ishii’s adaptation of the Kobo Abe novel. Review.
  • Bushido – a stoical ronin’s peaceful life is disrupted by a face from the past in Kazuya Shiraishi’s elegantly lensed period drama. Review.
  • Confession – latest from Nobuhiro Yamashita starring Toma Ikuta and Yang Ik-june as two men hiking in memory of a late friend.
  • Desert of Namibia – a young woman struggles with the conditions of modern living.
  • Fly Me to the Saitama – From Biwa Lake with Love – Osaka is on the March in the sequel to the popular comedy. Review.
  • Great Absence – a forced reconnection with his estranged father forces a young man to contemplate the great absences of life in Kei Chikaura’s poetic drama.
  • Hoyaman – the tranquil island life of a pair of brothers is interrupted by the arrival of a mysterious woman in Teruaki Shoji’s quirky comedy. Review.
  • Ichiko – when a young woman disappears, it transpires that she never existed in the first place in Akihiro Toda’s twisty psychological mystery. Review.
  • Kyrie – musical drama from Shunji Iwai told over 10 years and starring AiNA THE END as a street musician who can only communicate through song.
  • Let’s Go Karaoke! – an old school yakuza and high school boy find themselves fighting similar battles through the medium of Karaoke in Nobuhiro Yamashita’s zany comedy. Review.
  • The Moon – a formerly successful author struggling with personal tragedy takes a job at a care home and is shocked by what she finds in Yuya Ishii’s hard-hitting drama.
  • One Second Ahead, One Second Behind – misaligned romantics eventually rediscover a long forgotten connection in Nobuhiro Yamashita’s take on Taiwanese rom-com My Missing Valentine. Review.
  • Penalty Loop – a man trapped in a timeloop of vengeance begins to realise the fallacy of revenge in Shinji Araki’s absurdist drama. Review.
  • Promised Land – a young man takes drastic action when traditional bear hunting is called off.
  • Qualia – a timid poultry farmer’s wife begins to feel her coop’s a little cramped after unwittingly inviting her husband’s mistress to live with them in Ryo Ushimaru’s quirky family dramedy. Review.
  • Retake – a diffident teenage boy finds himself editing in real time in Kota Nakano’s movie-making summer holiday movie. Review.
  • Shin Masked Rider – Hideaki Anno’s take on the classic tokusatsu series.
  • Sin and Evil – when their friend is murdered, three teenage boys end up killing a man they assume to be responsible and then carry on with their lives only for the case to echo 20 years later.
  • Six Singing Women – a man finds himself trapped in a strange place after travelling to the mountains in the wake of his estranged father’s death in Yoshimasa Ishibashi’s surreal drama. Review.
  • Stay Mum – on returning to care for estranged father, a woman finds herself taking care of a neglected little boy in Kosai Sekine’s maternal melodrama. Review.
  • Swimming in a Sand Pool – a group of high school girls ponder the role of gender in their lives while shovelling the sand in Nobuhiro Yamashita’s charming teen comedy. Review.
  • Tatsumi – a fisherman/cleaner for a drug gang teams up with his ex-girlfriend’s sister to avenge her death.
  • Till the Day I Can Laugh about My Blues – lonely young woman bonds with a mysterious girl after being given a magic kaleidoscope.
  • Worlds Apart – a young woman goes to live with her eccentric aunt after her parents are killed in an accident in a gentle drama from Natsuki Seta.
  • Yoko – an isolated woman begins to rediscover herself while hitchhiking to her estranged father’s funeral in Kazuyoshi Kumakiri’s quietly moving road movie. Review.

Animation

Documentary

Special Screenings

  • All Mixed Up – new restoration of Yasuzo Masumura’s adaptation of the Tanizaki novel Quicksand.
  • Hoodlum Soldier – first in the series of films featuring Shintaro Katsu.
  • Kisses – Masumura’s debut feature subverts the Sun Tribe narrative for sweet and charming youth romance.
  • Nakano Spy School – drama starring Raizo Ichikawa as a recruit at Japan’s famous espionage academy.
  • The Wife’s Confession – searing drama starring Ayako Wakao as a wife accused of killing her husband. Review.

Camera Japan 2024 takes place in Rotterdam 26th to 29th September and Amsterdam 3rd to 6th October. Full information on all the films as well as ticketing links can be found on the official website and you can also keep up to date with all the latest news via Camera Japan’s official Facebook page, X (formerly known as Twitter) account, and Instagram channel.

Vendetta of a Samurai (荒木又右衛門 決闘鍵屋の辻, Kazuo Mori, 1952)

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During the American Occupation, period dramas were frowned upon, the occupation forces apparently fearing that they might encourage the latent feudalism in Japanese society. Released immediately before the Occupation’s end, Kazuo Mori’s Vendetta of a Samurai (荒木又右衛門 決闘鍵屋の辻, Araki Mataemon: Ketto Kagiya no Tsuji), not to be confused with the director’s similarly titled Samurai Vendetta from a few years later, is a suitably revisionist piece interrogating the legacy not only of the samurai but the samurai movie in demonstrating, quite poignantly for the contemporary audience, that the rigid and austere codes of a warrior class did nothing but create sadness which forced good men to sacrifice true friendship in service not even of an ideal but simply an agreement. 

To signal his intent, Mori opens with a bombastic sequence shot in the fashion of pre-war jidaigeki, all booming speeches and clashing swords before a voiceover cuts in to tell us everything we know of the events in play is wrong. The legends surrounding the battle at Kagiya Corner tell us that Jinza (Takashi Shimura) was a bad man, and that Mataemon (Toshiro Mifune) killed 36 that day, but in reality Jinza was kind and noble and in fact the two men were good friends while Mataemon in reality struck down only two enemies which is in any case much more plausible if perhaps less exciting. As the classic chanbara scene fades, we return to the modern city of Ueno in Iga which in some respects remains unchanged further emphasising the “reality” of the brief 17th century conflict. As we learn, a man called Matagoro (Minoru Chiaki) has poked a hole through the samurai order in killing the brother of a young man called Kazuma (Akihiko Katayama), and so a lot of people have to die to eradicate the corruption of his transgression.

Boasting a script by Akira Kurosawa, the action flips between Mataemon, brother-in-law of Kazuma, and his men waiting for the arrival of Jinza and Matagoro inside a small inn, and the circumstances which brought them to this point. Mataemon is duty bound to support Kazuma who is really just a boy forced to seek revenge because they are family though there does not seem to be much heat in his desire for justice against Matagoro. Jinza, by contrast, is positioned on the opposite side solely because he is affiliated with a high ranking Hatamoto who is protecting Matagoro. Yet the two men are good friends each resigned to their fates and in full knowledge of how the samurai world works. The have no quarrel with each other, but are forced into mortal combat because of a complex network of loyalties and obligations that can only be satisfied with blood. 

“What is the meaning of this violence?” an imperious official asks, receiving no answer only a mild plea for a little more time. “Being a samurai, what a funny thing,” Mataemon laments to himself reflecting on the fact he must now kill or be killed by his friend for no real reason but simply because things are the way they are. Jinza meanwhile agrees, “Being warriors, what a misfortune,” as the pair calmly discuss the inherent hypocrisies which define their lives wherein all that really matters is one’s proximity to the shogun. That’s one reason the nervous Mago (Daisuke Kato) has joined the mission for revenge, his loyalist father a former tutor to the lord and keen to show their fealty but also hoping to advance their fortunes through a successful vendetta. 

Mago isn’t the only one who’s scared. The inn keeper is visibly shaking. He didn’t really want to be ground zero for a samurai duel today and is presumably worried not just for his safety but for the repercussions of offending his guests and damage to his property. A crowd gathering around the fighting, which includes the wealthy merchant brother-in-law of Matagoro who declared himself unafraid of a few rural bumpkin samurai, remarks on the smell of blood in the air seemingly both horrified and excited by the spectacle though even that is thin on the ground. No grand duel, Mataemon merely strikes his friend down before the battle begins, thereafter coaching the young Kazuma to overcome his fear and claim his revenge despite the bloody ugliness of the task. Yet in the end all there is is fear and futility, along with still more duty and the promise of more blood to come.  

The Mob (龙虎制霸, Zhao Cong, 2023)

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The feckless son of the head of the Chamber of Commerce discovers he needs to grow up fast when a rival gang starts selling opium in the Shanghai of 1928 in Zhao Cong’s well appointed action streamer, The Mob (龙虎制霸, lónghǔ zhì bà). There can be few settings as enticing as pre-war Shanghai and Zhao certainly makes the most of his budget with beautifully designed sets along with a number of stylish action sequences and a narrative that’s a little more interesting that your average streamer.

The interesting thing is that the bad guys are the ones who want to work with foreigners, particularly the British, to flood Shanghai with opium which is obviously very bad for everyone and will cause a series of social problems the good gangs and the authorities don’t really want to deal with not least because it will disrupt their other business and increase foreign influence in the city. Evil gangster Zhao Longde doesn’t care about that though and is already making trouble that is only exacerbated by the return of his illegitimate son Yuyang from studying abroad. Yuyang has a serious chip on his shoulder about his relationship with his father and is jealous of Longde’s adopted son, Hai, who is just much better at this whole gangster thing and all thing’s considered the son Longde probably wants as opposed to Yuyang who can’t be trusted with anything.

Across town, Fang is also a feckless son but one on the side of the good guys in that his father is the current head of the Chamber of Commerce and dead against anyone trading opium in Shanghai. If they do, they’ll be kicked out and unable to do business in the city. Though the name sounds legitimate, it’s really just a forum to maintain equilibrium between the various gangs who control the local ports though the balance has already been destabilised with tension between Zhao Lin who runs swanky nightclub New World and Longde who apparently caused his brother to lose the use of his hand. Fang is drawn into the conflict when he comes to the defence of Hai when he’s attacked and outnumbered at New World.

They’re obviously on opposing sides, but the two men discover a respect for each other as fighters and men of honour. Hai is a loyal son to Longde and respected Yuyang out of loyalty to him but privately does not approve of some of the gang’s actions such as flouting the rules of the Chamber of Commerce, bumping off their rivals, and planning to take control of the local opium trade. Fang, meanwhile, is just really directionless and an overindulged little brother who spends all his time reading comic books and gambling on frog racing much to the disappointment of his father. But with all hell breaking loose in Shanghai, he has no choice but to step up to the plate and play his part as a member of the Tongmingtang to restore order and keep drugs out of Shanghai.

Interestingly enough, though perhaps just because it’s a streaming movie set firmly within the pre-Communist past, the film does not end with one of the familiar title cards explaining that justice was done and the wrongdoers punished but in fact justifies Fang’s violence as righteous and adds that he later joined the resistance movement against the Japanese (which sounds like a hook for another interesting film). In any case, Zhao includes plenty of twists and turns, betrayals and counter betrayals, while reserving the most interesting arc for the conflicted Hai who eventually shakes himself free of the sense of obligation he has to a gang that offends his sense of morality realising that like Fang he owes nothing to anyone and is free to make an individualistic choice as regards which side to be on. Fang’s sister Jiayue meanwhile is somewhat underused but is otherwise quite an imposing presence and certainly makes an impact with a hardline stance against the priggish Yuyang. Echoing the era of Heroic Bloodshed, Zhao lends the action an epic quality through his artfully designed set pieces including the rain soaked finale and an impressively staged assassination sequence intercut with scenes of a grieving family at a funeral.

The Mob is available now in the US on Digital courtesy of Well Go USA.

US trailer

Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram (名探偵コナン 100万ドルの五稜星, Chika Nagaoka, 2024)

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Now a sprawling multi-media franchise, Detective Conan began with Gosho Aoyama’s manga which published its first instalment in 1994 and is still going strong 30 years later. The series was released in the US in the 2000s under the name Case Closed and in a decision which was perhaps more common then than today anglicised all of the character’s names and settings (the Japanese publisher then began releasing its own English language translation of the manga maintaining all the original Japanese names and plot details). Meanwhile Detective Conan remains hugely popular across Asia and regularly tops the Japanese box office with the annual release of a feature film revolving around a major case for Conan in addition to the ongoing anime and manga.

Which is all to say it has a very well developed universe and vast cast of characters which weave in and out of Conan’s various adventures. The main thing to note about Conan himself, which is explained very briefly in a short introductory sequence to the movie, is that he’s actually a 17-year-old high school detective but his body was shrunk to the size of a small child when he was drugged by the mysterious Black Organisation after witnessing to of their agents getting up to something shady in a park. Only a handful of people know his true identity while he often works with the police solving crimes, and is common with Japanese crime fiction more often than not locked room mysteries.

The Million-Dollar Pentagram (名探偵コナン 100万ドルの五稜星, Meitantei Conan 100-man Dollar Michishirube), the 27th Conan movie, is somewhat different in this regard as it’s more of a treasure hunt in which Conan (voiced by Minami Takayama) and his associate Heiji (Ryo Horikawa) must attempt to figure out the mystery of some missing treasure which might have something to do with a pair of swords stolen by one of Conan’s arch nemeses, Kid the Phantom Thief (Kappei Yamaguchi). Like many of these kinds of stories, the mystery turns on historical detail in this case stemming back to the Meiji Restoration and legendary Shinsengumi boss Hijikata Toshizo, if by way of a long-dead industrialist who got rich quick during the pre-war goldrush in Hokkaido. Some of his estate apparently went missing after his death and now his grandson, who’s messed up the family business, wants to find it and so does Conan but for slightly different reasons. In any case, no one even knows what the treasure is and they may be disappointed when they find out especially as it might not show grandpa Onoe in a particularly good light. 

There is undoubtedly quite a lot going on with a prominent subplot focusing on Heiji’s crush on love interest Kazuha (Yuko Miyamura) and his rivalry with Kid the Phantom Thief with his big plan to finally confess his feelings aligning with the climax of the mystery taking place on Mount Hakodate. A port town in Hokkaido, Hakodate has not often been well served by cinema often appearing in indie films such as And Your Bird Can Sing, Sketches of Kaitan City, and Over the Fence as a moribund post-industrial centre the protagonists can’t escape, but here seems pleasant and relaxed as a kind of Northern Kyoto rich in period history. The film’s success has apparently spiked a mini tourist boom in the area.  

The filmmakers apparently did not want to destroy any of the town’s architecture even in animation, hoping to make the most of the city’s famous night scenes and beautiful scenery. Nevertheless, there are the usual series of impressive action sequences including one of Conan riding a jet-powered skateboard not to mention taking out a suspect with a football while Heiji fights another on the wings of a biplane. As for the mystery itself, it’s not the kind where the audience will be able to work it out seeing as it depends on very specific cultural knowledge that even Conan needs a hint to key into but eventually broadens into something more international involving arms dealers and corrupt businessmen. Long-standing fans of the franchise will want to stay put for a very interesting post-credits sequence and even newcomers will get a kick out of an unexpected punchline to the film’s closing moments. All in all another classic case for the Conan team peppering its key mystery with the humour and warmth the franchise is known for.

Detective Conan: The Million-Dollar Pentagram opens in UK cinemas 27th September courtesy of CineAsia.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese & English subtitles)

The Wind Blows Twice (風ふたゝび, Shiro Toyoda, 1952)

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Struggling with the end of her marriage, a young woman finds herself listless yet considering new possibilities in Shiro Toyoda’s The Wind Blows Twice (風ふたゝび, Kaze Futatabi). Adapted from a serialised novel by Tatsuo Nagai, the title is echoed in a remark from one of two potential suitors that youth is something that can come two or even three times so as long as you remain young at heart. They are each, however, each currently frozen and unable to move forward in the wake of their personal traumas. 

Kanae (Setsuko Hara), it seems, married for love but her husband has apparently been arrested for some kind of corruption. She has severed all ties with him and returned to the house of the uncle and aunt who raised her after her mother’s death where she helps out in their shop. Meanwhile, she learns that her semi-estranged father Seijiro (Ken Mitsuda), a university professor who lives in Sendai and hasn’t been in contact despite his daughter’s difficult circumstances, collapsed on the steps of the local station and is being cared for by a former student, Miyashita (Ryo Ikebe). She travels to look after him and becomes closer to Miyashita, who currently works as an auctioneer and has dreams of becoming a greengrocer, but is perturbed to learn that her father is a suspect in the theft of 10,000 yen from the wallet of a wealthy man, Michihara (So Yamamura), who carelessly left in the toilet and discovered the money missing when he went back to pick it up. Worried that the rumour may damage her father’s career, Kanae goes to apologise and find out what’s going on but Michihara tells her not to worry and it was his own fault anyway but his sudden magnanimity seems suspicious. In any case, Kanae later tells her friend Yoko that Michihara frightened her, also remarking to Miyashita that she felt as if she managed to slip away from him as she made her escape.

Though he later turns out to be sympathetic, Michihara appears as the villain of the piece. He thinks Kanae reminds him of his late wife and intends to ask her to marry him one the seventh anniversary memorial service is concluded. He starts using his wealth and power to gently interfere in her life, setting up a job for her on hearing that she’d been looking for employment and later approaching her father with the idea of investing in his research into the use of fluorides in the production of resin. Despite her initial dislike of him, Kanae goes along with everything and is soon sucked into Michihara’s world while otherwise wilfully oblivious of his feelings for her (which she does not share) and hoping he’ll help her convince Miyashita that he ought to return to science and help her father with his research which would obviously pave the way for them be together romantically.

The problem is that like Kanae Miyashita has become frozen inside, scarred by his wartime experiences and soured on science. Yet just as staying with him restores Kanae’s spirit and encourages her to want to look for work and find purpose in her life, her influence on him reawakens his passion for scientific research only he is less happy about it than she was. The interest that’s sparked in him ironically lies in the frozen north, travelling to Hokkaido to see an old friend and researching how to prevent potatoes from freezing in order to improve people’s quality of life. In essence it seems as if the futures they may want are too different. Now much more cheerful and energetic, Kanae genuinely enjoys her work in broadcasting and is less than keen to give it up and move to rural Hokkaido to help Miyashita study potatoes while secretly hoping she can convince him, with Michihara’s help, to become a respectable academic like her father and live a nice middle class life researching things that are more useful to industry and big business than to regular people.

Miyashita is disinclined to do so. He bounds straight off a train to see her with three day stubble from the journey, only to be disappointed witnessing in her in an elaborate kimono with her hair constrained in traditional style while Michihara is there waiting to see him to discuss a job offer from Seijiro. It’s at this point that he seems to decide his romantic desire for Kanae is most likely futile and she has chosen the rarified world of Michihara rather a rustic and homely life with a man like himself. Of course, this makes it sound as if Kanae doesn’t have much choice at all herself and to an extent she doesn’t or at least she feels backed into a corner while her aunt pressures her to remarry, unbothered to which man but excited about the proposal from Michihara because it means she will enjoy a life of uninterrupted financial comfort.

Having chosen her own suitor and seen things go drastically wrong also increases her aunt’s conviction that she shouldn’t make the same mistake again while she too is perhaps wary of remarrying. In any case. Kanae seems to want work and enjoys her job in broadcasting as much as she’s naturally drawn to Miyashita who brings out in her a greater desire to live while Michihara only seems to want her to be a shadow of his late wife suggesting that to marry a man like that may itself be a kind of death sentence. To that extent, the choice Kanae makes involves a predicable sacrifice, but still in any case it is a choice that she makes for herself to strike out for happiness and fulfilment of her own choosing rather than allow herself to be railroaded by conventionality unable to express her own desires.

The Fourth Portrait (第四張畫, Chung Mong-Hong, 2010)

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A young boy struggles to forge his own identity while lost amid the legacy of perpetual displacement in Chung Mong-Hong’s whimsical coming-of-age drama The Fourth Portrait (第四張畫). As the title implies, Chung structures his tale around four images as the boy looks for guidance through each of his relationships but perhaps finally discovers only that he is on his own and has only himself for protection yet must find the courage to try and escape even if it causes him pain. 

At 10 years old, young Xiang (Bi Xiao-Hai) is impossibly burdened in the way no child should be as a doctor coldly tells him that his father will soon pass, a nurse instructing him to stay put and let them know when his father is gone. Xiang impassively places a napkin over his father’s face, the undertakers bickering amongst themselves while deciding to do the funeral for free seeing as this child is now all alone and seemingly has no other family. Yet no one comes to take care of Xiang, he has to go home on his own and begins living independently eventually resorting to stealing lunch boxes at school only to be caught and scolded by a grumpy janitor who both tenderly offers him food but then roughly slaps him when he notices the boy is crying. 

As Xiang is about to become, the old man, Zhang (Chin Shih-Chieh), is also a displaced person having travelled from the Mainland 50 years previously. He takes him to scavenge abandoned buildings meditating on what it is that gets left behind, why it has value to some and apparently not to others. Xiang himself was abandoned by his mother who took his older brother with her but chose to leave him with his father, wondering perhaps if he is valuable or not. Technically if not literally orphaned, Xiang is later reunited with his mother, Chun-lang (Hao Lei), but is then displaced himself, forced to move to the city and into the house she shares with her second husband and infant child. Like Zhang his mother came from the Mainland in search of a better life she did not find and is living with a sense of disappointed futility trapped in her marriage to a dejected and violent man (Leon Dai) while forced to support the family through sex work at a nearby hostess club frequented largely by Mainland gangsters. 

Unanchored and insecure in his new environment, Xiang begins having strange dreams of his apparently absent brother Yi but his attempts to discover the truth about the past only further destabilise the foundations of his new home. His mother cannot fully embrace him because of her guilt over leaving him behind while unable to fully process the reality of what may have happened to Yi too frightened of the truth to risk poking around. His stepfather meanwhile is a haunted man, unable to work and seemingly the primary carer to their small child though neither them are ever really seen paying much attention to the baby. When Chun-lang tells Xiang that he is a stranger in their house, that she is no longer the mother she once was because she has married another man and has another child with him, she does so perhaps partly to encourage him to leave advising him to steer clear of his stepfather in a bid to keep him safe yet blaming herself for all the tragedy which has befallen her accepting it would not have happened if she had not “messed up” her life. 

Perhaps this is why Xiang finds himself bonding with a decidedly strange middle-aged man he meets by accident in a public toilet. “Big Gun” paints himself as something of a big brother figure, suggesting that they can drift together travelling around on his moped. His conduct towards the boy is extremely inappropriate in more ways than one involving him in his life of petty crime, yet Xiang finds in him a sense of acceptance that he doesn’t get from the other adults along with a new sense of independence. Yet Xiang’s illusions are eventually shattered twice over, the first revelation paving the way for a greater loss of innocence in discovering the truth about his brother while the second perhaps leads him to feel that he really is alone, continually displaced, and entirely unanchored in a world with offers little prospect of warmth, affection, or a place to belong. 

Like Zhang and his mother, Xiang is fails to settle in contemporary Taiwan lost amid a stream of constant dislocations and bound only for endless wandering. Yet staring into a mirror preparing for his fourth portrait he perhaps begins to forge an image of himself informed by those he’s drawn before and giving him the sense of confidence to survive the emptiness of the world around him. Beautifully shot with a lingering ethereality, Chung’s enigmatic storytelling coupled with the whimsical score lend a note cheerfulness to what in many ways is a fairly bleak situation but perhaps reflects the surreality of the boy’s life in his constant quest for belonging. 

International trailer (English subtitles)

Kalanchoe (カランコエの花, Shun Nakagawa, 2017)

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The truth is, most people genuinely mean well but they often make mistakes. They make them because they don’t think things through, fail to consider perspectives outside of their own, or act on assumptions that they later realise were incorrect (or tragically do not). Most people will come to understand where they went wrong and resolve to do better in future, but you don’t always get a second chance and a momentary lapse in judgement can do untold and sometimes irreparable harm.

Perhaps that’s just a lesson you learn as a part of growing up, but it doesn’t make it any less painful or indeed shocking at least for the heroine of Shun Nakagawa’s 40-minute mid-length film Kalanchoe (カランコエの花, Kalanchoe no Hana). The film’s title refers to a bright red plant that in the language of flowers means “I will protect you.” But protection can be a double-edged sword, and Tsuki’s (Mio Imada) later attempt to do just that for her friend seriously backfires well meaning though it may have been. The same is true of an ill thought out decision by the school nurse to give a mini lecture on LGBTQ+ issues to Tsuki’s class when their English teacher’s off sick. Because it was only their class that received this talk, some of the students assume it must mean that one of them is gay and begin a kind of witch-hunt trying to figure out who it might be which is completely the opposite of the reaction the talk was supposed to provoke.

Of course, the nurse meant well but it probably should have occurred to her to make sure the class wasn’t singled out and support was available for any students who might be experiencing anxiety surrounding their sexuality or gender identity rather than doing something essentially superficial to make herself feel better. Though most of the students are indifferent to the talk, the class clown bears out the latent homophobia of the current society in badgering the nurse to find out if there are any gay people “or other creeps” in their class while vowing to root them out and making it a kind of game to catch one. The girls, meanwhile, engage in some aggressive heteronormativity talking about boys and pretty much making it impossible for any of them to declare themselves for whatever reason uninterested. 

As it turns out, one student overheard the conversation in the nurse’s office that provoked the talk and knows that one of the students is indeed gay, perhaps inappropriately telling Tsuki who it is in an effort to relieve the burden on herself of carrying this explosive information. When Sakura (Arisa), the student in question, begins to tell Tsuki that she’s gay, Tsuki firstly reacts well patiently waiting rather than admit she already knows though in the end Sakura cannot go through with it despite having said that Tsuki was the person she most wanted to understand. Sakura had admired Tsuki’s red scrunchie that she herself had worried was too bold, prompting her to turn over in her hands and consider it as if thinking over how she intends to react to this information and how she herself may or may not feel.

But on her second opportunity she missteps. Fearing Sakura has been outed, she loudly and clearly says it isn’t true even though she knows it is in a mistaken attempt at “protection” as if she were clearing her name which is also an expression of her own latent belief that it being true is in someway bad. In its way, it echoes the fateful moment in William Wyler’s The Children’s Hour in which Shirley MacLaine tells Audrey Hepburn there’s some truth in the rumour, but Audrey Hepburn tells her she’s lost her mind and though the outcome may not be quite as devastating it’s still a crushing blow with the brutal conclusion implying nothing more than Tsuki will have to live with her bad decision and the pain it caused for the rest of her life. Nakagawa skips between idyllic scenes of the girls on a bike, head gently resting on a shoulder, and scenes of regular high school life but ends on a note of quiet tragedy that feels somehow casually cruel.

Kalanchoe is available to stream via SAKKA from 20th September.

A Family (ヤクザと家族 The Family, Michihito Fujii, 2020)

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“No one can survive as a yakuza in this world” according to another orphaned son playing the long game of a crime adjacent existence in Michihito Fujii’s melancholy gangster drama, A Family (ヤクザと家族 The Family, Yakuza to Kazoku The Family). The yakuza, or at least yakuza in the movies, has long been a relic of the Showa era rendered increasingly irrelevant in a society no longer in need of its dubious claims of protection. In truth, it’s hard to mourn the passing of organised crime, but Fujii at least finds a kind of pathos and infinite sympathy for these men for whom the gangster brotherhood took the place of a family even if one with a self-destructive legacy. 

To begin with, petty street punk “Li’l Ken” (Go Ayano) wants nothing to do with the yakuza, seemingly the only guest at the funeral of the drug dealer father he resented other than a corrupt cop from the organised crime squad, Osako (Ryo Iwamatsu), who expresses regret that had he simply arrested him perhaps Ken’s father would be still be alive. Visiting another “familial” environment, a Korean barbecue run by the maternal Aiko (Shinobu Terajima) herself the widow of a gangster currently with a baby on her back, Ken gets himself noticed by local mobster Shibasaki (Hiroshi Tachi) by taking on some punks who stormed into the restaurant and attacked his guys. Explaining that his guys don’t associate with drugs, Shibasaki offers him a job which he refuses but having his card in his pocket literally saves his life when he’s pickup by rival gang leader Kato (Kosuke Toyohara) after having stolen and then destroyed some of their stash after stumbling across a drug deal. The course of Ken’s life is set, he joins the Shibasaki gang along with his two delinquent friends and accepts Shibasaki as his “oyabun” or “father”. 

In Shibasaki, Ken finds a father figure more palatable than the one he lost. As in many a yakuza movie, the Shibasaki clan is positioned as “good yakuza” of the old school kind who believe in things like duty and honour and are apparently pursuing the path towards becoming “true men”. The rival Kyoyo, by contrast, are “bad” new yakuza who no longer play by the old rules and make their money through destructive vices such as drugs. The expected turf war does exactly materialise though the uneasy truce between the rival gangs becomes increasingly strained as the economic situation of millennial Japan begins to shift, the local town council apparently set on demolishing the red light district as part of their plans for redeveloping the city. Kyoyo would rather take over its entirety, pushing Shibasaki to retreat in exchange for a small amount of monetary compensation while shady cop Osako tries to play the situation to his own advantage. 

Yet it’s also clear that the yakuza as an institution is on its way out. After a 14-year prison term, Ken emerges into a very different world in which organised crime has been hounded further into the margins thanks to effective, though the film would also argue inherently vindictive, legislation. No one can make any money anymore, and the slightest slip up can lead to arrest. The Shibasaki gang is now a handful of old men, most of the guys having moved on only moving on from the yakuza life is not easy as Ken’s old friend Hosono (Hayato Ichihara) explains. In order to rejoin regular society, a former yakuza must endure five years in the wilderness unable to open a bank account or get a regular job leaving them with few possibilities for basic survival that enable them to leave a life of crime. Now with a young daughter and job in waste disposal, Hosono is nervous and reticent, reluctant to be seen in public with Ken lest he be tarred with the criminal brush and lose access to the new life he’s managed to build for himself as a responsible husband and father. 

Urged by Shibasaki, Ken eventually leaves one family for another in reuniting with a woman he loved before prison who has since made a respectable life for herself as a low level civil servant but once his life of crime is exposed by a thoughtless colleague at his new job in deconstruction, he discovers that there is no place for a “reformed” yakuza in the contemporary society because in a sense there can be no such thing. Once gangster always a gangster, there is no path forward. Complaining that Osako has stolen his right to life, Ken is told only that the yakuza lost human rights long ago. 

“They’re my family. No reasons are needed” Ken replied when asked why he became a yakuza, but he continues to find himself torn between the various concepts of family and the inheritances of his two very different father figures. “Your time is over old man”, Aiko’s fatherless son Tsubasa (Hayato Isomura) tells an unrepentant Kato attempting to hang on to his territory in the face of a younger generation operating on an entirely different level, rejecting the codification of gangsterdom but seemingly embracing its romance. Tsubasa too is later sucked in by the hyper masculine revenge drama of the yakuza way, seeking vengeance for the death of his father and apparently prepared to ruin his life in order to gain it. It’s for this surrogate son, now a kind of father figure himself, that Ken will eventually make a sacrifice. A sad tale of dubious paternal legacies, frustrated fatherhood, life’s persistent unfairness, and a perhaps uncomfortable lament for a bygone Japan defined by giri/ninjo conflict ruled by manly men, the ironically titled A Family has only sympathy for those trapped by an inescapable spiral of manly violence but also reserves its respect for those who know their time has passed and elect to end the cycle in order to set their “sons” free. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Tokyo Sweetheart (東京の恋人, Yasuki Chiba, 1952)

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It appears that even as early as 1952, some people were doing “very well, thank you” despite the suffering going on all around them. Then again, the heroes of Yasuki Chiba’s charming ensemble rom-com Tokyo Sweetheart (東京の恋人, Tokyo no Koibito) are relentlessly cheerful and likely wouldn’t use the word “suffering” to describe themselves, preferring instead to laugh at the foolishness of wealthy men and their petty squabbles while continuing to value what is honest and genuine above greed and insincerity.

At least, there’s a minor irony in the fact that Akazawa (Hisaya Morishige) makes his living selling pachinko balls, a a source of elusive hope that’s brought ruin to millions. His mistress, Konatsu (Murasaki Fujima), exclaims that when you’re doing well a ring or two is nothing, trying to manipulate Akazawa into buying a 500,000 yen diamond from the jewellers’ downstairs. Akazawa can afford to buy it, but he doesn’t really want to because he’s cheap and greedy. Later we’re introduced to a friend of portrait artist Yuki (Setsuko Hara) who does caricatures on the street corner below the office and hangs out with the three shoeshine boys opposite. Harumi (Yoko Sugi), a sex worker, has fallen ill presumably from tuberculosis. They only need 500 yen daily for her living expenses and medicine, but the only way they can hope to come up with it is by getting a large amount of people to part with a small amount of money which they are all willing to do as an act of solidarity. 

In rather farcical turn of events, the jeweller’s has commissioned a fake ring to display in the window for security purposes while they keep the real one in the safe. Konatsu suggests a complex plan to the jewellers of getting Akazawa to buy the diamond but giving him the fake which she will then return and pocket difference. Only Akazawa has the same idea, or rather he only wants to buy the fake one because Konatsu won’t know the difference and he doesn’t think she’s worth the expense of the real one. When he ends up with both rings, Akazawa’s wife, Tsuruko (Nijiko Kiyokawa), makes him give the fake one, which is actually real, to the tea girl, Tama, who wants to sell it, even if it is fake, to help Harumi not only with her illness but to escape sex work. The boys tell her she’s being selfish and naive. If Harumi had any way of escaping sex work she would have done so years ago, there’s no real hope for her now. “A shoe can be repaired,” one of the boys sighs, “but I’m not so sure about her.”

In some ways, it seems as if the genuineness of the ring is unimportant. The two are often mistaken for each other and few can tell the difference. After all, if you like it, what does its supposed authenticity matter and what does that really mean anyway? It does, however, seem to matter to Yuki who later says that she thought the film’s most genuine person, Kurokawa (Toshiro Mifune), was “gaudy and slick” when they first met because he was wearing a tacky tie pin and ring which stand out a mile to her as “fake”. Kurokawa in fact makes the replica jewellery displayed in front windows and dresses in that way as a kind lived brand though he does not necessarily approve of his own occupation. He exceeds expectations when he tracks the gang down in order to pay back some money Yuki had lent him when the conductor couldn’t give him change for his bus fare, as well as treating the shoeshine kids to ice creams and warning off the creepy yakuza type who keeps trying to bother Yuki for dates.

But the contradictions are brought to the fore when Harumi’s health declines and Yuki decides she ought to call the estranged mother to whom Harumi had written a comforting letter stating that she’d married and was living happily in Tokyo, enclosing a photo of herself and Kurokawa one of the shoeshine boys had taken on his toy camera. Yuki wants Kurokawa to pose as the husband so the mother won’t be so upset, only for him to point out that she now asks him adopt a fake persona after taking him to task for confusing people with his “fakes”. Again, this false comfort does seem to bring genuine relief to the mother even if as Kurokawa suspects she’s seen right through their ruse suggesting that authenticity of feeling is the only kind that matters.

Akazawa and his wife, meanwhile, bankrupt themselves trawling the river looking for the lost “genuine” ring sinking to all new depths of absurdity as even Tsuruko dons a diving suit and goes in to look herself. Unfortunately, all they find is a single pachinko ball. There is something quite abrupt about the sudden tonal shift from Harumi’s death bed to the gang laughing away at the foolishness of Akazawa and his wife, the boys convinced that Yuki and Kurokawa are now a couple though they never really enjoy much of a romantic resolution. Kurokawa lives a long way out of town and his home is surrounded by rubble and empty lots, signs of post-war devastation still not fully cleared away though Yuki and the boys, presumably war orphans, remain endlessly cheerful even as the extreme irony of Kurokawa’s rendition of Moon Over Ruined Castle washes over them. They do at least have each other and the strength of their community, living honest and genuine lives every day in contrast to men like Akazawa chasing pointless yet shiny trinkets and falling straight down the plughole themselves.