Yoshimitsu Morita, though committed to commercial filmmaking, also enjoyed trying on different kinds of directorial hats from from purveyor of smart social satires to teen idol movies, high art literary adaptations and just about everything else in-between. It’s no surprise then that at the height of the J-horror boom, he too got in on the action with an adaptation of Yusuke Kishi’s novel of the same name, The Black House (黒い家, Kuroi Ie). Though tagged as “J-horror” you’ll find no long haired ghosts here and, in fact, barely anything supernatural as the true horror on show is the slow descent into madness taking place inside the protagonist’s mind.
Wakatsuki (Masaaki Uchino) is a nice young man with a good job investigating claims at an insurance office. Unfortunately, this gives him a slightly dim view of humanity as he comes into contact with scamsters and even people willing to maim themselves just so that they can claim on their policies. One day, he receives a strange phone call from a woman who wants to know if her insurance policy will pay out in case of suicide. Wakatsuki, slightly panicked, tells her that it really depends on the circumstances and, jumping to the conclusion she plans to kill herself, urges her to get help and talk things over with someone before doing anything rash.
The next thing he knows, Wakatsuki is despatched to her house to sort things out whereupon he makes an extremely gruesome discovery – the woman’s son, though only a child, has hanged himself in the back room. Obviously extremely shocked and distressed, Wakatsuki heads home with the nagging suspicion that Sachiko (Shinobu Ootake) and her husband Komoda (Masahiko Nishimura) have done something truly dreadful. The couple take turns coming into the office to find out what’s taking so long with their claim and gradually the situation begins to spiral desperately out of control.
Always one for irony, Morita’s tone varies widely here. There’s an oddly Twin Peaks-like vibe with the jolly jazz score giving way to synths at moments of high tension, not to mention the run down industrial town setting. If that weren’t enough Lynchery, there’s even a moment where a severed hand is found in a patch of grass, crawling with ants just like the ear found by Jeffrey at the beginning of Blue Velvet. Morita seems to be telling us not to take any of this too seriously yet his subjects include parents harming or even murdering their children to claim on an insurance policy as well as bloody violence and dismemberment of corpses.
In fact, the insurance guys don’t spend too long trying to figure out if the boy actually killed himself but Wakatsuki becomes preoccupied by the idea the husband, Komoda, is behind the whole thing (the boy was only his step-son after all) and will now try and kill his wife to claim her insurance too. The couple are certainly both very strange people and the insurance company also have a problem as the policy was signed off on during a campaign drive in which a now dismissed employee made use of a personal connection to try and meet her unrealistic quota. Wakatsuki eventually engages an equally eccentric psychology professor who takes him out on a weird nighttime odyssey to a seedy strip club where he expounds on a epidemic of psychopathy among the younger generation. Even Wakatsuki’s girlfriend, Megumi, has some off the wall ideas based on an essay Sachiko wrote in elementary school (though actually Megumi’s view has some merit).
Things hit a more conventional note from this point on landing us with a familiar slasher villain who begins stalking Wakatsuki, even trashing his apartment before kidnapping his girlfriend and keeping her prisoner in the “Black House”. Wakatsuki heads to the den of evil by himself in the dark (in true horror movie fashion) where he finds a whole bunch of other dismembered corpses (and a few other surprises). He might think he can put his troubles behind him after this extremely traumatic incident, but this is still a horror movie so the killer gets away to strike again by throwing a bright yellow bowling ball at his head through the office toilet window.
Morita is not being serious at all, even for a second, but somehow he still manages to create an oddly threatening atmosphere of suspense despite the extremely weird things which are going on. He creates a complex set of visual cues from the recurring sunflower motif repeated on Sachiko’s shirt to the glistening yellow bowling ball, goldfish (in a toilet bowl if not a percolator), repeated sounds of cockroaches and old fashioned reel printers, and even the green glow from both old fashioned computer systems and the company’s insurance documents. Undoubtedly bizarre, The Black House is mind bending psychological-horror-movie-cum-Freudian-slasher that is primed for both head scratching puzzlement and confused chuckling as Morita has a lot of fun messing with our senses.
The stories of samurai whose soul is placed not in the sword but in another tool are quickly becoming a genre all of their own. Coming from the same screen writer as 
You know how it is, when you’re from a small town perhaps you feel like a big fish but when you swim up to the great lake that is the city, you suddenly feel very small. Natsume has come to Tokyo from her rural backwater town in Kagoshima to look for her boyfriend, Umi, who’s not been in contact (even with his parents). When she arrives at the patisserie he’d been working at she discovers that he suddenly quit a while ago without telling anyone where he was going. Natsume is distressed and heartbroken but notices that the cafe is currently hiring and so asks if she may take Umi’s place – after all she grew up helping out at her family’s cake shop!
Okinawa might be a popular tourist destination but behind the beachside bars and fun loving nightlife there’s a thriving community of local people making their everyday lives here. Just like everywhere else, life can be tough when you’re young and the town’s teenagers lament that there’s just not much for them to do. A small group of high schoolers have formed a rock band but they’re quickly kicked out of their practice spot at school after a series of noise complaints from neighbours.
How exactly do you lose a war? It’s not as if you can simply telephone your opponents and say “so sorry, I’m a little busy today so perhaps we could agree not to kill each other for bit? Talk later, tata.” The Emperor in August examines the last few days in the summer of 1945 as Japan attempts to convince itself to end the conflict. Previously recounted by Kihachi Okamoto in 1967 under the title Japan’s Longest Day, The Emperor in August (日本のいちばん長い日, Nihon no Ichiban Nagai Hi) proves that stately events are not always as gracefully carried off as they may appear on the surface.
Windows on Worlds 