Tag: Hirotaro Honda

Shrieking in the Rain (雨に叫べば, Eiji Uchida, 2021)

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“Let’s change Japanese film” a duplicitous distributor tries to convince a diffident director though his “creators first” stance predictably turns out to be somewhat disingenuous. Inhabiting the same territory as Netflix’s Naked Director, Eiji Uchida’s meta dramedy Shrieking in the Rain (雨に叫べば, Ame ni Sakebeba) finds a young woman struggling to take charge of her artistic vision while plagued by workplace sexism, commercial concerns, and absurd censorship regulations but finally claiming her space and along with it her right to make art even if not quite everyone understands it, 

Set entirely on a Toei lot in the summer of 1988, the film opens with rookie director Hanako (Marika Matsumoto) locking herself inside a car with her hands clamped over her ears, fed up with the chaos that seems to surround her. How Hanako got the job in the first place is anyone’s guess, but it later becomes clear that she is in a sense being exploited by the producer, Tachibana (Kazuya Takahashi), who thinks a pretty young girl directing a softcore porno is a selling point in itself. Meanwhile, he’s teamed up with an US-based production company and its Japanese producer, Inoue (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), who seems fairly exasperated by the Japanese-style shoot and despite his pretty words is all about the business. For him, the main selling points are the actors, one a young idol star intending to boost his profile by getting into films and the other a veteran actress stripping off for the first time in an attempt to revitalise her fading career. 

Surrounded by male industry veterans, Hanako struggles to get her voice heard and feels under confident on set as they encircle her and bark orders she doesn’t quite understand. Her decisions are continually overruled by the male AD, cameraman, and finally Tachibana who always has his mind on the bottom line while Hanako’s inability to express herself to the crew results in endless takes of scenes that others tell her are “pointless” and should be cut despite her protestations that they are essential to the piece. A forthright female makeup artist (Chika Uchida) asks if filmmaking should really be this heartless as she watches Hanako humiliated by the chauvinistic cameraman who forces her to get on her knees and beg for help, while a more sympathetic grip (Gaku Hamada) later tells her that becoming a successful director has little to do with talent and a lot to do with the art of compromise. 

Nevertheless, Hanako tries to hold on to her artistic vision even while some roll their eyes considering the project is a softcore romantic melodrama revolving around a love triangle involving two brothers in love with same woman. Inoue claps back that film is a business, admitting that when he said creators first he just meant the ones that make money. According to him, anyone could direct the film because all anyone’s interested in is the actress’ bared breasts and the teenybopper appeal of top idol Shinji. Or in other words, it doesn’t really need to be good, it’s going to sell anyway. In any case, it seems incongruous to cast a squeaky clean idol in an edgy erotic drama especially considering that if they want to market it to his fans then they need to secure a rating which allows them to see it without adult supervision. Business concerns and censorship eventually collide when the rather befuddled censor puts a red line through some of their kink and explains that the actress’ third hip thrust has just earned them an X rating. 

Unlike Hanako and her similarly troubled junior camerawoman Yoshie (Serena Motola), veteran actress Kaede at least knows how to advocate for herself and get what she wants on set so that she can do her best work. Only in this case doing her best work means she wants to go for real with arrogant idol star Shinji who refuses to wear a modesty sock or trim his pubic hair to fit in with the arcane regulations of the censors board. Shinji is brought to task by aspiring actor Kazuto who is pissed off by his unprofessional behaviour while struggling to get a foothold in a difficult industry and apparently finding one through a romantic relationship with the producer which otherwise seems to be a secret from cast and crew. 

In any case a final confrontation prompts a rebellion against Inoue’s production line metaphor as the crew reaffirm that they are a team working together on an artistic endeavour not mere cogs in his machine. Reemerging in bright red lipstick, Hanako returns to retake what’s hers boldly claiming her artistic vision and taking charge on set before descending into an unexpected musical number. With a retro sensibility, the film neatly echoes late 80s production style with a cutesy background score often heard in movies of the era while posters for top Toei movies from the 70s and 80s such as Yukihiro Sawada’s No Grave for Us line the walls. A meta rebuke against the constraints placed on filmmakers by those who shout “creators first” to bolster their image but never follow through Shrieking in the Rain, is at once a homage to the classic days of low budget Toei erotica and an inspirational tale of an artist finding her voice in a sometimes repressive industry.

Shrieking in the Rain screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Alivehoon (アライブフーン, Ten Shimoyama, 2022)

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How far can skills learned in simulation be transferred to the “real” world? Ten Shimoyama’s Alivehoon (アライブフーン) sees a top gamer take to the track for real to compete for drift racing glory while battling both his own lack of confidence and that of those around him. What he discovers is that there may not be so much difference as might be assumed, but offline racing is not a solo sport and succeeding means learning to trust in others as well as oneself. 

Koichi’s (Shuhei Nomura) immediate problem is that he doesn’t fit in at his job as a mechanic and is resented by the other employees for failing to pull his weight. All he wants to do is play games and after a lifetime of practice he’s become a champion in the world of e-sports drift racing but secretly harbours the desire to become a “real” race driver. He finally gets the chance to prove himself when his exasperated boss gets him an opportunity to try out for a real team in need of a rookie driver to ensure its survival. Diffident as he is, Koichi agrees and after brief moment of confusion on the track, proves he has what it takes to take his virtual skills to the real world as an aspiring drift racer. 

The main opposition Koichi faces is from those who dismiss him on the grounds that in-game experience is useless in the real world, which in some cases it may be but luckily Koichi does at least know how to drive and after a moment to play things through knows how to translate his skills from the online world to a real life track which of course has much more proximity to mortal danger than he has ever experienced before. That might be one reason that veteran driver Muto (Takanori Jinnai) who retired after a catastrophic crash in the opening sequence does not take him very seriously on witnessing him being physically sick after being driven round the course by a champion racer while his daughter Natsumi (Ai Yoshikawa) is very invested in the idea that it might be possible to turn an e-sports champ into a top rank driver and save the team in the process. 

Team Alive is positioned as the nice guy underdog, trying to win through hard work and fairness in contrast to arrogant hotshot Shibasaki (Shodai Fukuyama) who turns down the chance to join Alive to go with a more lucrative offer from a haughty middle-aged woman (Anna Tsuchiya) who plays only to win. Shibasaki drives dirty with the racing equivalent of kicking dust in Koichi’s eyes but eventually pays a heavy price for his lack of sportsmanship only to be humbled and come to see the merit in the honest and down to earth approach of team Alive. Koichi meanwhile fights an internal battle trying to rediscover a sense of confidence while beginning to find it in the mutual support of his teammates acknowledging that he may be in the driving seat but he’s not alone and the victory does not belong entirely to him. 

The film’s race scenes are supervised by “drift king” Keiichi Tsuchiya and feature real life drivers such as Naoki Nakamura, Daigo Saito and Masato Kawabata driving real courses for added authenticity all shot in camera without the use of CGI or special effects. The neon blue/red lighting and synth score contribute to the retro aesthetic but it has to be said that Koichi seems to take to real life drift racing a little too easily and experiences surprisingly few setbacks before making a fairly perplexing decision in the film’s final moments despite having discovered the value of teamwork along with a new family in team Alive who each value him for who he is as he brings the best in virtual racing to the real world game. Natsumi too earns the respect of her father as he comes to trust and believe in Koichi but is never quite given the chance to prove herself in her own right. In any case there is something heartwarming in the film’s conviction that there are no pointless skills and that working hard to become good at something is its own reward whether you become a champion or not.

Alivehoon screens in Chicago on Sept. 17 as part of the 15th season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Broken Commandment (破戒, Kazuo Maeda, 2022)

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Toson Shimazaki’s 1906 novel The Broken Commandment (破戒, Hakai) has been adapted for the screen several times, each version taking a slightly different approach to the source material. A new constitution film, Keisuke Kinoshita’s Apostasy (1948) focuses more keenly in the necessity of abandoning latent feudalism to create a truly free society of social equality, while Kon Ichikawa’s The Outcast (1962) essentially tells a coming out story in which the hero finds a kind of liberation in the embrace of his identity and resolves to fight for the rights of others forced to live in shame by an oppressive social order. 

One could say that each adaptation in its way reflects the time in which it was made. Kazuo Maeda’s The Broken Commandment focuses more on the threat of rising militarism and an increasingly authoritarian social order than the hero’s internalised conflict between the necessity of keeping the promise he made to his father never to reveal his roots as a member of the burakumin class and the knowledge that not to do so is to remain complicit in the oppression of others like him. 

Set during the Russo-Japanese War of the early 1900s, the film opens with a scene in which the hero, Ushimatsu (Shotaro Mamiya), is woken by a commotion in the inn at which he is staying. Another of the guests in town to receive medical treatment has been outed as a burakumin, a member of a near untouchable class. The woman running the inn apologises profusely and explains that all the tatami mats throughout the building now need to be replaced while following the elderly gentleman ejected from the building out onto the street throwing salt on the ground to purify it from his presence. Ushimatsu’s problem is that he is himself a burakumin who has kept his heritage secret and is living an ordinary life as a teacher in a small rural town. The school which he works for is extremely conservative and aligned with the proto-militarist conservative right which is currently in ascendency with the war in full swing. Ushimatsu is already treated with a degree of suspicion not of his class background but his socialist views which advocate for peace, freedom, and equality. 

Yet it’s clear that not even he has been fully able to relinquish feudalistic thinking. Though he urges some of his pupils that it is alright to play together despite the class difference which exists between them explaining that the class system ended with the Meiji Restoration, he feels beginning a relationship with the adopted daughter of a temple where he is currently living, Shiho (Anna Ishii), would be inappropriate not just because he is a burakumin and it would be unfair to marry without telling her which he cannot do because of the commandment from his father, but because she is descended from a former samurai family. As we can see social class is largely distinct from wealth, a corrupt local politician marrying the daughter of a burakumin who has become wealthy but keeping her origins secret while the old man ejected from the inn was also someone of means dressing in elegant Western suits in contrast to most in the impoverished village who still wear kimono. Wealth did not free the burakumin from prejudice, while even in poverty Shiho and her father Kazama (Kazuya Takahashi), who is about to fired by the school so they won’t have to pay his pension, are still thought of as members of the nobility. The old ideas don’t disappear so easily even among those who know them to be mistaken. 

Yet as Ushimatsu’s mentor Inoko (Hidekazu Mashima) says, even if the burakumin were to be accepted by society prejudice itself would not die merely migrate to another minority. In Inoko, a socialist writer who proudly comes out and says he is a burakumin, or “eta” meaning pariah in the language of the time, Ushimatsu discovers a second father who grants him the courage to free himself from his feudal vision of filiality and break his father’s commandment to better help those like him and resist the mounting authoritarianism of the education system in which boys in particular are being brainwashed that they are little more than tools for imperialist expansion. In his impassioned speech to the students, Ushimatsu tells them that he wants them to grow up to be people who can think for themselves rather than blindly accept their programming, the kids seemingly getting the message in defying slimy militarist plant Katsuno to see Ushimatsu on his way when he decides he must leave the village to foster freedom elsewhere. 

Unlike previous adaptations, the film does not much go into how he plans to do that save his intention to find a position as a school teacher in the city and educate the young away from prejudice. Breaking his father’s commandment is in its own way a way of breaking with the past, refusing to be complicit with an oppressive social order still bound up with feudalistic notions of class hierarchy which all point towards the emperor and reinforce the increasing authoritarianism of the militarists. Speaking to the rising nationalism of the contemporary society, Maeda’s adaptation positions education as the best weapon against an oppressive social order but also insists that its hero must first free himself from his own internalised shame and outdated ways of thinking. 

Broken Commandment screens at Asia Society 28th July as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

© 2022 BROKEN COMMANDMENT Film Partners

My Brother, the Android and Me (弟とアンドロイドと僕, Junji Sakamoto, 2022)

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“You’re a real weirdo, aren’t you?” the lonely hero of Junji Sakamoto’s existential psychodrama My Brother, the Android and Me (弟とアンドロイドと僕, Ototo to Android to Boku) is constantly told not least by his exasperated and unsympathetic boss but on another level may be the most human of them all longing for a sense of connection in a world which seems to have rejected him to the point that he is no longer sure whether or not he actually exists. Quite clearly drawing inspiration from Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, the Modern Prometheus as well as its many film adaptations though most obviously the 1931 Universal Horror classic, Sakamoto’s oblique chronicle of crippling loneliness presents a man estranged from himself but looking for comfort in his reflected image. 

Sakamoto opens the film in true gothic fashion, his hero Kaoru (Etsushi Toyokawa) a dark and mysterious figure obscured by an oilskin coat amid the ever falling rain illuminated only by the light of an ominous moon. As we discover he works as a university professor but says nothing to his students other than making an apology for his poor handwriting, sometimes writing with both hands at once as he recreates complex algorithms on an old-fashioned chalkboard. The students all mock him, not least because of a curious neurological condition which prevents him from fully controlling his right leg with the consequence that he is often compelled into strange, jerking movements or else to hop on one foot from place to place. In truth, his errant right leg is a symptom of Kaoru’s sense of displacement in that he does not quite feel it to be his own and experiences only pain when his right heel is in contact with the floor. 

It’s this problem with his leg that seems to most irk his boss who later invasively barges in to the gothic western-style mansion/disused hospital where he lives in the company of his nephew, a psychiatrist, who probably means well but offers little more than platitudes in insisting that Kaoru’s leg has simply been left off his internal schematics so all they need to do is mentally reconnect it. His boss meanwhile bizarrely states that Kaoru needs to get well “so that cracked roads can be fixed”, ironically treating his body like a machine that needs to be repaired so that it is optimised for work rather than out of care for another human being who may be in pain. Having barged into Kaoru’s office, he’d discovered his secret project in a highly complex, lifelike robotic arm which was a problem for him because he was supposed to be working on a robot that fixes potholes which seems almost ironic in its banality. In any case, Kaoru also has the rather unfortunate habit of entirely ignoring the person talking to him as if they weren’t even there which is in itself an ironic inversion of the way others see, or more to the point don’t see, him. Kaoru’s boss describes him as creepy because he has no presence, you’re never sure if he’s there or not, but can immediately sense the “giant” presence of his other self, the lifelike android he’s building in his spare time. 

The android is in its way his Frankenstein’s monster, an ironic attempt to rebirth himself constructed in the ruins of his family’s abandoned obstetrics hospital. By chance, he meets a young woman (Yuki Katayama) who closely resembles himself and carries her into his laboratory like the Bride of Frankenstein but treats her only with tenderness and sympathy while attempting to fend off his estranged half-brother (Masanobu Ando) constantly hassling him for money to pay for medical care for the father who abandoned him. His mother had instructed him to find his other self which is perhaps what he’s been doing if caught between the Id and Superego of his brother and father. Constant fire imagery including the repeated motif of a burning body in a conventional fireplace keys us in to Kaoru’s positioning as a “modern Prometheus” whose duty it is to keep the fire in while giving birth to himself as manifested in a perfect manmade creation that others may find frightening or uncanny though the android itself has done nothing wrong because it is in essence the embodiment of Kaoru’s frustrated humanity. Featuring sumptuous gothic production design with sci-fi sheen, Sakamoto’s steely, fragmentary drama finds a man in search of himself while also a perpetual exile but discovering a sense of warmth in the uncanniness of a reflected image. 

My Brother, the Android and Me streams in the US until March 27 as part of the 14th season of Asian Pop-up Cinema

International trailer (English subtitles)

Shall We Dance? (Shall we ダンス?, Masayuki Suo, 1996)

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If your life has gone pretty well and you’ve more or less achieved conventional success but you’re still somehow unhappy then what is it that you’re supposed to do? Sugiyama (Koji Yakusho), the hero of Masayuki Suo’s charming ballroom dancing dramedy Shall We Dance? (Shall we ダンス?) is beginning to wonder, after all he’s a “serious” man as his wife repeatedly describes him but is it really acceptable for a middle-aged husband and father to chase emotional fulfilment or would he be cheating on the salaryman dream in daring to nourish his soul?

As he later says, Sugiyama has followed a conventional path in life. He has a respectable job as an accountant, married at 28 and had a child at 30. By 40 he was able to buy a family home, but also acknowledges that he sold his soul to the company to do so seeing as with the mortgage hanging over his head he is now fully locked in to the corporate system and couldn’t leave even if he wanted to. Yet he’s not quite like his co-workers, an early scene sees the roles somewhat reversed as he, the boss, declines the invitations of a drunken subordinate to stay out longer after an effectively compulsory after work drinking session to return to his family home at only 9pm but going straight to bed when he gets there. He and his wife Masako (Hideko Hara) share a room but sleep in separate beds presumably so he doesn’t wake her when he gets up early to go to the office making his own breakfast before he leaves. 

“It’s not a matter of like or dislike, it’s work” Sugiyama tells his co-worker as she complains that the more glamorous sales department gets all the best perks and she’s sick of working in accounts, hinting at his inner malaise in his relentlessly corporate life. That’s one reason he’s captivated by the sight of a beautiful yet sad woman gazing out of a window from a building above on his train journey home. When he gets off the train to look for her, he in one sense leaves the salaryman rails breaking with the conventions that he is expected to fulfil in search of something more. Mai (Tamiyo Kusakari), a former ballroom dancer taking a temporary sabbatical from competitive sport teaching at her father’s studio, is just as unhappy as he is but for contrary reasons. She has lost the joy of dance, for her it has become as soulless a job as Sugiyama’s accountancy and she too struggles with the image she has of a dancer and what that means for her in terms of personal fulfilment. 

Yet as Sugiyama explains in his opening voiceover, ballroom dancing is viewed as something of a naff hobby mostly associated with sleazy old men only there for the opportunity of physical contact with women of varying ages. When he spots his co-worker Aoki (Naoto Takenaka) at the dance class it’s embarrassing for both of them, each promising not to say anything to anyone at work, the floor later erupting in laughter when someone finds a picture of Aoki taken at a competition in the newspaper. Developing an interest in the sport, Sugiyama buys a ballroom dancing magazine but interrupted by his daughter quickly hides it as if he had been looking at pornography or some other material he feels to be shameful. 

The irony is that Masako had wished Sugiyama would go out more, realising that he’s selflessly dedicated himself to the salaryman dream in order to provide for their family, but then becomes suspicious and resentful as he leaves her alone to pursue his new hobby which he cannot disclose to her out of embarrassment. She in turn sniffing perfume on his shirts fears he’s having an affair, but is unable to ask him about it directly preferring to hire a private detective (Akira Emoto) instead. Leaving aside that each of them ends up secretly spending money when they’re supposed to be saving for the mortgage, the oppressive social conformity of the salaryman existence is beginning to erode their relationship. Forced into the role of the conventional housewife, Masako too is lonely expected to find fulfilment only in home and family while preparing to re-enter the world of work now her daughter is old enough to care for herself because of the financial burden of the mortgage rather than her own desire to fulfil herself. Sugiyama isn’t having an affair, but still she feels betrayed because he left her behind to chase emotional liberation on his own rather than taking her with him never really noticing her loneliness. 

Yet as Sugiyama is repeatedly told, dancing, unlike the salaryman game, is about more than learning the steps, it’s about feeling the music and finding joy in movement. That’s something Mai has also lost sight of, finally realising that she too was a selfish dancer who’d been dancing alone all along unable to fully trust her partner rediscovering her joy in dance as she coaches not only Sugiyama but his classmates towards their own liberation. Sugiyama remains conflicted because the excessively corporatised society leads him to believe that it’s taboo to devote oneself to anything other than work or in essence to experience joy that is not directly related to productivity, that he should be wholly “salaryman” and nothing else, just his wife should be nothing more than that. It’s this oppressive conformity that undermines their conventional marriage rather than Sugiyama’s transgressive decision to get off the salaryman train, put down his briefcase, and embrace his desire for personal fulfilment. Only through this act of mutual emotional authenticity can they restore familial harmony. A minor meditation on the emptiness of the increasingly elusive salaryman dream in the economically stagnant ’90s, Suo’s charming drama insists on joy as a basic human need in a society which often trivialises personal happiness.

Shall We Dance? screens at the BFI on 21/30 December as part of BFI Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Graveyard of Honor (新・仁義の墓場, Takashi Miike, 2002)

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In Kinji Fukasaku’s 1975 jitsuroku eiga Graveyard of Honor, a collection of voices open the film musing on whether the hero was corrupted by the times in which he lived or merely born crazy. Like most jitsuroku or true account gangster movies of the ‘70s, Fukasaku’s Graveyard of Honor is a post-war story about a man who failed to adapt himself to the rules of his society which was of course in constant flux though the rules of the yakuza are perhaps as fixed and timeless as any. Inspired by the same source material Takashi Miike’s comparatively subdued, contemplative Graveyard of Honor (新・仁義の墓場, Shin Jingi no Hakaba) maintains the moody, noirish feel of the ‘70s gangster drama complete with melancholy jazz score but updates the legend of Rikio Ishikawa to late 20th century Japan which again finds itself in crisis, floundering for direction and filled with despair. The bubble has burst in more ways than one as the young in particular awaken to the fact they have been deceived by the false promise that the good times of the Bubble years were cost free and would last forever leaving them abandoned in a world they no longer recognise as their own. 

Unlike Rikio Ishikawa who, we are told, always wanted to be a gangster, Rikuo Ishimatsu (Goro Kishitani) falls into the gokudo world by chance, his life thereafter one long fall until the bloody suicide with which the film opens. A bleach blonde dishwasher at a Chinese restaurant, he gets an offer he can’t refuse when he calmly defuses a would be assassin by hitting him on the head with a chair, earning the eternal gratitude of boss Sawada (Shingo Yamashiro) who takes him on and makes him his protege. This meteoric rise in the yakuza ranks, however, is not without its drawbacks especially in that it destabilises the internal politics of the Sawada gang with old retainers instantly resentful that this young upstart has leap frogged them to sit at the boss’ side while they’ve patiently put the work in only to be sidelined. 

A stretch in prison for avenging the boss’ honour brings him into contact with Imamura (Ryosuke Miki), later his sworn brother but also his opposing number, possibly the last honourable yakuza. “A yakuza without honour isn’t worth shit” Imamura’s boss later remarks, instructing him that Rikuo is a liability he’ll have to take responsibility for, but in this graveyard of honour that kind of responsibility is the one that will get you killed. Honourable yakuza can no longer survive in the world of corporatised thuggery that is the modern gokudo existence. Later we realise that the tale is being narrated by Rikuo’s former underling, Kikkawa, who reminds us that “even yakuza are human beings” existing within a social structure with clearly defined rules which must be followed, yet the rules themselves are largely superficial and Kikkawa survives because he subverts them, abandoning the reckless Rikuo for the certainty of Sawada and setting himself on the traditional gokudo path of sucking up to the boss in the constant hope of advancement. 

Kikkawa is, in a sense, the grovelling salaryman to Rikuo’s frenzied maverick, one as much they symptom of the age as another. Rikuo’s rise occurs against the economic boomtown of Japan in the ‘80s which is as much a paradise for gangsters as for anyone else but also a kind of twilight, the yakuza as an institution relegated to the Showa era and the post-war past. Gangsters forced out of their families like the desperate ronin of the feudal era further destabilise an already chaotic environment which, like that of the post-war years, is filled with despair and disillusionment only to be further disrupted by the advent of natural disaster and economic collapse. 

Like the yakuza of the jitsuroku, those of Miike’s Graveyard of Honor struggle to reorient themselves in a changing society, no more equipped to deal with economic stagnation than their forbears were for the end of occupation and the increasing irrelevance of gangsterdom in a world of economic prosperity. Increasingly paranoid and anxious, Rikuo sees betrayal in all quarters and remains essentially powerless, eventually imprisoned in what appears to have been previously used as a child’s bedroom. He seeks escape in drugs which he finds by chance, and then in romance with an equally powerless woman who bizarrely seems to have fallen in love with him after he brutally raped her though their strange, drug-fuelled quasi-wedding ceremony is the tenderest, most vulnerable we ever see them. Yet as the opening scene implied, all there is is futility. Knowing what he knows, Kikkawa meditates on his memories of happier days when he was just a minion at Rikuo’s side. In this graveyard of honour only the slippery survive and the only way to be free is to fall, and fall hard. 

Original trailer (English subtitles)

JK Rock (JK☆ROCK, Shunji Muguruma, 2019)

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JK Rock poster 1The heyday of the idol movie may have passed with the Showa era, but the genre proves itself alive and kicking with the infinitely charming JK Rock (JK☆ROCK). Starring the members of Drop Doll – a band formed by the three actresses from director Shunji Muguruma’s previous short Little Performer: The Pulse of Winds, JK Rock is a spunky coming of age tale in which three lost high school girls end up starting band at the behest of a strange old man (Masahiko Nishimura) who owns a rock and roll bar in bohemian Kichijoji and secretly wants to coax reluctant rocker Joe (Shodai Fukuyama) back to the stage.

Joe was once in a promising band, JoKers – a combination of his own name and that of his best friend and bandmate whose initials are also JK. A year earlier, however, he appears to have got cold feet and left music behind him for good in order to concentrate on a law degree. He still has his adoring fans though, these days he’s known as the “purple prince” because he drives round campus in an ostentatious purple Lamborghini. A fateful meet cute brings him into contact with feisty high school girl Sakura (Chihiro Hayama) when she decides to take a middle-aged man to task for queue jumping in a convenience store only for Joe to calmly point out that she’s now the one holding everyone up. Somewhat grateful for Joe’s life lesson, Sakura is non-plussed when he calls her a weirdo as he leaves. It’s no surprise to discover that Sakura is a regular at Teru’s Rock ’n Roll Cafe where Joe used to play and so fate is set in motion.

The film’s name, “JK Rock” is a witty multilayered pun in that it refers both to the multiple “JKs” and to the more obvious “Joshi Kosei” which means “high school girls”. Sakura is joined by two more frequenters of Teru’s – waitress and track star Mao (Yuina) who takes up the guitar, and fabulously wealthy Rina (Yukino Miyake) who practices bass in secret so her ultra ambitious mother won’t stop her doing what she loves. In true idol movie fashion, everyone seems to be fairly well off in an aspirational sense but each has their own problems which run from an inappropriate crush on a supportive teacher to overbearing parents keen to stamp their own view of success on their kids in order to stop them making their own mistakes.

Meanwhile, Joe is battling the usual early life crises as he weighs up following his dreams against the safety of conventionality. “You can’t fire up my rock spirit and then run away!” Sakura angrily tells him in a line that seems oddly filled with subtext, but running away does seem to be Joe’s problem. He didn’t go with his friend to America, and the other Joe is now big international star. Snapped at by the band’s manager that he had no guts and no love for rock, Joe decided he was unworthy for the stage and had no right to play, forcing himself into a dull but conventionally successful life as a lawyer. Consequently, he is a grumpy, empty shell of a man driving round in a stupidly big and colourful car with a superficial girlfriend who assumes she’ll soon be getting married to an independently wealthy professional grade husband. Through jamming with Sakura he begins to rediscover some of his rock spirit and get his mojo back to realise he’s free to play with whoever he wants on his own terms.

A musical coming of age tale, JK Rock does its best to showcase the musical talents of Drop Doll which appear to be vast. JoKers plays only a minor role in brief flashbacks of what might have been (and perhaps could be again) for the dejected Joe while the girlband studies intently under his, originally reluctant, tutorship to become fine musicians in their own right. Of course, when it comes down it, it’s not just music but youthful solidarity and the true power of friendship which eventually show the way as old wounds are repaired and new bonds formed between the variously troubled youngsters who eventually realise that they’re figuring things out and will probably be OK. A charming, sprightly youth movie filled with true punk spirit and genuine warmth, JK Rock is an improbable delight and sure to make stars of its three leading ladies.

JK Rock was screened as part of the 2019 Udine Far East Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Short version of the music video for the movie’s theme song – Secret Voice

Dead or Alive (DEAD OR ALIVE　犯罪者, Takashi Miike, 1999)

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dead or alive
Prolific as always, Takashi Miike released four feature length films in 1999, in addition to working in TV and video. Dead or Alive (DEAD OR ALIVE　犯罪者, Dead or Alive: Hanzaisha) came out within the same year as Miike’s seminal Audition and though it is the latter which has gone on to define his reputation, the Dead or Alive Trilogy is equally responsible for the director’s ongoing popularity. Following the Black Society Trilogy the finale of which, Ley Lines, was also released in 1999, Dead or Alive returns to the world of orphaned exiles and Chinese gangsters, men looking for family in all the wrong places and finding only loneliness, rage, and disappointment. Criminal or cop, everyone is looking for the same old thing but for one reason or another it continually evades their grasp.

Late ‘90s, Shinjuku night life. Miike captures all of its sordid glory in a wordlessly frenetic opening sequence which begins with a naked woman falling off a building and ends with the exploding belly of a noodle loving Triad. The Shinjuku gang scene is a large and complex one but this tiny corner is about to be torn apart by the opposing forces of petty Chinese gangster Ryuichi (Riki Takeuchi) and veteran policeman Jojima (Sho Aikawa).

A little later, the major antagonist – yakuza boss Aoki (Renji Ishibashi), asks a drugged up woman he’s immersed in a pool of her own excrement he himself extricated by means of a series of enemas if she’s high or if she’s come down. Drugs are always on the periphery from the bag in the hands of the falling woman to the deluded hopes and dreams of everyone who’s had the misfortune to find themselves here but Miike takes things one step further and structures his film like the inverted bell curve of a strange trip. The relentless pace of the opening sequence with its constant noodle refills, cocaine excess, and eventual bathroom sex and murder combo gradually winds down giving way to the comfortably numb central section in which Jojima and Ryuichi mirror and circle each other in the murky Shinjuku streets but, as he often does, Miike refuels for an angry, increasingly bizarre final sequence as two men whose quests have cost them everything they were fighting to protect prepare to burn the world rather than see the other live another day.

Ryuichi, like many a gangster hero, is an orphan. His major motivation is a desire to protect his delicate younger brother whom he has sent abroad to study in the hope that he will be catapulted into a successful middle class life while Ryuichi takes over the criminal underworld. Toji (Michisuke Kashiwaya) has returned, but such close proximity to his brother’s darkness may have destabilising consequences for both of them. Ryuichi’s “family” is a constructed one made of other similarly lost or discarded kids of Chinese descent, all looking for a home when neither of the two which present themselves is willing to offer them full acceptance but there is no unconditional love here, betrayal is an easily applied judgement met with a harsh and irreversible punishment.

Even if Ryuichi’s world is cold, Jojima’s may be colder. Despite his wife’s pleas he sleeps on the sofa and seems to have a difficult, strained relationship with the family his life is founded on protecting. Jojima’s reasons for continuing to avoid his marital bed are unclear whether from simple consideration of his strange policeman’s hours or the hushed phone call his wife receives which suggests she may be seeking comfort outside the home, but the one thing which is clear is that this is a family already deeply fractured. Adding to the strain, Jojima’s daughter is seriously ill and his wife has worked out that they will need an enormous amount of money for her treatment. Jojima continues to proclaim that he is “working on it” and will find the money somewhere, reacting angrily to his wife’s desperate suggestion of asking her family for a loan. Wanting to save his daughter himself, he ventures ever deeper into the criminal underworld, crossing the line from law enforcer to law breaker.

Miike operates a tightly controlled approach to pacing after the frenetic opening, slowing right down before exploding in a flurry of gun fire for the climactic shootout (flying chicken feathers and all) and then taking a break until the bonkers finale with its self amputations, mysterious bazookas and strange power orbs. Dead or alive, these are men living in a furious purgatory each denied the very thing they’ve been searching for, but in the end they mirror each other, locked in a vicious cycle of rage and violence which threatens to engulf us all.

Out now in the UK from Arrow Video!

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Love Ghost (死びとの恋わずらい, Kazuyuki Shibuya, 2001)

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love ghost posterWhat is it about ghosts and high school girls? Maybe it’s shrines and graveyards mothers ought to be warning their daughters about rather than moody guys with motorbikes. Anyway, the somewhat salaciously titled Love Ghost (死びとの恋わずらい, Shibito no Koiwazurai) is not quite the film it claims to be, though it is haunted by the violent spirit of strong emotion. Innocent high school romance is suddenly infected with the cruel complications of adult love, mental illness, and suicide as a strange curse descends over a previously peaceful town.

Taking on the classic “mysterious transfer student” role, protagonist Midori (Lisa Goto) is about to set off for her first day in a new school after moving back to her home town ten years after her father left the family for another woman. Midori is frequently plagued by a recurring nightmare in which she indulges in the local practice of Tsuji-ura whereby girls wait near the temple and ask a passerby what they think their chances are with their current crush. Only, Midori’s visions have started to bleed into the real world and often end in a storm of fire and blood. For this reason she finds herself unable to enter the school building but is rescued by new classmate, Suzue (Asumi Miwa), who shows her another way in. On the way the pair meet clueless popular boy Kotaro (Takahashi Shinji) who is instantly smitten with the new girl, much to Suzue’s consternation.

Kotoro is, to put it mildly, a little on the dim side and either hasn’t noticed that the entire population of the school, including his good friend Suzue, is love with him or is just refusing to acknowledge it. Romance is the major occupation of the school girls who spend their break times reading tarot cards and talking about Tsuji-ura and the handsome boy dressed in black who often appears there, be he a force for good or ill. Midori isn’t really interested in her classmates but is captivated by the near silent boy at the back of the room whom everyone else is ignoring. She eventually recognises him as a boy she knew before she left and used to play with all the time. Meeting up on the roof, Ryusuke (Ryuhei Matsuda) reveals he’s been waiting for her to come back all this time. However, there is definitely something strange about this quiet boy, not to mention the ever expanding mould stain in Midori’s bathroom…

There’s a lot of obviousness in Love Ghost, but this is later revealed to be a master stroke undercutting the extreme reversals of the big reveals. Madness quickly takes hold in the school, fortunately it does not claim many victims though those who do succumb find themselves cutting their own throats out of sense of heartbroken helplessness unable to accept the fact that their romantic destinies are not the ones they would have chosen.

On the one hand there are Midori’s recurrent memories of her idyllic childhood playing with Ryusuke in beautiful green, sunlit forests which later gives way to tentative teenage romance – a perfectly natural development. However, that’s set against the increasing strangeness of the environment with its oddly ethereal atmosphere. The other girls are experiencing a dangerous kind of romantic madness turning to obsessive, unrequited love yet Midori’s own experience is seemingly a gentle and innocent one. Of course, there’s more to it than that, and Midori’s world is also “unreal” in a hundred other ways. As usual, her link to the curse is tied up with her long buried past which must once again be exposed to the light in order to move forward and finally bid goodbye to the ghosts of forgotten cruelty.

Love Ghost’s central curse is a little confused and never satisfactorily explains itself. There might be more to say about the way the intense emotions of adolescence don’t always dissipate on reaching adulthood in the way they are supposedly intended to, or about the obsessive preoccupation the schoolgirls have with romance, but Love Ghost isn’t interested in any of that. In fact, it’s a little confused what it is interested in but at heart its a series of intertwined ghost stories as Midori haunts herself whilst still alive with memories of the childhood cruelly ripped away from her by the selfish actions of a stranger which have also left her with a deep seated sense of unresolved guilt. An imperfect exercise, Love Ghost has little to recommend it aside from providing an early outing for later star Ryuhei Matsuda yet does offer a poetic, if poorly put together, take on a teen ghost story that is like to offer more to fans of supernatural romance than of J-horror gore.

Love Ghost is available on R1 US DVD from Tokyo Shock.

US release trailer:

At This Late Date, the Charleston (近頃なぜかチャールストン, Kihachi Okamoto, 1981)

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At this late date, the charlestonKihachi Okamoto first made his name with his samurai movies but his output was in fact far more varied in tone than the work most often screened outside of Japan might suggest. Marked by heavy irony and close to the bone social commentary, Okamoto’s movies are nothing if not playful even in the bleakest of circumstances. He first teamed up with Japan’s indie power the Art Theatre Guild for The Human Bullet in 1968 which recounted the absurd final days of the war in true Okamoto fashion and then bounced back to the Edo era for Battle Cry before deciding on the very contemporary satire At This Late Date, the Charleston (近頃なぜかチャールストン, Chikagoro Nazeka Charleston) in 1981.

Shot in 4:3 and a stately looking black and white, At This Late Date, the Charleston begins when Jiro – a slightly strange younger son of a wealthy family, punches out a girl’s boyfriend whilst the pair are sitting on a bench and subsequently chases her through the park util he eventually gets himself arrested on a charge of “attempted rape”. He then gets thrown into a cell with a gang of crazy old guys who took the decision sometime ago to secede from the state of Japan and create their own independent nation known as the land of Yamatai. Consequently, they all refer to each other by their “cabinet titles” such as Foreign Minister and Army Minister etc each inspired by their former lives which is why they have a minister for mail (he used to be a postman). They’re in jail because they tried to make a “state visit” to the Diet building and whilst there enjoyed some of the canteen food but as this was an official event they didn’t see why they should pay for any of it (and their Finance Minister was busy at the races).

Soon enough everyone gets released – the old guys when the Finance Minister turns up to pay their bill and Jiro when he’s bailed out by his older brother and the family housemaid (who quickly realises the “victims” aren’t quite what they seem). However, in a fantastically weird coincidence it turns out that the government of Yamatai have commandeered a house on the estate of Jiro’s father for their sovereign territory. Jiro’s brother is desperate to evict them but there’s also the problem that their multimillionaire dad has been missing for months and no one’s quite sure what might have happened to him…

Crazy old guys (and gal) who’ve become so disillusioned with their nation that they’ve started a new one on their own, missing industrialists, a Lupin III-like policeman who’s so obsessed with looking cool that the suspects always run away while he’s left striking a pose – Okamoto really knows how to pile on the strangeness, but somehow it all seems to make perfect sense. Madcap doesn’t even begin to do justice to crazy cartoon world Okamoto has created but it’s all so effortlessly funny that it hardly matters what you’d call it.

After initially being captured and branded a spy when he marches on over to Yamatai to ask them about his father, Jiro finds himself defecting to become “Minister of Labour” (this seems to involve doing all of the old guys’ menial tasks). As the youngest member of the group, he becomes the repository for their stories which mostly date back to the days of their youth from the fun loving Charleston era to the rise of militarism and eventually the war itself. This comes to the fore even more as the events take place in August, meaning that there’s both the anniversary of the atomic bomb and of the end of the war raising painful memories for this group of older folks, even if not quite so relevant to the younger contingent. The gang are planning a special trip to a hot spring on the 15th, but first they have to defend their micro-country against the onslaught of gangsters and bailiffs who are trying to “invade” their sovereign territory.

The old folks are pacifists, more or less (they didn’t really want an “Army Minister” but it was argued that no one would take them seriously without means of defence) but are still determined to protect their ideal state of Yamatai all the while clamouring for a silent kind of diplomatic immunity. They have some very unusual ideas but they know what’s what and having made an unlikely ally in the form of an unhappily married and soon to be retired policeman, have even managed to expose a little corruption and evil corporate shenanigans in the process of defending their own freedom. A vote for dancing cheerfully over a military march, At This Late Date, The Charleston is a warm and funny tale of eccentric oldsters who’ve seen it all before and finally decided it’s all kind of ridiculous anyway which can’t help but get your own toes tapping, whatever age you are.

Several unsubtitled trailers for the price of one: