Tag: Japan

Tomorrow There Will Be Fine Weather (明日は日本晴れ, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1948)

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According to the driver aboard the bus at the centre of Hiroshi Shimizu’s Tomorrow There Will Be Fine Weather (明日は日本晴れ, Asu wa Nipponbare),  “that ridiculous war ruined everything”. Shimizu had directed a similar film in 1936, Mr Thank You, in which times had been hard for all but people tried to stay cheerful and help where they could. But here, by contrast, the atmosphere is much less jovial. Everyone is fed up, unhappy, dissatisfied, and irritated far beyond the inconvenience of being delayed on their journey.

Once again shot on location, the film follows a bus on the outskirts of Kyoto making the journey along a mountain pass from the city to an onsen town before breaking down half way. It’s several miles across difficult mountainous terrain to the nearest town in either direction and many people aboard the bus are elderly or have disabilities that make simply walking the rest of the way a difficult prospect while no one can really say when help will come because they’re dependent on the arrival of the following service or some other form of transport that could get a message out for a mechanic or replacement bus. 

In any case, just as in Mr Thank You there is a diverse contingent aboard each of whom have particular reasons for travelling and for being upset about the delay. A trio of men begin by complaining that this journey which once took two hours now takes three while the bus itself has become worn down and unreliable. Even so, the fares are now much more expensive. What’s most surprising is that the men loudly and openly discuss their occupation as black market traders while simultaneously complaining about an increased police presence interfering with their work. An irritated, besuited man sitting across the aisle is the only one to challenge them, asking if they pay taxes on their clearly illegal earnings to which the answer is obvious though the men mostly complain about how it wouldn’t be worth their while if they did rather than outright denying a responsibility to pay. The man tells them that they’re part of the problem and that the future of the country is assured only if people pay their taxes, with which the men otherwise seem to agree. When the bus breaks down, one of them is most worried that his late arrival will cause concern for his wife who may assume he’s been caught and arrested.

But there’s a small drama playing out in the front of the bus too as the conductress gossips with the driver certain that the beautiful woman sitting half-way back is a well-known Tokyo dancer, Waka, who she’s heard is on her way to bury the ashes of her child seemingly born out of wedlock. The driver, Sei, grimaces slightly as if he didn’t want to have this conversation and as we later discover once knew Waka long ago before the war which has changed each of them. A blind man, Fuku, now working as a masseur after losing his sight in the war, once knew them both hatches a plan to try and get them to patch things up. But as Sei later says, they’ve both been through far too much and are no longer the same people. Nothing can be as it was before, but in a way that’s alright. There is still hope for the future on the broken bus that is post-war Japan if only someone can figure out how to get the engine going again. 

Nevertheless, the scars from this war are still very noticeable. One of the black-marketers has a missing leg and later lays into an old man who confesses that he was a military commander, hounding him for his responsibility for the folly of the war which men like him forced them to continue long after it was obvious that it was lost. Fuku is much more sanguine and after a minor misunderstanding able to find a way to communicate with an elderly man who is deaf despite the incompatibility of their disabilities as they help each other board the replacement bus to the new Japan. Sei, and the slightly younger conductress who is not so secretly in love with him, meanwhile remain stuck on the broken bus symbolically unable to move forward no matter how much Sei insists it’s time to “get over the war” and that he just wants to forget the past and start living again. Perhaps it’s for men like him who seem fine on the surface that the scars run deepest, overburdened by all that this “ridiculous war” took from them in unlived futures and broken dreams. Meanwhile Shimizu follows the other bus onward along the precarious and winding mountain roads hoping for better weather in the hot springs town ahead.

Tomorrow There Will Be Fine Weather screens at Japan Society New York on May 17 as part of Hiroshi Shimizu Part 2: The Postwar and Independent Years.

Memories of His Scent (においが眠るまで, Kahori Higashi, 2024)

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The link between scent and memory is incredibly strong to the extent that they are often inextricable from one another. For Hinoki, what she fears is that her father’s scent will fade from the world around her and she’ll no longer be able to feel his presence either externally or within herself. She tries to recapture and recreate it artificially only to realise that there was a crucial component that she never thought to include but was always central to her memories of her late father.

We can see the way she immortalises him in her dream sequence in which she walks through a gallery looking at a series of small exhibits marking out her father’s life until his hospitalisation at age 45 and subsequent death from illness. The last box appears empty but turns out to contain a simulacrum of his scent in the same way some museums offer the opportunity to experience what it may have felt like to live in a place through breathing in its ambient smells. It’s this sense of intimacy that Hinoki longs to recapture as she attempts to deal with her grief and the series of upheavals to her life in the wake of her father’s death including closing his coffee shop and bean roastery. She’s horrified that her mother’s put his favourite apron in the to go pile as if she were throwing away an essential part of him she can’t recover. It’s this along with a diary dropped off by the owner of a mini theatre he used to deliver coffee to that sends Hinoki on a summer holiday road trip adventure looking for traces of her father in the places he visited and trying to identify that behind a poetic entry at the end of the diary. 

The film then doubles as another in a series of films elegising the dying culture of boutique cinemas in small towns often catering to small but dedicated audiences who have formed a kind of community around their love of film. These smaller screens generally show older and indie films and are key to the success of independent filmmakers whose work often wouldn’t be shown in larger multiplexes, yet audiences have often not returned after the enforced break of the pandemic era while they also face competition from streaming and other forms of entertainment. The first cinema Hinoki visits is closing down in 42 days though she marvels at the scent and atmosphere of this retro space which has its own elegiac quality. Whilst there she also coincidentally runs to a scent scientist who gives her some pointers about how to preserve and recreate her father’s scent before it fades. By the time she reaches the end of her journey the final cinema has already closed down and rather depressingly been replaced by an entirely empty open air car park. 

Even so what she begins to realise is that nothing really disappears and experiences can be recreated to an extent as she discovers when they put a movie on in the car park leading to a very personal epiphany. The people she meets along her way teach her various things such as the importance of clearly stating how you feel while there’s still time even if her best friend’s attempt to do just that doesn’t quite go to plan. A single father raising a small daughter brings back painful memories for her of her own childhood and her father’s now continuing absence while also reminding her that those experiences live on in her memory along with the various things her father taught her throughout her life. 

Though suffused with melancholy, the film is ultimately uplifting in its determination that life goes on and nothing really disappears. Originally diffident and describing herself as someone who doesn’t particularly like interacting with others, through her partly solo road trip Hinoki learns to open herself up to the world around her along with its myriad fragrances and what they say about the people who inhabit a place. She thinks she’s looking for her father, but she’s really looking for herself and the path towards the rest of her life lived in his absence while discovering the richness of life as its lived in addition to that which has passed.

Memories of His Scent screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Sayon’s Bell (サヨンの鐘, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1943)

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Like all directors of his era, Hiroshi Shimizu made a series of National Policy propaganda films though he was often able to circumvent their requirements by focussing on themes that interested him more directly such as teamwork or childhood. Sayon’s Bell (サヨンの鐘, Sayon no Kane) is however an unavoidably propagandist film filled with praise for the Japanese empire and to modern eyes incredibly problematic in its depictions of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan many of whom did “volunteer” to serve in the Japanese imperial army a notable example being that of Li Kuang-hui who was the last Japanese soldier to be discovered hiding in the Indonesian jungle in 1974 having been recruited from the Amis people.

The film opens with a lengthy series of title cards explaining that the film is dedicated to the Takasago Volunteers, “Takasago” being, aside from the title of a famous noh play, the name Japanese gave to the indigenous people of Taiwan believing them to have been “civilised” by Japanese rule. Thus in the opening sequences, we see the role of the Japanese military personnel as essentially paternal. They are policemen, doctors, teachers, instructors, and directors of construction who are dedicated to raising the aboriginal people to level of Japanese citizens through forced assimilation. 

Inspired by a real life incident that also inspired a popular song of an indigenous woman who drowned in a river while carrying the belongings of a Japanese policeman, the film uses the titular Sayon as an arbiter of Japaneseness enhanced by the casting of Li Koran, later known as Shirley Yamaguchi/Yamaguchi Yoshiko, who was actually Japanese but presented as Chinese in the propaganda cinema of the time having been born in Machuria and fluent in Mandarin. Somewhat awkwardly given that Sayon is supposed to be an indigenous woman herself, she is the one schooling the local children in how to be Japanese reminding them that they should “use Japanese properly” rather than their indigenous language and praising one young boy for abandoning his indigenous name and adopting that of “Taro” instead. Japanese rule in Taiwan was not as oppressive as it was in the other parts of the empire and they did have some local support thanks to their investments in infrastructure and modernisation. Nevertheless, they did attempt to enforce the use of the Japanese language and the taking of Japanese names though it should also be noted that the KMT government did exactly the same thing only with Mandarin when it gained control of the island. 

That aside the indigenous people were often treated poorly in comparison to the rest of the of the population and we can see that the framing of them is often racist and derogatory such as when an abandoned baby is taken to the police and they remark that the indigenous community have too many children and they all look alike. The eligible men from the village, including Sayon’s love interest Saburo (Hatsu Shimazaki), have been sent to Japan for a kind of militarist re-education and are eagerly awaiting their opportunity to serve the emperor in the army. Though this may seem surprising, it apparently reflects a real fervour among indigenous men who were convinced to enlist by the money on offer and a campaign of rumours that suggested men who did not do so were unmanly and therefore unattractive to the local women. When the first round of volunteers is selected, a great amount of time is given to consoling the men who were not chosen many of whom protest and plead to volunteer their services. 

In an effort to inject some drama the film includes a love triangle between Sayon, Saburo, and Mona (Kenzo Nakagawa) who is said to be moody out of jealousy and unrequited love for Sayon but later reveals he was only jealous of Saburo in respect of playing second fiddle to him as a worthy man of the village again eager to serve the Japanese emperor. Led by Li Koran, there are several renditions of a patriotic war song singing the praises of the Taiwanese army that read that like a call to arms, though the audience for this film is certainly domestic and it seems unlikely that it would be screened in these mountain villages in Taiwan.

The first part of the film is basically ethnography featuring picturesque scenes of the local scenery and footage of the indigenous people living the “simple, peaceful life” patronisingly described in the opening titles while there is some exoticisation of the aboriginal culture in the elaborate costumes and scenes of indigenous rituals. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is that Sayon is encouraged to break a traditional taboo by entering a sacred lake where women are forbidden to go lest they anger the god Uttofu. With her new cultural re-education, Sayon thinks Uttofu is a myth and goes to the lake to help Saburo assess it because the Japanese are planning to drain it to create a rice paddy. For this she is expected to drown herself in the water to placate Uttofu and is urged to do so by the tribal elders with the Japanese basically agreeing with them deciding that they should catch an animal to sacrifice and if that doesn’t work, while it’s “unfortunate”, Sayon should indeed hurl herself into the lake if the for the good of the empire rather than Uttofu. 

It is quite odd to think that the Japanese military personnel would go along with human sacrifice rather than clamp down on a practice they would otherwise term backward, though in that light it’s impossible not to see her later death by drowning as a rejection of the “modernity” the colonial authorities represent and a re-assertion of indigenous culture. The bell referenced in the title refers to one given to the village to commemorate the incident bearing an inscription of Sayon’s name. When the KMT gained control of Taiwan, they erased the inscription on the bell and removed it as a symbol of Japanese rule though it was later restored after the end of martial law and the monument re-erected beside the bridge which was also named “Sayon’s Bridge” in a evocation of the complicated relationships between the three nations. The film is however rather uncomplicated in its themes which to modern eyes prove extremely unpalatable despite the often beautiful cinematography capturing the idyllic Taiwanese countryside.

Sayon’s Bell screens at the Museum of the Moving Image May 11 as part of Hiroshi Shimizu Part I: The Shochiku Years.

Inch Forward (走れない人の走り方, Su Yu-Chun, 2023)

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Why does everything always go wrong just when it was about to go right? Everything has fallen into place for director Kiriko’s upcoming indie film but suddenly she finds herself experiencing a series of crises that are perhaps a bit of a wakeup call teaching her a few things about herself as well as the process of filmmaking. The latest film to tackle the perils of the independent movie scene, Inch Forward (走れない人の走り方, Hashirenai hito no Hashiri-kata) never shies away from the difficulties involved but does suggest they can be overcome with humility and a willingness to get creative.

Part of the problem is Kiriko’s difficulty in making decisions and lack of clarity over her role as a director. Her producer, Takimoto, tries to keep her grounded by pointing out places where the script will be difficult to film and dealing with the actors, but also tells her that she should have a better idea of the message she intends her film to carry and be prepared to answer questions about the script from her cast members. But Kiriko says she doesn’t really intend the film to have a message and thinks creating a character is an actor’s job not a director’s. Whenever Takimoto asks her to reconsider something, Kiriko childishly answers that she’ll think about it probably without really intending to.

But her irresponsible behaviour causes problems for others, particularly when she messes up the company car during a bit of unauthorised location hunting, or fails to shut the front door properly allowing her pregnant roommate’s pet cat to escape and thereby sending her into an early labour. It’s only after these series of crises that Kiriko begins to understand that she needs to make amends and be more considerate in future if she wants to continue receiving help and support from those around her. After all, you can’t make a film all on your own.

Ironically enough she describes her film as like a road movie but on foot about people going to the same place over and over again. Even one of her crew members asks her why it is indie filmmakers like to end at the sea hinting at her screenplay being slightly cliché even as she tries to think her way out of the problem. At a particularly low point, she has a vision of the film being taken away from her as her (all male) crew members and Takimoto remark on how useless she is and vow to take over their section from her. She also has an obsession with her horoscope which is usually a little negative further deepening her lack of confidence and general sense of despair. 

“Don’t worry, just believe in yourself and move forward’” one of her horoscope ads advises and it might indeed by good advice for an indie filmmaker. Learning to be a little more considerate of those around her, she begins to benefit from their help and advice rather than rejecting it in her own insecurity. Despite all of the constraints her friend tells her that she should make something authentic, what she actually wants to do rather than cynically doing what seems the most advantageous, but what’s really important is a sense of balance. As Takimoto told her, she needs to learn to prioritise rather than expect to get everything she wants and be realistic about what’s achievable while still aiming for the film she wants to make. 

Then again in the cinema scenes which bookend the film Su implies that the audience weren’t particularly impressed or perhaps confused by her road movie that doesn’t go anywhere. One audience member was so deeply asleep they had to be woken by an usher. Nevertheless, to overcome her problems Kiriko has to take the lead in more ways than one asserting control over her project but also prepared to work with others, listen to their suggestions, and make firm decisions as they inch forward towards their goal. Warm and quirky, Su’s lighthearted dramedy never shies away from the difficulties of indie filmmaking but finally resolves that it is possible to overcome them with a little mutual respect and solidarity between those on the other side of the screen.

Inch Forward screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

My Elder Brother (私の兄さん, Yasujiro Shimazu, 1934)

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A wastrel son and runaway daughter get a few lessons in filiality in Yasujiro Shimazu’s genial ‘30s comedy, My Elder Brother (私の兄さん, Watashi no Niisan). Reflecting the changing the times, the film is in many ways about navigating the sometimes fraught relationships among a blended family though like many hahamono, it’s the stepson who is most devoted to his mother while the birth son is consumed by a sense of guilt and inadequacy in his accidentally awkward positioning within the family hierarchy.

The filial piety of eldest son Shige (Reikichi Kawamura) is established early on by the fact he’s not at work because his mother is ill and he’s off visiting her. He does in fact return late at night, though there’s a question mark over his qualities as a boss as the drivers at the taxi firm he runs remark that he’s been ignoring their attempts to negotiate with him for better conditions not least the provision of assistants which has been given additional weight by one driver’s experience with a disturbed fare who attempted to strange him with his belt.

The strange and violent opening sequence in which a cabbie is attacked by a crazed passenger is never referenced again and out of keeping with the otherwise lighthearted tone of the film though does add to a sense of danger later echoed in the appearance of two guys who first seem like yakuza but are actually just two grumpy old men trying to retrieve a young woman who’s run away in defiance of an arranged marriage. In any case, tearaway brother Fumio (Kazuo Hasegawa), who arrives drunk in the back of a cab, has indeed fallen into bad company with yakuza whom he describes as his friends though Shige warns him they’re probably just after his money.

Fumio has returned because he’s learned his mother is ill, though he’s reluctant to see her given his present condition. When he does actually meet her, she says that she hates him and calls him a good-for-nothing, worthless man. It seems her animosity is partly motivated by a sense of guilt and embarrassment that her biological son has brought shame to the family she married into and especially to Shige. For his part, Shige acknowledges that he also felt resentful when Fumio and his mother moved in but explains that he was still a child clinging to the memory of his late birth mother. Fumio explains to the young woman he picks up, Sumako (Kinuyo Tanaka), who is on the run from her uncle and the man her stepmother wants her to marry, that he left home because of his precarious status and sense of inadequacy but liked the sense of freedom his independence gave him even if he is ashamed of the kind of life he’s lived on the fringes of the underworld. 

Sumako is experiencing a similar dilemma as she feels herself unable to bond with her stepmother to the extent that she has not been able to articulate that she objects to the arranged marriage her relatives have set up for her. She laments that if it were her birthmother she should be able to tell her everything, but Fumio counters that Shige had been jealous of him because he could exchange harsh words with his mother because of their closeness in a way he never could because he is not her biological son. Reinforcing a sense of obligation between parents and children might have been an important message in the mid-1930s, but the film is perhaps unexpectedly progressive in its openness and desire to embrace these then considered less usual family arrangements born of second marriages in emphasising the brotherly bond between the two men and Sumako’s successful escape from an unwanted marriage simply by speaking her true feelings to her mother not to mention the suggestion of a cross class romance between rich girl Sumako and the middle-class Fumio.

Meanwhile, the film also has an international bent in the prominent signs for Chevrolet and Hollywood-esque aesthetics, drawing inspiration from American and European crime films for the violent opening sequence and underworld setting. Shimazu hints at the shadiness of Fumio’s backstreets life, but equally of Sumako’s uncle and his moustachioed friend lending an undertone of darkness to the mid-30s society but otherwise keeps things light in the innocent courtship between Fumio and Sumako who can mediate their attraction only by remarking on the beauty of a sunset. 

SPY x FAMILY CODE: White (劇場版 SPY×FAMILY CODE: White, Takashi Katagiri, 2023)

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The irony at the centre of the Folger family is that they cannot communicate effectively because they’re each afraid of blowing their cover. Adapted from the manga by Tatsuya Endo, Spy x Family was the smash hit anime of 2022 and now makes its way to the big screen with an epic adventure which threatens the foundations of a “fake” family which has become increasingly real to the extent that it may have come to eclipse the reason it was created.

Newcomers to the franchise need not fear as the film is broadly standalone and gives a brief explanation of its setup in not dissimilar fashion to the voiceover intro of the TV anime. Codenamed “Twilight”, spy Loid Folger (Takuya Eguchi) has adopted a little girl, Anya (Atsumi Tanezaki), and married a local woman, Yor (Saori Hayami), in order to infiltrate an elite boarding school with the aim of targeting a reclusive politician through forging a connection with his younger son, Damian. What Loid doesn’t realise is that he’s completely in the dark about his new family. Anya is the only one who knows the whole truth as she is a telepath, while Yor is a secret assassin who agreed to fake marriage as cover to avoid detection by the authorities. Even the family dog, Bond, is a canine clairvoyant who was the product of an experimental program to breed super intelligent dogs. 

The mission is compromised by the fact that Anya is less than academically gifted and unlikely to gain all eight stars needed to join the elite group of students that would get her close to Damian and Loid close to his father. Having made so little progress, Loid’s handler reveals Operation Strix may be taken away from him and given to a political crony which would necessarily mean he’d have to give up the new family life to which he’s gradually become accustomed. But the family is also threatened by Yor’s insecurity and conflicted feelings for Loid, well aware their arrangement is “fake” but still anxious that Loid is having an affair and worried he’ll divorce her for not being good enough at the domestic life she too has come to value. Anya, meanwhile, obviously wants to keep to her new family together while helping her parents with various missions but can’t say anything for fear of exposing herself as a telepath and Bond as a clairvoyant. 

Echoing the extended cruise arc from the anime, the film follows the Forgers on a mini break to nearby Frigis in search of a regional dessert they hope will help Anya win another star only to end up swept into local politics. The long-form format of the feature surpasses that of the TV series in shedding its bitty, episodic structure for something more substantial though that may of course detract from its charms for those taken by the isolated vignettes of the show. Even so, the film doesn’t stint on quickly humour gaining the ability to deepen its ongoing gags culminating in a fantasy sequence animated like a kids drawing in which Anya meets the God of Poop and is rewarded for excellent service. 

Though what’s really about is once again the Forger family who must finally turn the wheel together in order to avoid certain death. Though fighting parallel battles, unable to simply explain what they’re doing and ask for help, the gang eventually end up in the same place united in their missions and also as a family having faced off various threats and reaffirmed their bonds which have by this point become very much real. Loid continues to struggle with the mechanics of his mission, frequently unable to read Yor’s insecurity and unwittingly fuelling it, and exclaiming that he doesn’t understand children nor have much clue how to manage Anya’s often madcap behaviour. The irony is that if he succeeds, the family will have to disband and he’ll lose this new sense of domesticity that’s becoming used to, but if he fails his nation may go to war and thousands of people will die. But until then his biggest problem is figuring out how Anya can win a baking contest and survive yet another impromptu family holiday without becoming embroiled in an international conspiracy. 

SPY x FAMILY CODE: White is in UK cinemas now courtesy of All the Anime.

UK trailer (English subtitles)

Images: © 2023 SPY x FAMILY The Movie Project © Tatsuya Endo/Shueisha

The Tattooed Hitman (山口組外伝　九州進攻作戦, Kosaku Yamashita, 1974)

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The close brotherhood between two men is disrupted by changing times in a more contemporary gangster drama from Kosaku Yamashita, Tattooed Hitman (山口組外伝　九州進攻作戦, Yamaguchi-gumi gaiden: Kyushu shinko-sakusen). As many are fond of saying, times have changed and the yakuza must try to change with them or else meet a melancholy end. But as the hero admits, change is something he has no intention of doing even as his old school gangsterism leaves him increasingly at odds with the corporatising ways of the contemporary yakuza. 

The change in the times is obvious from the film’s opening sequence set in 1957 in which an attempt is made on the life of petty boss Ishino (Tatsuo Umemiya) by a gunman who shouts “die, for the good of the world” before firing a pistol and running away. Ishino has been targeted in a dispute over construction rights connected with the regeneration of hot springs resort, Beppu. The hit seems to have been ordered by rival gang, Sakaguchi (Eizo Kitamura), the leader of which is also a prominent local politician who is content to abuse his power for his own financial gain. So confident is he in his safety, that Sakaguchi even gets the police involved rather than deal with it himself. 

Ginji (Bunta Sugawara) has been Ishino’s sworn brother since their teenage delinquent days and determines to get revenge by raiding the Sakaguchi offices and killing one of their high ranking officers. Seeing as he’s already wanted by the police for a previous murder, Ishino sends Ginji to Osaka to lay low while working for an associate, Daito, mainly as a debt collector. It’s this act of separation which introduces a rift between the two men. While Ginji waits patiently to be recalled, Ishino climbs the ranks of corporatised gangsterism by learning to play by the new rules. 

To fill the void, Ginji takes on a new “brother” or perhaps surrogate son in the wayward Ken (Tsunehiko Watase) whom he first meets cheating at pachinko at a parlour where his pregnant wife Fusako (Mayumi Nagisa) is working. It’s Ken who first drags him into a brewing turf war as Korean gang Soryu threaten to disrupt the local equilibrium not least by selling drugs of which Ginji does not approve. Ginji “saves” Ken from joining Soryu by essentially making him his one of his guys though he doesn’t really have much of a position in Daito’s gang, offering him a sense of grown-up responsibility by handing him a pistol with the only the instruction to make sure he shoots with two hands. Unfortunately, Ken will follow his advice but otherwise ends up almost causing an incident with another gang by shooting a man who disrespected him in the street. Ginji marches straight down there to sort things out, but on arrival discovers an arrangement has already been made with his boss which further strains his sense of pride and confidence in his position as a yakuza.

Ginji feels something similar on being invited to a party to celebrate Ishino’s promotion only to be seated with the lowly footsoldiers and ignored by Ishino all night. Ishino rejects him still further in agreeing to plan to send him back to Kyushu out of the way hoping that his old school hotheadedness can finally be tempered. Others meanwhile voice concern that Ginji may have forged a relationship with rival Kobe gangs during the 18 months he abruptly disappeared from Osaka and has only come back to cause trouble. Ginji perhaps knows that he has no more future in the contemporary society, others remarking that seems like someone who is in a sense already dead for having accepted that he will die and most likely in Hakata, the town he had wanted to conquer with Ishino who had crushed his dreams in his newfound pragmatism by calmly explaining that they would never have the power to take it. 

Koji Takada’s screenplay positions Ginji’s gradual decline as an allegory for the yakuza himself while citing the new legislation that this particular series of incidents made necessary creating the new offence of assembly with dangerous weapons as a decisive moment in weakening the yakuza as an institution. Ginji remains a man displaced by his times unable to move forward into a new society in the way that Ishino has but stuck in a permanently post-war mentality despite the constant reminders that “times have changed”. Yamashita adopts the trappings of the jisturoku drama with frequent references to real life events and narrative voiceover but otherwise maintains his classicist formalism while ending on a note of ambivalence that tells us a certain kind of justice may have been served but the cycle of violence may not yet be completed.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

DitO (Takashi Yuki, 2024)

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A defeated boxer and absent father rediscovers the will to fight after an unexpected reunion with the daughter he abandoned to chase his dreams in Takashi Yuki’s Philippines-set sporting drama DitO. The title translates simply as “here” which is what Eiji (Takashi Yuki) and those around him eventually accept themselves as being, striving to create a place for themselves to belong rather than fruitlessly searching for one and finding themselves denied.

A contrast is eventually drawn between Eiji, an ageing boxer who remained in the Philippines when his wife (Machiko Ono) and child returned to Japan, and Joshua, a 17-year-old aspiring boxer and surrogate son figure whose boxing dreams are suddenly dashed by unexpected defeat and the death of his father from a long illness. Faced with these two blows, Joshua declares that he’s going to choose his family in giving up boxing to look after his younger siblings in direct contrast to the choice Eiji made to let his family leave him so that he could continue chasing a boxing glory he never achieved. 

When his now 17-year-old daughter Momoko (Momoko Tanabe) shows up out of the blue and tells him her mother has passed away, he’s a defeated figure still nagging his kindly boss Tamagon to set him up with a fight though having apparently fallen out with his coach some years previously. Her father’s living conditions evidently come as a shock to Momoko as she winds her way through the narrow alleyways of a local slum towards a small courtyard where Eiji lives in a home stewn with cardboard boxes that has no functional gas supply or other cooking facilities. In her youth, she’d seen him as a hero who keeps fighting no matter what, but here he’s clearly given up and is far from the saviour she hoped he’d be after travelling all the way from Japan where she believes she has nothing and no one to go back to. 

Meanwhile, as he reminds her the Philippines is not Japan and she finds it difficult to adjust to an environment that much less safe at least for women as her father cautions her not to go walking around alone and especially at night. Tamagon and coach Sese also paradoxically remind them that they shouldn’t trust Japanese people after the pair are scammed by an offer of an apartment which in truth seemed far too good to be true by a pair of Japanese expats apparently expressly targeting their fellow countrymen. Yet as she said, everything she has left in the world is “here” and so Momoko too decides to forge her own future in the Philippines rather than go looking for one if while also recapturing the past of her happy childhood memories from when they all lived together as a family. 

As Sese says, Eiji’s internal battle has narrowed his vision of the world and cost him the will to fight must as Joshua says that in understanding his fear he has lost the desire to fight it in the anxiety that he may lose. What they learn is that they must stand and fight for what they want, never giving in win or lose, though they will always have the familial solidarity of the boxing gym whatever else may happen to them. Essentially a family drama, the film is in part a tale of father and daughter learning to reconnect but also of the importance of making an active choice to “here” rather than passively existing in a place not of your own choosing. 

Momoko’s decision to clean her father’s long neglected house is not only a symbol of her desire to lighten his life and jolt him out of his inertia, but of a determination to make a home for herself and maybe even get the gas turned back on so she can use the kitchen. Nevertheless, it’s also clear that “here” is wherever you are and the thing is to embrace the now or change it and fight for your place to belong rather than let it beat the spirit out of you. In the end being a hero really just means staying in the fight with no fear of losing because you know you won’t stop fighting.

It’s All Right, My Friend (だいじょうぶマイフレンド, Ryu Murakami, 1983)

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Ryu Murakami was already a prize-winning author who had successfully adapted his own novel for the screen when he began work on 1983’s It’s All Right, My Friend (だいじょうぶマイフレンド, Daijobu My Friend) yet he was perhaps an odd choice for the material. A big budget blockbuster produced by Toho, the film may have been intended to echo the kind of films Kadokawa was making with its teenage starlets and media mix strategy and like them is largely built around the title song performed by star Leona Hirota. But what might have worked as a countercultural piece of punk cinema if made on a shoestring by starving artists could not help but fail when blessed with the production values of a mainstream picture. 

A case in point, the film stars Hollywood actor Peter Fonda as an alien, Gonzy, who has lost the ability to fly causing him to plummet into an outdoor swimming pool where the three heroes are hanging out. Fonda delivers all his lines in English, while everyone else replies in Japanese. Gonzy explains that he was raised in the US by a kindhearted scientist who taught him to speak (his first words were “Merry Christmas”) but longs to visit his home planet. Meanwhile, he’s being hunted by a mysterious fascistic group of misogynistic eugenicists who want his genes for their cloning programme which hopes to eliminate the need for human women to exist at all. 

Doors have apparently already taken over factories, family restaurants, and psychiatric institutions such as the Tachibana Mental Hospital where they take heroes Monica (Yoshiyuki Noo) and Mimimi (Leona Hirota) and try to brainwash them to recognise a pigeon as an apple and aeroplane as a banana. They also drill into the brain of a young man they describe as a poor delinquent in order to turn him into an obedient drone, the implication being that they wish to turn mankind into a race of automatons and possibly resent women because they pose a threat to their plan. Then again, there is a distantly homoerotic quality to the relationships between the Doors, two of them later dying with clasped hands aside from all their strange musical numbers about how women are inferior and produce only substandard offspring.  

Ryuichi Sakamoto is credited as a composer on the film and the Doors’ henchman appear to be closely styled to resemble Yellow Magic Orchestra, often mimicking their dance moves while otherwise faceless and anonymous behind their identical sunglasses and slicked back hair. Murakami signals his intentions in the opening scene in which Mimimi has a dream sequence in the manner of classic Hollywood musical. She dances with an American sailor against a backdrop that strongly recalls the noir cinema of the late 40s until a car full of gangsters turns up and shoots him with a machine gun leaving her kicking around on her own. Music becomes the device that can break through the Doors’ programming, the drones beginning to twitch to Monica’s Harmonica provoking a vision of dancers in gold lamé that finally ends in a mass disco of liberation from the authoritarian thought police that restores Gonzy’s ability to fly. 

Even so, the reason he couldn’t was apparently his aversion to his personal kryptonite, tomatoes, whose voices he can hear whispering that they hate him and thereby suppressing his powers in reawakening memories of his childhood trauma along with his low self-esteem. To help him fly again, the gang engage in a series of crazy episodes including hang gliding in Saipan while Gonzy continues as an innocent with an incredibly vulgar sensibility eventually turning his “bazooka-like” ejaculate into a key weapon. There might be something in the echoing of an early ’80s anxiety about dangerous technology and weird techno-cults with shady motivations for their scientific endeavours though the irony is often buried under the swanky blockbuster production values and destabilising presence of Fonda who is quite literally in a different film from the rest of the cast by virtue of speaking his own language and being unable to understand what is going on. Even so, the film like the title song is essentially a kind of tribute to intercultural friendship in the bond that arises between the trio of aimless youths and the middle-aged space alien who’s trying to find his way home. Decidedly strange and defiantly surreal, Murakami’s weird countercultural blockbuster is a forgotten piece of 80s pulp but perhaps exposes something of the anxieties of a Japan heading towards the height of its prosperity and developing a fear of flying if not quite of tomatoes.

The Lost World of Sinbad: Samurai Pirate (大盗賊, Senkichi Taniguchi, 1963)

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Seemingly drawing influence from the series of Arabian fantasy films from Hollywood, Senkichi Taniguchi’s Lost World of Sinbad: Samurai Pirate (大盗賊, Dai Tozoku), sees the director reunite with Toshiro Mifune who had made his debut in the director’s Snow Trail which could not be more different from this crowd-pleasing adventure movie. The film is loosely based on the life of 16th century merchant Luzon Sukezaemon who eventually fled to Cambodia after all his possessions were seized by Hideyoshi Toyotomi and he was condemned on some trumped up charges.

The film’s opening scenes perhaps reflect this incident as Luzon (Toshiro Mifune) is branded a pirate and set to be burned at the stake, narrowly escaping after bribing an official with drugs. Resentful, Luzon decides he might as well become a pirate after all as he’s pretty sick of Japan and fancies seeking his fortune on the open seas only his ship is quickly destroyed in a storm and all his crew killed while the treasure he was carrying is seized by the fearsome Black Pirate (Makoto Sato). Washing up in a mysterious place aesthetically a mashup between South East Asia and the Middle East, Luzon is cared for by a hermit and then becomes embroiled in intrigue on finding out that the tyrannical king has been seizing local women in exchange for unpaid taxes and imprisoning them within his harem.

Luzon’s dreams are for riches and status so his sudden discovery of a love of justice is a bit of a surprise, but then he’s also most interested in the princess Yaya (Mie Hama) because he spotted one the necklaces from his treasure chest around her neck which suggests she might have a lead on the Black Pirate. Princess Yaya is engaged to a prince from the Ming kingdom which threatens a wider kind of geopolitical destabilisation should anything go wrong with this marriage which is a distinct possibility seeing as the corrupt Chancellor (Tadao Nakamaru) has been colluding with an evil witch to kill the king and seize the kingdom.

Rather than a pure pirate movie the film contains fantasy elements such as the presence of a Western-style castle which is clearly modelled on the one from Disney’s Snow White along with a weird hermit whose powers are weakened every time he sees an attractive woman. It is not, however, the kind of tokusatsu the English title bestowed by the US release implies as it contains no real monsters instead focussing its special effects on the magic used by the witch, who can turn people to stone with her eyes, and the hermit who can turn himself into a fly or disappear in a puff of blue smoke. Despite the prominent inclusion of SFX master Eiji Tsuburaya these effects are repeated several times are really the only ones featured in the film. 

In any case, what’s in play is famous merchant Luzon’s redemption arc in which he recovers the treasure but gives it back to the people, symbolically abandoning his dreams of wealth and status for something a little more community minded in vowing to sail the seven seas pursuing justice throughout the world. Having been a victim of authoritarianism in Japan, he rises up against tyranny abroad while teaming up with a group of local bandits and several times proudly proclaiming himself as Japanese though in a movie conceit everyone speaks his language including the Black Pirate who is later exposed as a snivelling fool tricked by the Chancellor on the promise of a chance to marry the Princess Yaya. Most of the derring do is reserved for the final sequence in which Luzon and the bandits storm the castle to defeat the evil chancellor but the screenplay also packs in genre elements such as trap doors and secret dungeons which keep Luzon busy as he does his best to overthrow an oppressive regime if only to put the rightful king back on the throne in the hope that might be better. Taniguchi certainly makes the most of his elaborate sets and costumes, creating a sense of tempered opulence along Middle-Eastern themes while adding a touch of the mythic in the attempt to weave a legend around the real life figure of Luzon Sukezaemon as a bandit revolutionary selling dreams of freedom on the sea as a pirate more interested in justice than money in otherwise corrupt society.