Tag: Japan

Japan Organized Crime Boss (日本暴力団 組長, Kinji Fukasaku, 1969)

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A yakuza just out of jail emerges into a very different Japan in Kinji Fukasaku’s proto-jitsuroku gangster picture, Japan Organized Crime Boss (日本暴力団 組長, Nihon Boryoku-dan: Kumicho). A contemporary Oda Nobunaga is trying to unify the nation under his yakuza banner while fostering a nationalist agenda and colluding with corrupt politicians to prop up the 1970 renewal of the Anpo security treaty, but as it turns out some people aren’t very interested in revolutions of any kind save the opportunity to live a quiet life they once feared would elude them. 

As the film opens, a narratorial voice explains that the nation has now escaped from post-war chaos, but Japan’s increasing prosperity has led to a natural decline of the yakuza which has seen some try to ride the rising tides to find new ways to prosper. Exploiting its control of local harbours, the Danno group has quickly expanded though Osaka and on to the rest of the nation thanks largely to its strategist, Tsubaki (Ryohei Uchida), and his policy of convincing local outfits to ally with them and fight as proxies allowing Danno to escape all responsibility for public street violence. 

Perhaps strangely, the Danno group and others are acutely worried about optics and keen to present themselves as legitimate businessmen while using a prominent politician as a go-between to settle disputes between gangs. The yakuza already know they’re generally unpopular and fear that attracting too much attention will only bring them problems from the authorities. The politician needs Danno to look clean so that they can back them in opposing the protests against the Anpo treaty, while the yakuza organisation is later depicted as a militarised wing of the far right hoping to correct “misguided” post-war democracy while eradicating communism and instilling a sense of patriotic pride as they go. Of course, all of that will also likely be good for business while quite clearly marking these new conspiracy-minded yakuza as “bad”, hypocritical harbingers of a dangerous authoritarianism. 

Tsukamoto (Koji Tsuruta), the recently released lieutenant of the Hamanaka gang, is conversely the representative of the “good” yakuza who still care about the code and are genuinely standing up for the little guy against the oppressive forces now represented by bad yakuza. Hamanaka had allied with Danno while Tsukamoto was inside and was thereafter targeted by the local Sakurada group who have joined the Tokyo Alliance of yakuza clans opposed to Danno who continue to fight them by proxy. After his boss is killed and tells him that joining Danno was a mistake, Tsukamoto’s first thought is to rebuild the clan which he does by remaining neutral, refusing to engage in Danno’s proxy wars while protecting his men from their violence as mediated by the completely unhinged, drug-addled Miyahara (Tomisaburo Wakayama) and the anarchic Hokuryu gang. 

Miyahara comes round to Tsukamoto precisely because of his pacifist philosophy after he kidnaps one of his men and Tsukamoto stands up to him while making a point of not fighting back. As crazed as he is, Miyahara is a redeemable gangster who later also turns on Danno regretting having agreed to do their dirty work for relatively little reward. After a gentle romance with the sister of a fallen comrade, Tsukamoto, who lost his first wife to suicide while inside, begins to dream of leaving the life behind but as he and others discover there is no real out from the yakuza and the code must always be repaid. In failing to protect his clan he fails to save himself and becomes a kind of martyr for the ninkyo society taking on politicised yakuza and their lingering militarism. 

Fukasaku takes a typical ninkyo plot of a noble gangster standing up for what he believes is right against the forces of corruption and begins to undercut it with techniques such as voiceover narration and onscreen text that he’d later use in the jitsuroku films of the 1970s which firmly reject the idea of yakuza nobility seeing them instead as destructive forces born of post-war chaos and increasingly absurd in a Japan of rising economic prosperity. Men like Tsukamoto are it seems at odds with their times, unable to survive in the new society in which there is no longer any honour among thieves only hypocrisy and self-interest. 

Electric Dragon 80000v (エレクトリック·ドラゴン 80000V, Sogo Ishii, 2001)

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“How do we repress the animal instinct to explode?” asks a narratorial voice (Masakatsu Funaki) in Sogo Ishii’s 50-minute cyberpunk fever dream Electric Dragon 80000v (エレクトリック·ドラゴン 80000V). The supercharged hero is indeed filled with a kind of rage, not least because society seems intent on trying to “regulate” him while he later comes into contact with an opposing force whose job it is to control the electric flow though in a curious way the two men perhaps free each other from their mutual oppression and regain the right to run on their own current. 

“Dragon Eye” Morrison (Tadanobu Asano), as he comes to be called, got zapped by a pylon when he was a child which altered his brain, awakening the dragon within by “damaging” the part of our neurology unchanged from our reptile ancestors that controls emotion and acts of desire. Doctors seem intent on “correcting” this “fault” in his circuitry through electro-shock therapy to force him to conform to mainstream society while he does admittedly seem to have some problems with violence and impulse control. He self-regulates by chaining himself to a table and “recharging” overnight while easing his frustrations through playing electric guitar, boxing, and hanging out with his calming lizard friends 

Meanwhile, Thunderbolt Buddha (Masatoshi Nagase) is literally divided in two, one half of his face covered in a metallic Buddha mask hinting at the inner duality which at times literally leaves him at war with himself while wandering around with an electric metre trying to control not just his own flow but everyone’s. “He’s the electricity man! All its wavelengths are his!” the narrator explains, while Thunderbolt Buddha turns his head to the Buddha side and an old lady prays to him in his infinite calmness. Not so long before, he’d been acting as a vigilante thief, like Dragon Eye in the ring only darkly exorcising his frustration through violence attacking the corrupting forces of the contemporary society. Perhaps jealous, or just seeking an escape, Thunderbolt Buddha gradually dismantles all of Dragon’s Eye’s means of self-regulation, disappearing lizards and chopping his electric guitar into a series of uniform triangles. Dragon Eye tries to put it back together, but the guitar doesn’t play the right tune anymore, now echoing Thunderbolt Buddha’s eerie discordance. “I just wanted to see you angry” Thunderbolt Buddha admits, trying to engineer a battle that will decide each of their fates. 

Dragon Eye’s power is in one sense manmade, he got he got it from a pylon which is after all an attempt to regulate natural energy into something useful to a modern society, whereas Thunderbolt Buddha was as his name suggests was struck by lightning and imbued with 20,000v of naturally generated pure electric charge. As the two men square off against each other on a Tokyo rooftop, Dragon Eye once again marshals the power of modernity, ripping open the electric power supply and using it to supercharge himself before turning it on Thunderbolt Buddha who has no such recourse to a greater power. In the end, they are perhaps both freed. Thunderbolt Buddha’s mask falls to the ground while a calmed Dragon Eye retrieves his lizard and returns home no longer locking himself into his electric table but freed of its restraints. 

Shooting in a crisp black and white, Ishii returns to the punk sensibilities of his earlier career in a tale of a free spirit seeking escape from a conformist society and rebelling against the forces quite literally intent on regulating his brain. Echoing the avant-garde cinema of the 1960s, Ishii uses anarchic title cards with strangely drawn, elongated figures accompanying the voiceover narration and aggressive guitar music as the two men spark in conflict each threatening to explode, already overloaded with the alternating currents of contemporary civility. “Let’s send them to hell, your demons and mine” Thunderbolt Buddha insists, ironically echoing Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo the Iron Man as the pair bend the electric city to their will and finally find release in a mutual explosion that catapults each of them free of the magnetic pull of social conformity towards a world of freedom in self-regulation and independent flow.

Electric Dragon 80000v is released on blu-ray in the UK on 6th March courtesy of Third Window Films.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Rainbow Over the Pacific (夜明けの二人, Yoshitaro Nomura, 1968)

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Yoshitaro Nomura is most closely associated with a series of gritty crime thrillers that dug deep into the dark heart of post-war Japan. It may seem surprising therefore to see him helming this generally cheerful if occasionally melancholy musical romance created as a star vehicle for singer Yukio Hashi in commemoration of 100 years of Japanese migration to Hawaii. Curiously pitched, Rainbow Over the Pacific (夜明けの二人, Yoake no Futari) arrives somewhere between extended tourist reel and accidentally colonialist soft propaganda that nevertheless never shies away from the complicated relationship between the two nations. 

As the film opens, hero Hideo (Yukio Hashi) is a something of a slacker working in a photo studio with a crush on an aspiring model. When she shows up late to what he thought was a date and then tells him she’s getting married before dumping her fiancé’s ex on him, he finds himself taking pity on the jilted girlfriend while they drown their mutual sorrows in the beerhalls of post-war Tokyo. Audrey Reiko Misaki (Jun Mayuzumi) is a third generation Japanese-Hawaiian who loves all things Japan and is becoming quite fond of Hideo though he abruptly tells her that it’s been fun but they live in different countries so it’s best they call it quits. Reiko goes back to Hawaii and tries to forget about her double romantic heartbreak in Japan while Hideo continues to be an unserious man berated by his grumpy granddad and exasperated mother not least because of his reluctance to get married. A year later his mentor takes him with him on a trip to the US stopping over in Hawaii where finds himself hoping for a fateful reunion with Reiko. 

Before that, however, he and his boss are met by a Japanese-American man who takes them on a tour of the island and explains that all the swanky hotels are owned by Japanese companies. “Anything you can find in Japan you can find in Hawaii” he insists, at once exoticising the environment and trying to sell it as a place that the growing Japanese middle classes might feel comfortable going on holiday because it is almost like being in Japan only of free of the intense atmosphere of the era of high prosperity where everyone works all the time. But then something a little strange happens, Sakata (Hiroyuki Nagato) points at the elephant in the room and begins talking about Pearl Harbour before visiting a cemetery where many men of Japanese descent who lost their lives fighting for the US in Europe are buried. Even so, he quickly points out that the Japanese community continue to dominate the political realities of the island with several Japanese-Americans elected to the Senate one of whom he actually interviews on camera. 

As for Hideo, he is at times a fairly crass tourist who accidentally mocks the traditional singing of a middle-aged Hawaiian. Much of the narrative appears to have been designed to take in most of the important tourist sites on the islands which are each marked with onscreen katakana as are several important landmarks in Japan in the later part of the film which almost does the same thing in showing off historical Kyoto and the Nara deer. After re-encountering Reiko, Hideo finds himself sucked into various kinds of romantic drama, accidentally coming between a local girl and her boyfriend whose relationship is strained by his wealthy father’s disapproval (much like Hideo he is thought to be an unserious man) and then getting into a dangerous situation with a rival suitor whose cool exterior masks a volatile intensity. 

Ironically enough, through his Hawaiian adventures Hideo becomes a “serious” man resolving to buckle down and work hard though seemingly abandoning his dreams of romance out of a kind of misplaced bro code that in a roundabout way undermines the message of solidarity between Hawaii and Japan in implying that Reiko must choose between the two but then refusing to respect her choice. Further parallels are drawn in the reunion of Hideo’s great uncle who has since become a respected teacher at a Japanese school and his grumpy grandfather who is exposed as a dissolute layabout who returned to Japan in disgrace after giving up in the face of the harshness of life for Japanese migrants, Nomura utilising stock footage to demonstrate the many difficulties they faced in trying to make new lives for themselves in Hawaii. Of course, this being a star vehicle for Hashi, he gets several opportunities to sing including a rendition of the title of song while the film at times turns into a musical though the melancholy, foggy conclusion perhaps plays against the expectations of the genre. In any case, the film appears to be a fascinating document of an increasingly globalising Japan which nevertheless looked for itself even while seeking escape.

Catharsis After the End (#ピリオド打ったらカタルシス, Crazy Joe, 2022)

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“Why should I give my freedom to anyone but myself” the hero of Crazy Joe’s (Junpei Suzuki) Catharsis After the End (#ピリオド打ったらカタルシス, #Period Uttara Catharsis) asks himself, realising that his quest for internet fame has begun to erode his sense of self. Then again as he later admits, it isn’t video site New Qube or social media that have made him what he is, the darkness was there all along.  A critique of the dangers of the age of the internet in which online approval becomes all, Crazy Joe’s highly stylised dramedy ironically finds its hero fulfilling his desires but only in the darkest of ways. 

Hiro and his friend Hide are aspiring New Qubers trying to find fame and fortune through viral video but struggling to gain a foothold in the crowded space of online streaming. They start off with annoying public pranks and later find themselves drifting into an exploitative relationship with a homeless man who makes a habit of approaching men to ask if he can give them blow jobs while searching for new ideas to reel in views and subscribers which are all they really care about to the detriment of their other social relationships. 

Hiro at least in one sense got into New Qubing as a form of revenge, secretly videotaping the boss who regularly assaulted him physically with the intention of uploading to the internet. Access to the platform is also a source power as much as it’s a dangerous drug that feeds on his need for approval. After a while he stops doing what he wants to do and finds himself preoccupied only with what other people want, what they think of him, and what he can do to gain their engagement. At one point he and Hide venture into a forest in search of a dead body, though it’s not really clear what they intend to do if they find one, but end up running into a dejected salaryman who just wants to die but can’t seem to do it. They end up asking him if he wants to make a comment on video before almost realising how inappropriate that is in the quality of the man’s refusal. Later a pair of New Qubers will ask Hiro the same question in a similar situation while he can only marvel at the irony of the situation in the rapid evolution of ideas he himself helped to breed. 

In their ever increasing quest for success, the guys are roped into helping an intense old friend, Ryu, set up an account but he only posts inappropriate content including showing people how to waterboard or beating someone to a bloody pulp so all his videos are banned, yet Hiro still finds himself feeling jealous knowing Ryu is pushing boundaries in a way he’s failing to all of which leads him to his next evolution in creating crime duo Monolith which he intends to spark some kind of social movement among the young. But to his consternation there’s little interest in his crime spree while another old friend eventually steals his thunder by confessing to the crimes himself explaining that he did them because he wants to be “famous” before live streaming a murder to cement his notoriety. Running out of ideas in a continual game of oneupmanship, the New Qubers are left with nowhere to go other than increasingly bloody violence and cruelty while their followers egg them on from the sidelines crying out for pain and suffering. 

Hiro’s quest for freedom ends only in further constraint, addicted to the artificial high of internet acclaim and willing to sink ever lower to gain it. The irony is that he wanted to create something from nothing and then see others build on what he’d started which is in a sense what happens but only in the darkest of ways. Beautifully shot and highly stylised featuring animation, on screen text, and moments of genuine horror in its ominous score and red/blue lighting, Crazy Joe’s darkly humorous exploration of the ills of the contemporary society in which nothing happens if it doesn’t happen online presents an incredibly bleak prognosis for the evolution of social media but nevertheless has sympathy for its “scum of the earth” hero who only too late begins to realise he’s lost touch with himself in his never-ending quest for the approval of others. 

Catharsis After the End screened as part of the 2022 Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Doing Time (刑務所の中, Yoichi Sai, 2002)

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Who ever thought that life in prison could be so…peaceful? Adapted from the autobiographical manga by Kazuichi Hanawa, Yoichi Sai’s 2002 drama Doing Time (刑務所の中, Keimusho no Naka) is a slice of life dramedy somewhat typical of the early 2000s save its unexpected setting in a state penitentiary. Unlike the average prison movie, the main thing that Hanawa discovers is that life inside is incredibly dull, yet he approaches his brief sojourn in this other world with anthropological precision observing and mimicking the behaviour of his fellow prisoners while making the most of this hopefully once in a lifetime experience reflecting that he’ll likely never have the opportunity to wear such worn out undergarments ever again. 

A quiet man already in middle age, Hanawa (Tsutomu Yamazaki) is no dangerous criminal merely a firearms enthusiast who liked to fire modified pistols into bottles of water. He’s got three years for illegal possession of weaponry and explosives, which seems to be quite a harsh penalty considering another man is doing seven for murder after shooting a man he says waved an axe at him when he went to collect a debt. There are clearly men who have committed violent crimes in Hanawa’s immediate vicinity, yet this is not a traditional tale of prison gangs and factional infighting, the only violence we witness concerns one prisoner who appears to have broken the rules accidentally in thoughtlessness or ignorance rather than direct rebellion. Rather it is, ironically enough, almost like a summer camp in which Hanawa and his four cellmates attempt to amuse themselves during the little free time they are offered for contemplation and relaxation. 

Even so, every inch of the prisoners’ lives is micromanaged by the guards from the way they walk to when they are allowed to move or speak. So entirely stripped of their dignity are they, that they must ask for permission even to use the toilet in their own cell while in solitary confinement and dutifully report back once they’ve finished. The communal squat toilets at the back of the workshop where Hanawa works crafting wooden tissue boxes are entirely open with only knee-height doors on each stall for privacy. The prisoners’ days are tightly ordered, early to bed and early to rise with work in-between and only the promise of rest to look forward to on weekends and holidays. 

Ostensibly a shy man, Hanawa dislikes having to ask permission all the time though not so much as an affront to his autonomy as simply bothersome. Surprisingly he begins to warm to the rhythms and routines of prison life discovering in them a kind of liberation, finding his time in solitary for “unauthorised communication” the most enjoyable of his sentence free as it is of the necessity of interacting with other people. Like the bug collector in Woman of the Dunes, he finds freedom in simplicity appreciating the mindlessness of his absurd new job folding paper bags for medical prescriptions. He can abandon any sense of responsibility for his life, submitting himself entirely to the guards’ authority and surrendering the need for control, happy to allow his existence to be managed for him without needing to decide on anything for himself. 

That aside, it’s difficult to see what other purpose prison could serve for a man like Hanawa who merely had an unusual if potentially dangerous hobby save providing him with a unique life experience he seems to be treating as a kind of adventure. He may at times look down on his cellmates who have their own routines, but otherwise appears grateful for their input and advice regarding prison life often listening to their explanations for behaviour he regards as strange such as removing one’s trousers before entering the bathroom and then deciding to do as they do. With so little stimulation the mundane becomes exciting, each meal a culinary adventure listening to a cellmate recount his group treat of a film screening (Takeshi Kitano’s Kid’s Return) as if he had returned from exotic land relishing his description of the chocolate biscuits and cola he was given to snack on. Time is what Hanawa is doing, but he does at least gain the opportunity of experiencing life in slow motion learning to appreciate the beauty of a single dandelion while observing the absurdity of the world all around him which is perhaps no more absurd than that which exists outside. 

Blue Ribbon Awards Announces Winners for 65th Edition

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©2022 "A MAN" FILM PARTNERS

The Blue Ribbon Awards, presented by film critics and writers in Tokyo, has announced the winners for the 65th edition which honours films released in 2022. Kei Ishikawa’s A Man takes the Best Film prize but Chie Hayakawa walks away with Best Director for Plan 75 which also picks up Best Actress for Chieko Baisho.

Best Film

©2022 "A MAN" FILM PARTNERS

Best Director

  • Kei Ishikawa (A Man)
  • Shinzo Katayama (Missing)
  • Takahisa Zeze (Tombi: Father and Son, Fragments of the Last Will)
  • Chie Hayakawa (Plan 75)
  • Ryuichi Hiroki (2 Women, Motherhood, Phases of the Moon)

Best Actor

  • Sadao Abe (Lesson in Murder, I am Makimoto)
  • Jiro Sato (Missing)
  • Satoshi Tsumabuki (A Man)
  • Kazunari Ninomiya (Tang, Fragments of the Last Will)
  • Masaharu Fukuyama (Silent Parade)

Best Actress

Best Supporting Actor

Best Supporting Actress

  • Sakura Ando (A Man, Korosuna)
  • Machiko Ono (Anime Supremacy!, Soul At Twenty, Sabakan, Thousand and One Nights)
  • Nana Seino (Kingdom 2: To Distant Lands, Offbeat Cops, A Man)
  • Atsuko Takahata (Motherhood)
  • Ryoko Hirosue  (The Hound of the Baskervilles: Sherlock the Movie, 2 Women)

Best Newcomer

Best Foreign Film

  • Avatar: The Way of Water 
  • West Side Story
  • Cry Macho
  • Coda
  • Top Gun: Maverick
  • King Richard
  • Blue Bayou
  • Broker
  • Belfast
  • Lamb

Sources: Eiga Natalie, Nikkan Sports

Blood of Revenge (明治侠客伝 三代目襲名, Tai Kato, 1965)

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An earnest yakuza trying to walk a more legitimate path faces off against a thuggish businessman in Tai Kato’s late-Meiji ninkyo eiga, Blood of Revenge (明治侠客伝 三代目襲名, Meiji kyokyakuden – Sandaime Shumei). Though set in the confusing world of 1907, Kato’s tale is in some ways not so different from contemporary gangster dramas in its suggestion that even in the early days of the 20th century the yakuza were already somewhat out of date while the fancy capitalist who calls them so is not so far off from the corporatised gangsters of the high prosperity era. 

Kato opens with a tense scene at a festival in which local boss Kiyatatsu is knifed by an impassive assailant who later claims to have been acting alone and that he did it to make a name for himself by stabbing a big time yakuza boss. Kiyatasu’s hot-headed son Haruo (Masahiko Tsugawa) suspects that rival businessman Hoshino (Minoru Oki) is somehow behind the attack but is talked out of a self-destructive bid for revenge as his father reminds him that they are “not a mob” but “honest businessmen” and acts of violence would impact their business negatively. 

Kiyatatsu may once have been a big time yakuza boss but it’s clear he’s made an attempt to go straight by founding a legitimate business that began trading lumber and now sells construction supplies that are helping to expand the rapidly modernising late-Meiji economy. He is closely involved with a construction project to introduce a modern water distribution system for the good of the people of Osaka organised by another former yakuza, Nomura (Tetsuro Tamba). Hoshino, who was indeed behind the attack and is secretly backed by his own band of mercenary yakuza, had Kiyatatsu knifed in the hope of getting his hands on the contract, later stooping to other dirty tricks such as ruining their cement supply so that he can swoop in with a special deal on his own.  

Just like yakuza, businessmen appear to have a code and letting personal feelings interfere with business is just as bad as letting ninjo get in the way of your giri. Hoshino is a bad yakuza in a business suit, his Western clothing just another symbol of his villainy. Kiyotatsu’s guys including noble retainer Asajiro (Koji Tsuruta) all wear kimono with the young son Haruo later shifting to a suit after taking over the business in a bid to appear less like a yakuza and more like a serious young professional. Though Hoshino sneers at Asajiro that yakuza are already out of date and that he hates their tendency to solve every problem through violence he is little more than a thug himself keeping a small band of yakuza onside to do his dirty work.

Yet there is something in what he says that the yakuza belong to an earlier age and are unable to travel into the new post-Meiji society men like Normura are building. Insiting that Japan must embrace international trade, Nomura builds piers as a kind of outreach to a new world and does so for the good of the people rather than himself, living up to an old yazkua ideal in trying to ensure prosperity for all. Kiyotatsu is already distancing himself from the gangster way of life, explaining to a travelling gambler to whom he grants hospitality that he does not allow gambling in his home and believes that modern gangsters should find new ways to live, but is constantly tarred by the yakuza brush unable to fully escape the legacy of his tattoos. When Asajiro is appointed the new head of the clan it comes as quite a shock to the young Haruo who is outraged having believed it was his birthright to succeed his father. Ever noble, Asajiro suggests that he succeed as the head of the clan and Haruo as the heir to the legitimate business saving him from a sordid yakuza existence. 

Even this cannot save the clan from destruction in the light of Hoshino’s avaricious greed forcing Asajiro on a bloody path of revenge while forced to give up the woman he loves because of his code of duty. Asajiro’s kindness is signalled by his decision to buy a geisha for three days so she can visit her dying father in the countryside but Hatsue (Junko Fuji) remains otherwise entirely trapped. Her contract is bought out by boorish assassin Karasawa (Toru Abe) who treats her cruelty and buys her complicity in insisting that should she disobey he will turn on Asajiro. Asajiro’s eventual arrest makes it clear that he is not a man who can survive in the new times because his brand of nobility is clearly out of fashion even as he takes revenge on an increasingly corrupt society by standing up against the duplicitous Hoshino ironically taking a leaf out of Haruo’s book that by appeasing men like Hoshino they only enable their own oppression. Kato’s characteristic low level photography reflects the anxiety of the times dwarfing these old-fashioned men with an awkward modernity they are ill-equipped to survive.

Torso (トルソ, Yutaka Yamazaki, 2009)

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A traumatised woman overcomes her sense of loneliness by sharing her life with a limbless inflatable doll in the aptly named Torso (トルソ). More than a treatise on urban disconnection, the directorial debut from Yutaka Yamazaki is both an exploration of the lingering effects of childhood trauma and a contemplation of contemporary womanhood, the changing relationship dynamics between men and women, and the extent of bodily autonomy in an often conformist society while ending on a note of ambiguity which may represent either liberation or resignation. 

34-year-old Hiroko (Makiko Watanabe) works at an apparel studio where she is among the older of the employees and somewhat aloof with her colleagues, declining invitations to hang out after work or attend the singles mixers one of the other girls is forever organising. She is indeed the sort of person who likes to keep her distance, ostensibly preferring her own company spending her time working on a patchwork quilt but secretly cuddling up at night with a slightly smaller than life-size inflatable male torso which is anatomically correct yet has no head, arms, or legs and into which she must herself breathe life only to let it out again later. Her only other real connection is with her younger half-sister Mina (Sakura Ando) who is her polar opposite in terms of personality, a bubbly, energetic woman who seems to crave the kind of contact her sister is largely unable to give her. 

Even so despite claiming to hate having other people in her space, Hiroko is indulgent of Mina always giving in and allowing her to stay at her apartment at one point for an extended period of time even if not entirely happy about it. While Hiroko has eschewed male contact for the 100% controllable union with the torso pillow, Mina is trapped in an abusive relationship with a man, the otherwise unseen Jiro, whom we later learn to have been a long term boyfriend of Hiroko. Theirs is a relationship frustrated and defined by unresolved resentments, Hiroko complaining that Mina always takes everything she treasures beginning it seems with her mother’s love. A colleague of Hiroko’s around her own age laments that at their age weddings and funerals are the only occasions that they visit their hometowns, but Hiroko is reluctant to visit for reasons other than the usual awkwardness between grownup children and their parents, dressing up and catching a train to attend the funeral of the stepfather we gather must have abused her while her mother (Miyako Yamaguchi) turned a blind eye but finally unable to go through with it. 

For Hiroko’s mother, Hiroko is the embodiment of her resentment towards her first husband who left her, later on another visit snapping back that she must have got her “unpleasant personality” from him while otherwise praising Mina who admittedly has bad taste in men but a generous heart. Hiroko meanwhile projects her own resentment onto her mother who failed to protect her from abuse she wonders possibly because of the resentment she feels towards her while she also projects her feelings of jealous inadequacy onto Mina who may also in a sense resent her for being unable to return the sisterly affection she desires. As she replies, she took Hiroko’s things because she only wanted her love even if vicariously through the otherwise abusive relationship with Jiro whose child she is also carrying. 

In many ways it’s Mina’s pregnancy which forces Hiroko to reassess her life, not least in the accusation that she had wanted to carry Jiro’s child herself. At 34 Hiroko is perhaps at a moment of crisis, her frosty mother coldly telling her she’ll soon have to “give in” and abandon her solitary life for a conventional marriage (despite her recent widowhood her mother has already started another affair with the guy from the funeral parlour). On the other hand, are men actually very necessary anymore or has true independence become not only viable but a respected choice? Despite the constant mixers, some of the younger women at the office have decided not to wait for marriage and have already put a foot on the property ladder getting a good deal on a mortgage by starting young to own their own place and achieve financial independence. “You can’t rely on men these days” one of others agrees while recognising that choosing this kind of independence does not necessarily mean a rejection of romance or long term relationships. 

For her part, Hiroko is wary of men who do in the main seem to be sleazy and predatory, visibly flinching as an over-friendly clerk at the car rental office repeatedly attempts to lean across her while she’s sitting in the driving seat. Aside from its obvious insentience, the torso is symbolically unable to harm her in having no arms to strike, no legs to kick, and no head to hurt while preserving the part she most craves buried in its empty chest which she cradles constantly like a child with a favourite toy. Her attachment to it is not purely physical but emotional, taking it on a mini holiday to the beach dressed in a pair of tiny speedos as they frolic in the sea together alone on a private beach. Yet even this body as empty as she feels her own to be can also betray and be betrayed, another treasure to be stolen if only in the breaking of a spell on realising that Mina has discovered her secret. 

Mina’s final decision is both old-fashioned and ultra-contemporary, vowing to go back to the country and raise the child alone while in a symbolic sense becoming her mother in intending to take over her old part-time job at a nursing home. Hiroko meanwhile is preoccupied with the idea that she’s sacrificing her dreams and aspirations because of something that’s essentially Jiro’s fault, in part stripping her of her own agency in making her decisions and imposing on her the view that struggling in the city even if it doesn’t really suit you is inherently better than making a simple life at home. A brassy gravure model (Sora Aoi) who makes a point of the fact her body is business similarly looks down on Mina, suggesting that she’s simply weak and if she really wanted to pursue her dreams she’d have an abortion without a second thought. Yet does it really need to be an either or? The decision that Hiroko finally comes to may suggest that it might, or then again perhaps she’s merely freeing herself of her long held trauma and looking to lead a more emotionally fulfilling life. “We’re just starting out” Mina shouts back from from across the ticket barriers as she leaves hinting at new beginnings for each of the sisters having each at least laid something to rest. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Dead Angle (白昼の死角, Toru Murakawa, 1979)

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The jitsuroku yakuza movie which had become dominant in the mid-70s had often told of the rise and fall of the petty street gangster from the chaos of the immediate post-war era to the economically comfortable present day. The jitsuroku films didn’t attempt to glamourise organised crime and often presented their heroes as men born of their times who had been changed by their wartime experiences and were ultimately unable to adjust themselves to life in the new post-war society. Adapted from a serialised novel by Akimitsu Takagi which ran from 1959 to 1960, Toru Murakawa’s Dead Angle (白昼の死角, Hakuchu no Shikaku) by contrast speaks directly to the contemporary era in following a narcissistic conman who has no need to live a life of crime but as he says does evil things for evil reasons. 

Prior to the film’s opening in 1949, the hero Tsuruoka (Isao Natsuyagi) had been a law student at a prestigious Tokyo university where he nevertheless became involved in the Sun Club, a student financial organisation launched by mastermind Sumida (Shin Kishida) who eventually commits suicide by self-immolation when the organisation collapses after being accused of black market trading. An unrepentant Tsuruoka resolves to start again, rebuilding in the ashes as a means of kicking back against hypocritical social institutions and rising corporate power by utilising his legal knowledge to run a series of cons through the use of promissory notes to prove that the law is not justice but power. 

In this Tsuruoka has an ironic point. He doesn’t pretend what he’s doing is legal, only that he’s safeguarded himself against prosecution. When a pair of yakuza thugs break into his office and threaten him in retaliation for a con he ran on a shipping company, he reminds them that as they’ve had him open the safe it would make the charge of killing him robbery plus murder which means automatic life imprisonment rather than the few years they might get for simply killing him without taking any money. He always has some reason why the law can’t touch him, while implicitly placing the blame on his victims who were often too greedy or desperate to read the small print and therefore deserve whatever’s coming to them. In at least one case, Tsuruoka’s victimless crimes end up resulting in death with one old man whom he’d double conned, pretending to give him the money he was owed but getting him drunk and talking him into “re-investing” the money with him, takes his own life by seppuku in the depths of his shame not only in the humiliation of having been swindled but losing his company, who had trusted him, so much money. 

You could never call Tsuruoka’s rebellion an anti-capitalist act, but it is perhaps this sense of corporate tribalism symbolised by the old man’s extremely feudalistic gesture that Tsuruoka is targeting. As his wife Takako (Mitsuko Oka) tells him, Tsuruoka should have no problem making an honest living. After all he graduated in law from a top university, it’s not as if he wouldn’t have been financially comfortable and it doesn’t seem that the money is his primary motive. While Takako continues to insist that he’s a good person who wouldn’t do anything “illegal”, his longterm geisha mistress Ayaka (Yoko Shimada) knows that he’s an evil man who does evil things for evil’s sake and that’s what she likes about him. Elderly businessmen are always harping on about the “irresponsible youth” of the day but all are too quick to fall for Tsuruoka’s patter while he is essentially nothing more than a narcissist who gets off on a sense of superiority laughing at the law, the police, and the corporate landscape while constantly outsmarting them. 

In this, the film seems to be talking to the untapped capitalism of the 1970s. Like Tsuruoka, the nation now has no need to get its hands dirty and should know when enough is enough but is in danger of losing sight of conventional morality in the relentless consumerist dash of the economic miracle. That might explain why unlike the jitsuroku gangster pictures, Murakawa scores the film mainly with an anachronistic contemporary soundtrack along with the ironic use of saloon music in the bar where Tsuruoka’s associates hook an early target, and the circus tunes which envelope him at the film’s opening and closing hinting that this is all in some ways a farce even as Tsuruoka is haunted by the ghosts his narcissistic greed has birthed. Then again perhaps he too is merely a product of his times, cynical, mistrustful of authority, and seeking independence from a hypocritical social order but discovering only failure and exile in his unfeeling hubris. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Hypnosis (ヒプノシス, Takuto Okui, 2022)

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The difference between hypnosis and brainwashing, according to a recently released street thief, is that brainwashing forces you to do something you don’t really want to whereas hypnosis merely encourages you to act on a latent desire. He perhaps leans a little heavily on this defence, justifying his own actions as only accidental motivators as if his victims were somehow complicit in his crimes, yet there is something in what he says if only in his own wilful self-delusions. 

A graduation project, Takuto Okui’s Hypnosis (ヒプノシス) follows protagonist Kazuto across two time periods 15 years apart opening in colour with the young Kazuto hypnotising and then robbing a policeman of his watch and gun, before jumping forward and into black and white to find him recently released from prison using his powers for “good” to knock out a sexually aggressive guy and rescue sex worker Maki from being assaulted in an alleyway. Taking her for a hamburger dinner he can’t convince her to eat, he explains that he was passing through on a trip down memory lane remembering when he’d saved his first love Mei from a similar situation with an abusive boyfriend. 

Kazuto proves his point about hypnosis only working if the target on some level wants to comply when his attempt to convince Mei to leave violent partner Masashi immediately fails, she later coming to the conclusion her decision to stay with him was also a kind of brainwashing. Nevertheless, he seems to be able to pull Jedi mind tricks on various policemen while otherwise using it to manipulate a situation to his advantage. We might wonder about his ability to pull the wool over our eyes especially when he pulls a gun on his abusive father, a fantasy sequence giving way to his shooting him for real but there being no sign of blood at the scene though a policeman does turn up a little later having received a report of a gunshot only for Kazuto to convince him to go away without investigating further. 

In each timeline he’s minded to play the hero, firstly trying to save Mei from Masashi and then Maki from the loansharks who have been after her ever since her father took his own life after unwisely guaranteeing a loan for his boss who then ran off and left him to carry the can. But the more he tells us the less we trust him, painting a picture of romantic tragedy in which he was cruelly robbed of his true love and languished in prison for 15 years while Masashi apparently went on enjoying his life. “That’s how this story ends” Kazuto stoically explains, suggesting that it’s how he’s chosen to end it in not immediately gunning for revenge on his release from prison but also hinting at a degree of personal myth making in creating an ending that fits with his version of events. 

The colour sequences are in a way part of the movie in his mind, the way he’s taught himself to remember it, while the black and white are just that a starker version of an objective truth without Kazuto’s editorial filter. He says he wants to help Maki, and perhaps he does, but is also playing an angle to get his hands on her money while leaving her open to reprisals from the loanshark, not to mention his grand plan involves selling someone to an elite club of French of torture enthusiasts through middle woman Akemi who, as a kind of anchor, has apparently not changed in the 15 years he’s been in prison. 

Even so, reality will eventually come calling for him and he’ll go to great lengths to protect his self-deluded fantasy, preserving the grand act of self-hypnosis he’s practiced on himself. As it turns out, there are some situations you can’t talk your way out of or escape through a simple Jedi mind trick but the ability to rewrite the past as you remember it might be the next best thing. Heavily stylised, Okui’s noirish drama pits fantasy against reality and objective truth against delusion while Kazuto wanders between failed hero and cowardly villain unable to protect anything or anyone save perhaps his image of himself even in his failure. 

Hypnosis screened as part of the 2022 Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival.

Interview with the director (Japanese only)