Tag: Japan

Heaven’s Story (ヘヴンズ ストーリー, Takahisa Zeze, 2010)

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“When your family’s murdered, aren’t you entitled to happiness?” remarks a bereaved husband trying to move on from tragedy to a similarly bereaved little girl who is determined not to. “I don’t think so”, she coldly replies, dragging him back into a dark world of hate and vengeance. At that time perhaps best known for his career in pink film, Takahisa Zeze’s 4.5-hour epic Heaven’s Story (ヘヴンズ ストーリー) weaves a tale of interconnected hurts born of violence and its legacy, parental betrayals, and irreconcilable loss. The only victory is survival, but it’s a prize none of us will win. The best we can hope for is continuity, and perhaps leaving something more behind us than fear or rage. 

Our heroine, Sato (Moeki Tsuruoka), is orphaned when her parents and older sister are brutally murdered by a disgruntled employee exacting some kind of petty revenge on her father. The killer is later found dead in a hotel room, presumed to have taken his own life. The tragedy is however just one of many. Passing by a TV screen, Sato catches a report detailing the death of her family members and their murderer which is immediately followed by a press conference with a very angry young man whose wife and infant daughter were killed in random attack by a passing drifter who has been given an indeterminate sentence on account of the fact that he was underage and suffered greatly during his childhood. Tomoki (Tomoharu Hasegawa), the bereaved husband and father, vows revenge angrily insisting he won’t ask for the death penalty because he wants the killer, Mitsuo Aikawa (Shugo Oshinari), released as soon as possible so he can kill him with his own hands. Only eight years old, Sato identifies with his rage. The man she wants to kill is already dead and she’s been robbed of the chance of closure through vengeance so vicariously latches on to Tomoki’s quest for retribution, making him something of a personal hero. 

Tomoki’s words were offered in the raw pain of his loss. His reaction is understandable, but as he later says, people started to lose sympathy for him once he called for the killer’s death. As time moves on, he perhaps starts heal, marrying again and having another little girl, starting a new life in a new place which of course does not overwrite his past loss but is a new start. That’s something Sato can’t allow or understand. She feels irrationally betrayed by Tomoki’s decision to leave his loss in the past and move on to a new life. Rocking up at his tranquil island home, she accuses him of forgetting the dead, guilting him into thinking he’s betrayed the memories of his wife and child by not knowing that Mitsuo has been released from prison let alone not having taken his revenge. 

Mitsuo, however, has also attempted to move on. It can’t be denied that he committed a heinous, unforgivable crime, but he is also, in a sense, a victim himself. His mother took her own life when he was 13 because his father was abusive and he carries that abuse with him, which of course does not excuse his crime but might help to explain it. Kyoko (’70s folk singer Hako Yamasaki), a lonely doll maker, is taken by his enigmatic statement that he wants to be remembered by the unborn and begins writing to him in prison, eventually agreeing to adopt him as her son though she is already suffering with the early stages Alzheimer’s. Later in a tense conversation with Tomoki, Mitsuo describes Kyoko as a woman of great warmth and if it were not for her he might perhaps have killed again. Her positive maternal presence gives Mitsuo the sense of anchoring through parental love that he had never had, restoring him towards a more normal kind of existence as he diligently cares for her while her condition continues to deteriorate. 

Time swindles them all. Kyoko desperately tries to remember something she’s forgotten, while Sato is locked into a pleasant childhood memory of walking with her parents to see a newly completed housing estate which seems to be the very embodiment of a post-war utopia, a large green space surrounded by neatly arranged, identical blocks with well appointed family homes piled one on top of the other. The conclusion takes us somewhere similar, only inverted, in the empty shell of a disused danchi, once a home to a bustling mining community now abandoned by the modern era. In the monologue which opens the film, Sato recounts a folktale about a monster who lived in the hills and attacked people, but did so only accidentally in his loneliness and longing to be a part of the world around him, but the people were afraid and so they rejected him and his monstrousness intensified. Tomoki destroys his second family in an internecine need to avenge the first driven by Sato’s demonic need for vicarious retribution, while Mitsuo’s attempt to move into the light is frustrated by an inability to escape his past. All the fear, and hate, and suffering, breeds only more of the same. “Heaven’s Story” may be in many ways the story of violence, but violence is not its resolution. Sato makes a kind of peace with the past, but will also carry that legacy of pain back into the complicated urban world as far from the heavenly vistas of tranquility which exist now only in her memory as it’s possible to be. 

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Immersion (忌怪島／きかいじま, Takashi Shimizu, 2023)

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Technological anxiety was at the heart of millennial J-horror, but perhaps the more things change the more they stay the same. Takashi Shimizu’s latest ghost story Immersion (忌怪島／きかいじま, Kikaijima) sees a grudge-bearing spirit cross over from the virtual world neatly suggesting we take our monsters with us into our simulacra and to that extent the brave new world is not so new at all. Then again, the hero thinks he desires a private world but paradoxically wants to share it and eventually discovers that what he craves is connection.

Tomohiko (Daigo Nishihata) has accepted a job as a programmer helping to build a new virtual world exactly replicating a remote island. He is greeted by his boss, Ide, in the digital space, but shortly after his arrival discovers that she died some time previously along side a man she may have been experimenting on in a project exploring brain syncronicity. When Tomohiko enters the virtual world he is confronted by strange and dangerous visions which suggest there’s a threatening bug in the system. Soon enough, the data breaks loose and somehow awakens in our world.

What no one knows is how a vengeful ghost got in the machine in the first place, though a shinto priestess later likens the new digital space to the “over there”, a perfect simulacrum of our world existing on another plane where spirits and their victims gather. Then again, it seems the problems are mainly on this side with an old man mocked by children and shunned by society because his mother suffered some kind of mental illness and was filled with a lust that was taboo at the time. The man’s mother is linked to the legend of Imajin, a slave raped by her master whose wife then took against her causing her to become a vengeful spirit who drove people out of their minds.

The purpose of the new world Tomohiko is creating isn’t clear, but it’s certainly very well resourced. The implication seems to be that the virtual is already haunting us and we can’t be sure of what we’re “really” experiencing and what we’ve been primed to experience. Tomohiko increases “the reality” of the virtual space by coding to it to activate “real” sense memories such as the smell of the sea or the feel of the sand. He can’t be sure if he’s the ghost in this world or the other while remaining aloof and diffident, unable to communicate effectively with his teammates. Tamaki, the estranged daughter of the dead man asks him if he doesn’t like people, to which he has no real answer though she replies that she doesn’t really like them either. What he realises is that doesn’t really want a world of solitude, but to be with others though it seems it might not matter whether in a “real” or virtual space.

But in contrast to all this modernity, the island is a traditional community with a strong interest in shamanistic lore and ritual. Tomohiko says he doesn’t really believe in any of that stuff, but is still prepared to go along with the shamaness’ advice in order confine the vengeful spirit to another world even if it means sacrificing the virtual space they are trying to build. Perhaps the message is that this kind of technological advance is dangerous and hubristic, unleashing forces we are ill-equipped to understand and would not be able to quell. As the shaman implies, you have to close the door from this side and not the other, which is a serious problem for the engineers who find themselves struggling to destroy the portal of a Torii gate in both spaces while the ghost continues to wreak watery vengeance.

Shimizu conjures an atmosphere of lurking dread in which digital ghosts haunt us in reflections of the ancient past even as our reality is destabilised by the overlay of the virtual. Tamaki reflects that the island is like a ghost town with few figures on the streets save themselves though they too sometimes appear like lingering spirits. What they discover may be a kind of refuge or escape, but perhaps not in the way we might expect while vengeful ghosts aren’t quite so easy to exorcise as they might once have been.

Immersion screened as part of this year’s London East Asia Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Bohachi Bushido: Code of the Forgotten Eight (ポルノ時代劇 忘八武士道, Teruo Ishii, 1973)

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A nihilistic ronin falls into the hellish trap of the Yoshiwara in Teruo Ishii’s dazzlingly psychedelic period drama, Bohachi Bushido (ポルノ時代劇 忘八武士道, Porno Jidaigeki: Bohachi Bushido). Adapted from a manga short by Kazuo Koike, the film once again tackles Edo era corruption as a brothel owner with a special connection to the shogun attempts to wipe out the competition presented by an enterprising merchant class only to find himself hoist by his own petard.

Ishii signals his intentions early on with the artfully staged opening scequence in which wandering ronin Shino (Tetsuro Tanba) is attacked on a bridge at dusk. As he turns to slash at an opponent, the blood splatter morphs into the film’s title while the clang of swords gives off little blue sparks that turn into the listings for the cast and crew. By the time the title sequence has concluded, night has descended on the bridge and Shino finds himself engulfed in darkness. “To die is hell, but to live is also hell” he exclaims as he jumps into the water below, hoping to be free of his empty life of killing. 

Unfortunately, he is rescued and brought to the Yoshiwara where they try to persuade him to join the Bohachi clan so called because to do so you must abandon all eight human virtues. The Bohachi’s main line of work is the sexual torture of women until they become docile dolls for their brothel. Shino describes them as “revolting” but then adds “just like me” and agrees to join anyway only to earn their mistrust when he refuses to play along with their games, buying but not sleeping with a woman brought in over a debt. Though Shirakubi, the guy who recruited him, tries to kick Shino out and calls the police on him for good measure, the big boss, Shirobe (Tatsuo Endo), decides he’ll take him in for use as an attack dog taking down anyone who interferes with business be they lords or officials. 

The irony is that the nihilistic Shiro enthusiastically takes to his work because he dislikes the debauchery of the Edo-era society even while working for the “legitimate” brothel owner who is at least “licensed” to exploit women for financial gain. What Shirobe resents is the rise of quasi-brothels in the various teahouses that are obviously selling more than just tea but continue to undercut his business by selling women even cheaper than he does. He also feels betrayed by the various samurai lords who choose to visit the teahouses over his own establishment and therefore seeks to have them frightened into submission by ordering Shino to kill any man found with one of the tea house sex workers. Later he even declares a kind of sex worker amnesty promising to pay five ryo for any of the teahouse women brought to him, no matter by who, and then joking that he’s actually killing two birds with one stone by getting his hands on a high quantity of new stock for a very low price. 

Shino refuses to sleep with the women and is most offended when his male assistant is killed in an attack by the rival brothel owners yet the team of warrior women sent to protect him did nothing to help because their orders were only to protect Shino and Shirobe’s orders must be followed to the letter on the pain of death. He seems to know he’s living on borrowed time and Shirobe probably intends to finish him off once he’s finished his mission of removing all opposition and restoring Shirobe’s power to manipulate the shogun but barely does anything to resist until faced with the rather ironic punishment of being given opium and then forced to participate in a never-ending orgy intended to result in his death in an extraordinary psychedelic sequence from Ishii . 

Of course, what they didn’t reckon on was Shino’s ironic desire to live or at least not to be beaten in which he actively begins stabbing himself to overcome withdrawal symptoms and carry on fighting even when they try to ram him with a giant spear cart. Ears are cut off, flying across the screen followed by arms and then heads. Ishii lends a poetic sheen to the closing moments as Shino is caught in a hero pose alone in the snow but still standing, if barely, and freed at least from one kind of hell if not from many others. 

Godzilla Minus One (ゴジラ-1.0, Takashi Yamazaki, 2023)

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When Godzilla emerges from the waves in Takashi Yamazaki’s entry into the classic tokusatsu series Godzilla Minus One (ゴジラ-1.0), he does so as an embodiment of wartime trauma most particularly that of the hero, Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot who failed die. Some might call his actions cowardice, returning to base siting engine trouble rather than doing what others regard as his duty, though the film implies it’s simply a consequence of his natural desire to live, a desire which the tenets of militarism which in essence a death cult insisted he must suppress. 

But for Koichi as he’s fond of saying the war never ends. He’s trapped in a purgatorial cycle of survivor’s guilt and internalised shame, feeling as if he has no right to a future because of the future that was robbed from other men like him because of his refusal to sacrifice his life. When he first encounters Godzilla on a small island outpost, he is ordered back into his plane to fire its guns at him but freezes while the rest of the men, bar one, are killed. Tachibana (Munetaka Aoki), a mechanic who had already branded Koichi a treacherous coward, gives him a packet of photographs belonging to the dead men each featuring the families they were denied the opportunity to return to. Photographs on an altar become a motif for him, though he has none for his parents who were killed when their house was destroyed by the aerial bombing of Tokyo. A surviving neighbour similarly blames him, directly aligning Koichi’s act of selfish cowardice with the razing of the city.

The return of Godzilla is literal manifestation of his war trauma which he must finally confront in order to move into the new post-war future that’s built on peace and solidarity rather than acrimony and resentment for the wartime past. But then again, the film situates itself in a fantasy post-war Tokyo in which the Occupation is barely felt and the government, which mainly consisted of former militarists, is also absent. Both the US and the Japanese authorities refuse to do anything about Godzilla because of various geopolitical implications making this a problem that the people must face themselves, though they largely do so through attempting to repurpose rather than reject the militarist past. Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka), a scientist who worked on weapons production during the war, gives a rousing speech in which he explains that this time they will not pointlessly sacrifice their lives but instead fight to live in a better world which is all very well but perhaps mere sophistry when the end result is the same. 

Called back by their old commander, many men say they will not risk their lives or abandon their families once again because they have learned their lessons but others are convinced by the message that they must face Godzilla if they’re ever to be free of their wartime past. Koichi wants vengeance against Godzilla but also to avenge himself by doing what he could not do before. The film seems to suggest that this time it’s different because he has a choice. No one has ordered him to die, and he is free to choose whether to do so or not which is also the choice of being consumed by his war trauma or overcoming it to begin a new life in the post-war Tokyo that Godzilla has just destroyed. 

Despite the desperation and acrimony he returns to, Koichi maintains his humanity bonding with a young woman, Noriko (Minami Hamabe), who agreed to take care of another woman’s child. Even the neighbour, Sumiko (Sakura Ando), who first rejected Koichi and is suspicious of Noriko, willingly gives up her own rice supply for the baby proving that in the end people are good and will help each other even if that seems somewhat naive amid the realities of life in the post-war city ridden with starvation and disease. In any case, it’s this solidarity that eventually saves them, Godzilla challenged less by a pair of large boats than a flotilla of small ones united by the desire to finally end this war. Like Yamazaki’s previous wartime dramas The Eternal Zero and The Great War of Archimedes, the film espouses a lowkey nationalism mired in a nostalgia for a mythologised Japan but as usual excels in terms of production design and visual spectacle as the iconic monster looms large over a city trapped between the wartime past and a post-war future that can only be claimed by a direct confrontation with the lingering trauma of militarist folly.

Godzilla Minus One opens in UK cinemas 15th December courtesy of All the Anime.

International trailer (English subtitles)

Ninja vs Shark (妖獣綺譚 ニンジャVSシャーク, Koichi Sakamoto, 2023)

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There’s a lot going on in formerly peaceful village Okitsu. Not only are villagers washing up in bits after being attacked by a mysterious Sea God, but they’re also being abducted by a gang of devil-worshipping bandits. Koichi Sakamoto’s Ninja Vs Sharks (妖獣綺譚 ニンジャVSシャーク, Youjuu Kitan Ninja vs Shark) is exactly what it sounds like only with added zombies and black magic along with a more prosaic darkness in the legacy of domestic violence, entrenched patriarchy, and social prejudice. 

The twin threats are the reason that the village chief decides to employ Kotaro (Koshu Hirano), a drifter with a good reputation as a bodyguard but a bad one as a man. In the last village, he raped the wife of the man that hired him, Tae, on learning that they did not in fact have the money to pay. This fact seems to be forgotten as the film progresses and Kotaro is seen in a much more sympathetic light as someone who has a genuine interest in protecting the village rather than a heartless rapist and mercenary. In any case, on his arrival in Okitsu he walks in the attempted rape of Sayo (Juria Nagano), a woman ostracised by the village for having killed her abusive father after he murdered her mother. Her father was also the Mayor’s brother, which would make him her uncle though he thinks nothing of declaring her “cursed” and offering her up as a sacrifice to bandits and supernatural enemies alike. 

As Kotoaro remarks, some people only feel safe through oppressing others. The pair immediately bond over their shared outsider status and a sense of loss having been instructed by those they could not save that above all else they should live. There is however a minor love triangle in the determination of villager Shinsuke (Shun Nishime), otherwise fairly ineffectual, to protect Sayo from bandits, curses, and the stigmatisation of the village. Nevertheless the trio end up becoming fast friends even as Kotaro’s past comes back to haunt him in the form of roving ninja Kikuma (Kanon Miyahara) who is set on tracking him down as a traitor to their clan. 

Meanwhile, the leader of the devil-worshipping clan has figured out that he can gain eternal youth by eating pearls and vampirising handsome young men after sucking on their chests and licking their faces. Becoming a many-toothed shark-man in the process he has a pact with a giant shark demon which has been slowly killing off the villagers which is counterproductive because he needs them to produce more pearls. Kikuma also has some kind of dark ninja magic which allows her to create zombies, killing and bringing back the woman Kotaro raped as an undead retainer still hoping for vengeance though Kotaro’s dark past seems to be otherwise forgotten in his newfound sense of righteousness. 

It’s obviously a lot, but Sakamoto mostly makes it work as simply a part of this strange feudal world though the real villain is obviously the Mayor who is not sufficiently dealt with and yes, he probably should have closed the beach not to mention looking for a better way to deal with the Sea God if not the bandits. The titular shark does not appear all that much though there are plenty of other fights and action sequences not to mention severed heads and giant blood sprays along with gory dismembered body parts. Less a contest between man and nature, the battle is between the supernatural force of the shark and classic ninja training which Kotaro is forced to re-embrace in his quest to save Sayo having sworn off it because of inherent corruption in the ninja world. In any case, though they might have defeated the shark and struck a partial blow against the devil-worshippers, the trio each find themselves exiled from mainstream society, unable to remain in the village and seeking a life of independence elsewhere. A post-credits sequence hints a sequel suggesting that trouble is, however, likely to follow them as they do their best to survive in Edo-era society where vampire shark-men may actually be the least of their worries.

Ninja vs Shark screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Eagle and the Hawk (鷲と鷹, Umetsugu Inoue, 1957)

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Strapping sailors meditate on revenge and forgiveness while trapped aboard a moribund cargo ship in Umetsugu Inoue’s otherwise charming musical youth drama, The Eagle and the Hawk (鷲と鷹, Washi to Taka). One of several films Inoue released starring muse of the moment Ishihara, the film uses the boat as a kind of metaphor for a reluctance to deal with the unfinished past as several of its crew members are actively engaged in a self-imposed limbo wilfully remaining in a transient space floating between two harbours with no plans to disembark. 

This is most obviously true for the zombified Ken (Kinshiro Matsumoto) who wanders around the boat in a depressive daze unable to get over a girlfriend who left him for another man though as it turns out the bosun too is hiding out at sea waiting for the statue of limitations to run out on the murder of his lover 30 years previously. When two new recruits show up from the sailors union despite only one having been requested, many are under the assumption that they too are running from something on land though the boat itself is a confined environment from which there is no real escape so it’s also an ideal space for confrontation. 

The thing they may be running from is the murder of the boat’s chief engineer in the film’s noirish opening sequence in which a middle-aged man in a sailor’s cap is stalked by a youngster in jeans before being knifed with a ceremonial dagger. If they were running from that particular crime, it might be ironic that they chose this particular boat but then as the murdered man’s son, First Mate Goro (Hiroyuki Nagato), discovers the dagger was part of a set and the other one’s owned by the captain who seems very alarmed by the whole affair. Meanwhile, the captain’s daughter, Akiko (Ruriko Asaoka), has secretly stowed away along with Akemi (Yumeji Tsukioka), the heartbroken former girlfriend of one of the two new guys, Senkichi (Yujiro Ishihara). 

Women are regarded as unlucky on board, and it’s not difficult to guess why with Goro offering strict instructions to the new guys not to try anything with Akiko while one of the other sailors later attempts to rape Akemi with a palpable desperation existing within the crew. There is also a degree of homoerotic tension between the two new guys, the other being Sasaki (Rentaro Mikuni) who typically walks around shirtless in a pair of tight jeans and works hard to give the impression of having a mysterious past all of which leads Senkichi to suspect he’s an undercover cop possibly there after him or one of the other crew members though unbeknownst to (almost) everyone there is another crime in motion on board. 

As usual, it’s the past that’s come calling with Senkichi on the boat ironically running towards rather than away from a confrontation while others desperately try to cover up their crimes or deflect their responsibility for the dodgy dealings of their youth. Both Senkichi and Sasaki immediately remark that the boat’s a “junker” as soon as they get on board, implying that it too is on its way out, its disrepair a sign of its captain’s lack of respect and care for ship and crew alike. Then again, it seems the crew were intent on drinking half the cargo, most of them clearly happy in their work and enjoying a pleasant sense of camaraderie even on this crummy ship and its presumably not quite above board trip to Hong Kong which might hint at why Akemi shows up in cheongsam though for stowaways both women seem to have brought extensive wardrobes which in all honesty are not particularly well suited to life at sea. 

In any case, the boat becomes an unexpected place of healing and forgiveness largely brokered by manly magnanimity as Goro, on learning the truth behind his father’s murder, accepts that the killer’s motivations are “understandable” even while cautioning them against the fallacy of revenge which he insists will only create more hate and violence. He’s also fairly okay with Senkichi romancing his girl, Akiko, who sadly tells him she sees him more like a brother and isn’t interested in marrying him even if that’s what her father also expects neatly reflecting the dynamic which arises between Akemi and the lovelorn Ken who begins to cheer up and consider leaving the boat to open a transistor radio shop only for Akemi to describe him as a little brother while continuing to chase Senkichi despite his interest in Akiko. An expressionistic storm scene provides some divine justice, but also provokes a bittersweet romantic resolution which suggests it’s time to get off the boat and the face the past but with a kind of cheerfulness for the future otherwise at odds with the rage and violence of the original crime. Of course, this being a vehicle for Yujiro Ishihara, Inoue works in a few romantic scenes with his ukulele and a mournful song about the moon and ocean but finally sends him back to dry land a little more “grounded” for having found his sea legs.

The Rest of Our Lives (ラストターン　福山健二71歳、二度目の青春, Shinji Kuma, 2023)

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A pair of elderly men struggle to find meaning in their lives in the face of well-meaning infantilism and health anxiety in Shinji Kuma’s warmhearted ageing drama, The Rest of Our Lives (ラストターン　福山健二71歳、二度目の青春,, Last Turn: Fukuyama Kenji 71-sai, Nidome no Seishun). They are not, however, the only ones as even younger people find themselves consumed by existential confusion when reaching a natural turning point and accepting that their lives will have to change. Yet through their various relationships each begins to come to a new accommodation with the present and accept that though their lives may be different than before there are still many things for them to do. 

Kenji lost his wife two years previously having cared for her as she succumbed to Alzheimer’s. These days he likes to take a walk around the neighbourhood and then get on with his usual business though even he begins to realise that he’s become forgetful and is prone to doing strange things like leaving the remote control for the TV in the freezer. His son lives far away but is worried enough about him to install an iPad on the wall so they can call each other any time and he can also check in on him to make sure Kenji hasn’t had a fall or anything like that. But to Kenji it obviously seems like an imposition, his son’s basically spying on him and taking away his privacy along with a little of his independence. Satoru has also been checking out homes and recommends an organisation for elderly people where he can get health advice, stay active, and avoid social isolation. 

Only at the centre he starts to feel insulted, irritated that the staff members talk to them as if there were small children while getting them to do weird exercise regimes that make him feel silly. One elderly gentleman, Hashimoto, eventually storms out exclaiming that they aren’t in kindergarten anymore instantly earning Kenji’s admiration. Even so, as it turns out they are very different men. While Kenji is somewhat reserved and polite, Hashimoto is a chatterbox who makes constant inappropriate comments about women he probably only (just) gets away with because of his age and otherwise loudmouth personality. The friendship between them is slow to develop for this reason, but also because Kenji seems to have forgotten what it’s like to have a friend and accidentally upsets him leading Hashimoto to think that perhaps he is just annoying Kenji and should leave him alone. 

At the swimming pool they’re encouraged to go to, the pair run into Kaori, a former competitive swimmer like them struggling to accept the physical decline of her body along the end of her sporting career. Now working as an instructor she finds teaching an uphill battle partly in her buried resentment but also through a lack of empathy for her students unable to remember what it was like to not be able to swim and impatient with those lagging behind. They are all looking for ways to reorient themselves, not so much because of their age because of the immense changes in their lives along with a sense of loneliness. Kenji lives alone, but even Hashimoto who has moved in with his son confesses that the often feels in the way and once again infantilised seeing as they’ve given him a traditional Japanese room which lacks a locking door. 

Yet the realisation Kenji comes to is that their fear of becoming a burden is misplaced. It’s alright to ask for help when you need it and even better to offer it where you can such as in his thoughtful decision to walk a neighbourhood dog that barks all the time because the elderly lady who owned him passed away and her son’s out all day at work. Shining a light on the lives of the elderly in an increasingly ageing Japan, the film is makes a gentle plea for intergenerational solidarity and a more compassionate society that is responsive to the needs of others and cares for everyone equally. Kenji and Hashimoto marvel that even in their old age they still take pleasure in learning new things while allowing themselves to accept help as a gesture of love while making sure to return the favour wherever they can. 

The Rest of Our Lives screened as part of this year’s Camera Japan.

To Trap a Kidnapper (誘拐報道, Shunya Ito, 1982)

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One of a number of films released in the early ’80s critical of the police force, To Trap a Kidnapper (誘拐報道, Yukai Hodo) draws inspiration from a real life case of child abduction but suggests that the police largely just get in the way and are only interested in apprehending the culprit rather than ensuring the boy’s safety. In any case, unlike the similarly themed High and Low, the film devotes most of its focus to the kidnapper’s desperation as a man apparently left behind by the rapidly rising tides of prosperity. 

Yet somewhat perversely the film opens with a scene of children playing and seven-year-old Hideyuki (Motoyoshi Wada) getting into trouble for flicking toy discs at his friend and deskmate Kaori (Kaori Takahashi). Hideyuki is then made to stand on his own in the playground as a punishment, though quickly makes things up to Kaori by gifting her the plastic discs he was playing with. Neither of them know it, but the children share a grim connection for it’s Kaori’s father Kazuo (Kenichi Hagiwara) who is responsible for kidnapping Hideyuki on his way home from school in the next town over.

Both Hideyuki and Kaori attend a prestigious private institution but are being raised in very different circumstances. Kazuo was once a successful cafe owner but was swindled out of his business and is now in massive debt to a shady loanshark named Moriyasu who’s sold his promissory note on to a third party debt collector. Hideyuki’s father, Noboru Mitamura (Fujita Okamoto), is a doctor though there’s nothing that suggests the family is anything more than financially comfortable and they aren’t immediately able to get the money together for the ransom. Noboru has to ring round all his friends, family, and random acquaintances begging for emergency loans but without really being able to explain why he needs the money. Just having seen it noted on a school register that Hideyuki’s dad was medical professional Kazuo assumed they’d be a good target for a kidnapping and is in any case resentful of their nice middle class life. 

His wife, Yoshie (Rumiko Koyanagi), is in turn resentful of Kazuo for their reduced circumstances later lamenting that they moved house, swapped their big car for a smaller one and are even going to rehome their dog but if Kazuo is really so deeply in debt, something he had kept from her, then nothing they do really matters because their lives will never improve. What she can’t understand is why Kazuo was so keen on keeping Kaori in a private school that he’d get himself into financial hell rather than make a more pragmatic decision to let her go somewhere else. The obsession perhaps hints at his class anxiety, wanting his daughter to stay in a more resolutely middle class environment otherwise in strong contrast to the hometown he later visits where his elderly mother operates a loom in a moribund fishing village which the youngsters are slowly leaving for jobs in factories in neighbouring towns. 

Perhaps in over his head, it at one point looks like Kazuo is about to dump Hideyuki’s body in the sea only to realise police divers are already searching the area. Despite himself, he begins to care for the boy though doesn’t really know what to do with him. He feeds him bread from convenience stores and keeps him tied up in the boot of his car wrapped in several blankets without really considering the possibility that he may die of cold or hypothermia left outside in the freezing winter. Realising the distraught parents have called in the police despite his warnings not to, he is too afraid to accept the ransom and is therefore at something of an impasse given he can’t very well give up the boy without getting the money.

Meanwhile, as the Japanese title implies the tale is alternately told from the perspective of the reporters at Yomiuri Shinbun who are originally quite annoyed by the police’s request for a news blackout to avoid panicking the kidnapper, suggesting it’s an infringement on their free speech if coming around in the acceptance that a child’s life is at stake. A rookie reporter, Kotaro (Shin Takuma) is involved in a dispute with his fiancée Tomo (Miwako Fujitani) who is having second thoughts because he’s always working while her parents are pressuring her to consider an arranged marriage. Kotaro refuses to write one of the dummy articles they’re putting together in the event that Hideyuki is killed describing it as morbid and irresponsible, but is very involved with the ongoing press investigation which simultaneously seems more rigorous than that of the police and accidentally gets in its way. A “suspicious car” that’s noticed outside a drop sport turns out to belong not to the kidnapper but a reporter on a stakeout wasting the police’s time.

Even they are eventually conflicted, the officer in charge on the ground later letting the Mitamuras leave on their own for the final drop empathising with them as a fellow parent and acknowledging the reason everything keeps going wrong is because the police got involved. Yet his boss orders him to follow them anyway, reminding him that the only job of the police is to catch the culprit seemingly indifferent to whether or not they rescue the hostage unharmed. Their tactics are quite naive, not considering that Kazuo will obviously realise that the Mitamuras are surrounded by undercover officers because they keep using the same ones and it’s odd to keep seeing that couple from the coffee shop everywhere they go. The big break in the case happens by accident just because a couple of traffic cops decide to ask a random car a few questions.

In any case, it’s Kaori who ends up suffering. She and her mother are also victims, unfairly hounded by the press and left with nowhere to go and no-one to turn to having had their lives turned upside down by her father’s desperate decision. He didn’t even know the kids were friends or the effect his actions would have on his daughter. Kazuo hadn’t really thought any of this through but acted only in jealousy and resentment, wanting payback against the Mitamuras for their nice middle class life and his own slice of the pie that he felt had been denied to him. In the end, the only winners are the press who can rejoice in selling their newspapers even if a remorseful Kotaro resents himself for taking a paparazzo photo of Yoshie and Kaori trying to leave town quietly. On seeing his article pasted on pillars at the station, even Tomo starts to change her mind reflecting that if he’s working on a story like this then perhaps working too much isn’t such a dealbreaker after all even if everyone seems to have forgotten about little Hideyuki in the headlong rush to dominate the newsstands by trying to lure a kidnapper into their trap.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Mayhem Girls (メイヘムガールズ, Shinichi Fujita, 2022)

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Four teenage girls unexpectedly find themselves with superpowers during the Covid-19 pandemic, but largely struggle with just the same problems as everyone else in Shinichi Fujita’s sci-fi-inflected high school dramedy Mayhem Girls (メイヘムガールズ). Despite the implications of the title, mayhem is not exactly the girls’ vibe though they each in their own way challenge the oppressive social norms of those around them later depressed by the realisation that they’ll soon have to go back to being “normal” and lose this brief respite they’ve been given from the rigours of high school life. 

The girls are already close to boiling point with the pressures of the pandemic as the teachers (ironically) yell at them to use hand sanitiser and social distance. The final straw seems to be the announcement that the Cultural Festival will be going online. That might be one reason why popular girl Mizuho (Mizuki Yoshida) suddenly snaps when her teacher catches her reading Twitter on her phone rather than studying. Miss Sawaguchi (Maako Miwa) is young and somewhat timid, unable to exert her authority over the class which is largely uninterested in her attempt to read out articles from English-language magazines. What’s the point, Mizuho wonders, in learning English if you can’t go abroad anyway? Sawaguchi takes this opportunity to reprimand Mizuho as a means of asserting her control but it backfires as something strange happens when she confiscates the phone. Sawaguchi’s hand stops mid-air allowing Mizuho to simply reclaim it while she runs out of the room as if in pain. 

This is only the first inkling that Mizuho has gained unexpected powers of telekinesis though she struggles to understand what happened, certain that she didn’t touch Miss Sawaguchi and confused that she seems to be talking about “violence” and displaying bruises on her wrists. In any case, the event loses her her phone which is akin to a kind of social death for a teenage girl. Her powers have, however, brought her to the attention of Tamaki (Amane Kamiya) who is a telepath, or more accurately given her an excuse to make contact for as it turns out Tamaki has long been carrying a torch for the oblivious Mizuho who is hung up on the student who was her tutor in middle school, Yusuke (Taisei Kido). Soon they are joined by two more girls, Akane (Manami Igashira) who can teleport, and Kei (Hina Kikuchi) who can read the minds of machines, in a kind of after school superpower club. 

Though they eventually become good friends, the relationship between the girls is strained by their differing views on their powers and by Mizuho’s concurrent obsession with Yusuke who is now a part-time delivery rider struggling to find a full time job in the middle of the pandemic. Using Kei’s powers to track him down she waits outside his house for him to come back and inserts herself into his life. Though he seems as if he’s about to remind her that her behaviour is inappropriate, Yusuke eventually goes all in on Mizuho after learning of her powers and asks her to use them to rob a bank so he can forget about his employment woes. 

There are many things you shouldn’t do for a boy and robbing a bank is very high on the list, though perhaps merely a more extreme version of a lesson typically learned in adolescence. In any case, this is far as Mizuho is pushed to the dark side. Other than that, none of the girls really consider using their powers for evil ends with even Tamaki admitting that she has thought about poking around in Mizuho’s head but feels it would be wrong to do so. It’s Tamaki who draws the short straw in being largely unable to articulate herself even by using her powers before eventually trying to communicate in images only to be robbed of the power to do so at the very last second when she’s reduced to being “normal” once again. 

“Normality” does seem to resume for them, each of the girls heading back to their own individual cliques having seemingly learned little from their experiences save Tamaki who is left with a lingering sadness. Perhaps what they’ve been through is a kind of mayhem, a period of chaos provoked by the pressures of the pandemic along with oppressive teachers and the regular teenage issues of unrequited love and romantic disappointment but they’ve returned to “normal” all too quickly leaving precious little time to meditate on the results of their flirtation with superpowers and psychic abilities in a world in which normality itself is both somewhat illusionary and infinitely oppressive.

Mayhem Girls screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Invasion of the Neptune Men (宇宙快速船, Koji Ota, 1961)

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Japan was well on the way to economic recovery by 1961, but the newly prosperous society also gave rise to other anxieties and most particularly in the light of the Cold War and space race with the nation fearful of falling behind in scientific development. Or at least, that’s something that particularly bothers the young heroes of Koji Ota’s kids tokusatsu, Invasion of the Neptune Men (宇宙快速船, Uchu Kaisokusen), in which the nation’s failure to build a space rocket is conflated with its traditional visions of masculinity. 

At least, the boys all agree that Tachibana (Shinichi Chiba), a young scientist who runs a kind of club with them at the research facility where he works, is pretty great but also a bit of a wimp who failed to stand up to some bullies who were hassling him at a local cinema. They think it would be better if he were cool, re-imagining him as a kind of tokusatsu hero named “Iron Sharp” for whom they even come up with a theme song. As part of their club activities watching satellites, the kids accidentally stumble across a spaceship belonging to Neptune men who are planning to invade though obviously as they are children no one really believes them until the Neptune men start causing other forms of destruction. 

Attacked, the kids are saved by the hero they themselves made up flying in on a car/plane/spaceship though he too doesn’t really have a lot time for them and the kids don’t even really notice he looks a lot like Tachibana who is noticeably absent from the lab whenever he’s around. Even so, this being a kids film the major the problem is that no one else takes the boys very seriously, save Tachibana himself, leaving them to save the day on their own while the grown-ups argue amongst themselves. 

Getting people to argue amongst themselves turns out to be part of the aliens’ mission in exploiting Cold War paranoia to start world war three. The first attack results in a mushroom cloud which must have been fairly painful symbolism though the Americans immediately blame Russia who blame the US in return asking if they’re really intent on starting a nuclear war. The kids wonder why grownups are always so suspicious of other countries, hinting at a desire for a less xenophobic society eventually echoed in the calls for worldwide unity to defeat the Neptune men while otherwise repeatedly emphasising that Japan can’t be left behind by the US and Russia in the space race. 

Then again, there is something quite troubling in the fact that the invading Neptune men who’ve taken on human form appear as soldiers but wearing prominent feminine makeup, re-echoing the boys’ concerns regarding science and masculinity while introducing a seemingly unintentional dose of homophobia into the threat posed by the aliens who otherwise wield destructive nuclear powers echoing the atomic bomb in using their ray guns to vaporise their targets who then leave shadow imprints of themselves where they disappeared. The main weapon used to combat them is science, Tachibana and his boss, the father of one of the boys, coming up with an ingenious electric shield and then a series of magnetic rockets which allow them to shoot down the Neptunian’s ship. 

In this case, science is the “good” force that combats the “bad” use of nuclear weapons this time rendered alien rather than manmade therefore neutering the debate surrounding their use and the responsibilities involved with their discovery. Tachibana, the thinly disguised Iron Sharp, then becomes a hero of science racing round in his custom car and largely defeating the Neptunians through a more primal kind of hand to hand violence while embodying the kind of cool masculinity the boys the otherwise feared he lacked which is to say that unlike his real life guise, Iron Sharp is perfectly capable of standing up to “bullies” like extraterrestrial invaders. Reusing some of the effects footage from The Last War, the film emphasises the need for world unity and the end of the Cold War, but also sells a slightly contradictory, mildly nationalist message insisting that Japan can’t fall far behind technologically or will essentially be at the mercy of Russia and America, Tachibana having travelled to Moscow to assist with the creation of a new spaceship. Spurred on by their adventures, the kids all vow to become great inventors protecting Japan through their innovations, going on to explore Mars and Venus hinting at a new sense of possibility in the post-war society but also mindful of its geopolitical realities.