Tag: Japanese

Ninja, A Band of Assassins (忍びの者, Satsuo Yamamoto, 1962)

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Ninja in Japanese cinema had largely been relegated to the realms of childish fantasy prior to Satsuo Yamamoto’s Ninja, A Band of Assassins (忍びの者, Shinobi no Mono) which cast a distinctly less heroic light on the famed mercenary spies of the feudal era. Indeed, there’s something reminiscent of the cult of militarism in the repressive nature of the ninja code and the hero Goemon’s (Raizo Ichikawa) original allegiance to it despite his father’s wariness and attempt to warn him that human happiness has no place in the life of a ninja. 

As the leader of Goemon’s clan, Sandayu (Yunosuke Ito), explains the ninja are obliged to serve whichever lords require their service, but he refuses to work with Oda Nobunaga (Tomisaburo Wakayama, billed as Kenzaburo Jo) owing to his famous animosity towards them. He even goes so far as to call Nobunaga a greater threat to the ninja than demons or devils. Opening in 1573, the film takes place at a tumultuous moment as Nobunaga continues to solidify his plan to unite the whole of the land under his banner by absorbing or defeating rival clans. The pre-credits sequence finds Goemon playing dead on a battlefield surrounded by ominous crows and encountering another ninja from a rival clan, Kizaru (Ko Nishimura), who has become a more literal kind of vulture in stealing from the dead.

Stealing is against the ninja code and something of which the young and idealistic Goemon fiercely disapproves. Nevertheless, in a cruel irony he’s forced to become a burglar in an effort to raise funds for more weapons to combat Nobunaga whom he has also been ordered to assassinate in return for his life after having been caught having an affair with Sandayu’s wife, Inone (Kyoko Kishida). Goemon is inspired by the legendary figure dubbed the Japanese Robin Hood for his mission stealing money from the rich to give to the poor, but here is far from heroic. When his affair with Inone is discovered by a servant, Goemon kills him to maintain the silence. He then believes that Inone has also been killed after falling into a well and attempts to flee the scene only to be confronted by Sandayu. 

Only too late does to he begin to understand what his father tried to warn him about, that the code of the ninja is cruel and unforgiving. It cannot grant him pride or happiness despite the self-satisfied glow he feels on having been singled out by Sandayu as a protege. A ninja must be ready to sever all ties to those he loves and endure intense torture without speaking. If caught in an impossible situation he must scar his face and take his own life as one of Goemon’s acquaintances eventually does after being captured by Nobunaga. Goemon assumes he has no reason to be afraid because he is the most skilled ninja in the garrison and a single ninja can take down a fortress all on his own, but in reality he is powerless, merely a puppet manipulated by Sandayu for his own ends. After falling in love with a sex worker, Maki (Shiho Fujimura), he grows tired of his missions, gives up on burglary, and makes no move to assassinate Nobunaga but is pursued by Sandayu’s minions, the irony being that not even a ninja can escape from the confined space of ninjadom.

This world is so steeped in secrecy that nothing is as it seems and Goemon discovers the rug pulled out from under him in more ways than one before beginning to realise that Sandayu has deliberately engineered his downfall and was most likely behind his father’s murder in an attempt to get his hands on his recipe for gunpowder which is, as Nobunaga says, the future of warfare. Nevertheless, even within its commitment to realism the film contains plenty of ninja tricks from sudden appearances to superhuman leaps and expert shuriken throwing and grappling hooks.  The sense of melancholy futility implied by the presence of the crows in the opening scenes never recedes, Yamamoto frequently descending into mists as Goemon sinks into his confusion and eventual disillusionment with the tenets of ninjadom. Rival ninja clans more obsessed with their reputation and status vie for the head of Nobunga while all Goemon wants is the right to live a quiet life with Maki though that’s something that largely cannot be found amid the constant chaos of the feudal era. 

Golden Eyes (100発100中 黄金の眼, Jun Fukuda, 1968)

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Three years after taking down illegal arms dealers, “Interpol” agent Andrew Hoshino (Akira Takarada) returns with another globetrotting adventure, this time concerning a missing coin worth a great deal to an amoral gold smuggler. Ironfinger had appeared in the midst of Bond-mania and boasted a script by none other than Kichachi Okamoto which was full of cartoonish fun and surreal humour as Andy made use of a series of spy gadgets to aid him in his cause. The similarly Bond-referencing sequel, Golden Eyes (100発100中 黄金の眼, Hyappatsu Hyakuchu: Ogon no Me) , attempts something much the same but perhaps without so much of Okamoto’s trademark sophisticated silliness. 

This time the action opens in Beirut where a chauffeur is being hunted by a man in a helicopter as he attempts to escape through the sand dunes. Skewered by a giant grappling hook, the driver’s body is apparently then deposited on the roof of a hotel, causing not a little embarrassment to gold smuggling kingpin Stonefeller (see what they did there?) who is already quite worried about attracting the attention of the local police. Meanwhile, Andy happens to be in Beirut on another “vacation”, having fun driving the owner of a shooting game in an arcade out of his mind before he runs into a little girl who tells him that she’s looking for an assassin to avenge the death of her father, the body deposited on the hotel roof. All she can afford to pay him is the silver dollar her dad gave her as a keepsake before he died, but it’s good enough for the kindhearted Andy who decides to get justice for the little girl no matter what. Just then, however, an attempt is made on his life by means of a bomb hidden in a bouquet given to him by pretty Japanese singer Mitsuko (Tomomi Sawa) who is in Beirut to find wealthy men to finance her love of rally car racing. 

The major antagonist is an ancient American “industrialist” with a dog called Sinbad who thinks that the gold must flow and that he’s doing a public service delivering it to Japan where its absence only highlights the “backwardness” of the Japanese state. Stonefeller is also blind but an ace sniper thanks to a directional microphone in place of a sight on his rifle. In any case, though Stonefeller is the kingpin, the true “villain” is Kurokawa (Yoshio Tsuchiya) who is responsible for the death of the little girl’s father, killed while thought to be in possession of the missing gold coin. The coin later makes villains of the two Beiruti gangsters working with Stonefeller who end up chasing after Kurokawa to try and retrieve it while Andy, mysterious “reporter” Ruby (Bibari Maeda), and earnest detective Tezuka (Makoto Sato) do their best to stop them. 

The international villainy may reflect a certain anxiety about Japan’s increasingly global role, rising economy prosperity, and relationship with the Americans, but it’s also a little guilty of exoticisation in its Middle Eastern setting with the majority of Beiruties played by Japanese actors in awkward brown face. An early, spectacular set piece sees Andy and Tezuka beset by Stonefeller’s goons swarming over the dunes dressed as mothers pushing prams which turn out to be fitted with machine guns while Andy sets up a complex stunt which sets off two abandoned weapons with a single pistol shot to take down the bad guys. 

Mitsuko, meanwhile, seems to be a symbol of out of control celebrity, an aspiring singer taking part in rally races sponsored by the Japan Economic Council dedicated to fuel efficiency. She is content to be discovered with a dead body because of all the free publicity it’s about to buy her, but more than holds her own when in a difficult situation with the amoral Kurokawa, perhaps a representative of unbridled capitalist greed. Almost blown up with flowers, encased in plaster like a giant mummy, and delivered poisoned gas by room service, Andy maintains an ambiguous cool while still making constant references to his dear French mama waiting for him at home in Paris. As expected, no one except for Tezuka has been quite honest about their intentions or identities, but it hardly seems to matter as they work together while pursuing their own angles to get their hands on the coin and stop the Stonefellers of the world messing around in their economy. 

Video Girl Ai (電影少女, Ryu Kaneda, 1991)

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The thing about video is that it is essentially one-sided. Though it might be possible to achieve the effect of interactivity, the video itself is obviously not responding to the viewer but proceeding along its preordained path. Then again, in the new AI age, interactivity can also be dangerous as chatbots are programmed to say whatever the user wants to hear, even if it ends up encouraging them to do something harmful to themselves or others.

Video Girl Ai (電影少女, Denei Shojo), whose name means “love”, is definitely not artificial intelligence but a sort of video fairy that the hero discovers after encountering the “paradise” video store which is only visible to the pure of heart. The extremely odd proprietor gives Yota (Ken Ohsawa) a videotape he says will heal him following a moment of heartbreak on learning that the girl he fancied, Moemi (Hiromi Hiraguchi), actually has a crush on his best friend Takashi (Naoki Hosaka). Takashi acts cool, but is actually just as diffident as Yota and also has a crush on Moemi. He can’t say anything either, less because he feels bad for Yota than he just can’t muster up the courage.

Nevertheless, he keeps encouraging Yota even if it may be partly to assuage his own fear in not having to deal with his feelings for Moemi. Everyone seems to think Yota is a bit a of a loser and the kids at school have created a pun on his surname to make it sound like he’s called “Yota no luck with girls.” He is indeed awkward. His first date with Moemi goes incredibly badly. Not only is he late because he went to the wrong place, but is overly obsessed with his carefully constructed itinerary which he keeps checking on his electronic day planner. Unable to adapt to the moment, he irritates his date and is finally unable to say how he feels.

Queue Video Girl AI (Kaori Sakagami) who has been sent to comfort him. Thanks to a malfunctioning VHS player, Ai emerges from the TV set a little differently to how she was described on the back of the case. Though she was said to be kind and graceful, Ai is feisty and immediately starts giving Yota what for. After getting to know him a little, Ai begins to develop human feelings and fall for Yota herself, even though she’s supposed to be comforting his broken heart and supporting his romance with Moemi. At this point, she basically finds herself at the centre of a love square as she flirts with Takashi to get him to back off from Moemi so Yota’s romantic fantasy can come true.

Yota, meanwhile, is a classic nice guy but struggles with interpersonal communication and pales in comparison with his ultra-cool friend Takashi. In this case, the TV really can talk back and interact like a real person. Ai is not, however, very familiar with human customs and asks inappropriate questions in public, such as the nature of marriage and sex which she awkwardly says she wants to try out for herself later without knowing what it is. That he has to sort of train Ai opens up a dialogue and gives Yota a means of teaching himself, but despite the fact that Ai has corporeality, there is still a question mark over whether or not she is “real”. Looking at Ai’s imitation flowers, Yota says they’re still pretty even if they’re just pretend, just the like ready meals that Ai starts buying after realising her cooking’s gone to pot because of the damaged VCR. 

Nevertheless Yota struggles with himself. His love is a pure-hearted kind, so he’s firmly rooting for Moemi and Takashi rather than resentful or trying to keep her to himself despite knowing she likes someone else. He’s torn between his growing feelings for Ai and those he had for Moemi while also uncertain how long Ai can stay before her tape runs out. Ironically enough, she’s eventually told that she can’t voice her feelings or risk erasure because her role is supposed to be purely supportive. Erasure is in a way what Yota and Takashi fear. They’re too afraid to voice their feelings in case the girl rejects them. The first ever girl Yota asked out turned him down, which left him vowing never to tell another girl he liked her again. As he describes it, love is conflicting emotions, but thanks to his friendship with Ai, Yota is beginning to find the courage to face his feelings. There’s a minor irony, then, that he may be destined to forget her in the same way as the memories of an old girlfriend inevitably fade, leaving him clinging on to a forgotten ghost of love rather than risk romantic heartbreak pursuing connection in the real world.

The Garden Apartment (ガーデンアパート, Umi Ishihara, 2018)

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Can one escape from the loneliness of being alive, or is melancholy longing an unavoidable companion of existence? Two very different women attempt to answer this question, perhaps unknowingly, in the debut feature from Umi Ishihara, The Garden Apartment (ガーデンアパート). Love becomes a destructive force which binds them both in different ways in its elusive yet unattainable allure, yet if escape exists perhaps it lies in acceptance of emotion’s transience rather in the permanence of a single moment of connection. 

Our heroine, Hikari, is a young woman at a crossroads. She’s been living with her boyfriend Taro for some time and has recently discovered that she is expecting their child. However, the couple are also struggling in a still stagnant economy. Taro is currently unemployed and, from Hikari’s point of view at least, not trying hard enough to find a stable job of the kind he will need to become a responsible father. Taro, however, does not seem worried because he’s long become used to relying on the financial assistance of his eccentric aunt, Kyoko. Kyoko married a wealthy man who sadly passed away at a young age, leaving her rich but sad and with no children of her own. Ashamed of himself and embarrassed by his aunt’s lifestyle, he’d not planned on introducing her to the mother of his unborn child but ends up doing so when she unexpectedly accosts them in a coffee shop. Things take a turn for the strange when Kyoko decides to invite Hikari to her home where she hosts “parties” for young women who want to have fun together in a safe space. 

Kyoko’s entire existence is founded on the idea of retreat, a way of living in an imagined past where she is in no pain. Her hedonistic household is filled with youngsters in a similar position all looking simultaneously for escape and for a place to belong. Kyoko drinks, so she says, not to forget but to remember, as a means of slowing down time. She wants to live inside love in memory of her late husband whose loss she cannot overcome and whose presence she feels to be slipping away from her. Sure that no one would ever love her, she clings to the last vestiges of a long absent love rather than submit herself to the loneliness of her later life. 

Nevertheless, the kind of parties Kyoko throws are the kind which only make you remember just how lonely you really are. Hikari, fed up with Taro’s vacillations, arrives at Kyoko’s only to abscond with her only male guest, Sekai, for an unfulfilling late night adventure. Hikari was seeking escape through love, but discovered that love was a finite thing which must eventually run its course. Nevertheless, she appears to have taken little pleasure in it and has come to the conclusion that desire only breeds pain. Love didn’t save her, it only brought her fear and a desire for solitude.  

Meanwhile, Taro tries to retrieve his love from Kyoko’s world only to discover she has chosen her own path, drifted away from him and the life he assumed they were building together. He attacks Kyoko for her lovelorn eccentricity, her jealously, and her need for affection in her treatment of him as a surrogate son (a role now seemingly ambiguously played by Sekai who seems to be just as conflicted as the increasingly petulant Taro) but has little real intention of assuming his responsibilities as an expectant father. 

Kyoko seeks escape through growing herself in nostalgia and the false friendships of disenfranchised youth while Hikari becomes intent on moving forward in an acknowledgment of life’s despair rather than intent on fighting it. Love may be a temporary illusion trailing a wake of self-destruction but there’s something to be said for knowing when it’s time to wake up. Ishihara frames her tale in the mundanity of an ordinary struggling existence alternating with the melancholy neons of Kyoko’s world of night peopled by fugitives like herself looking for an escape from life’s suffering but finding themselves imprisoned all the same. There may be no salve for sadness, but a life must run its course and, in the end, we are all alone.

Budget Hotel Family (ビジネスホテル･ファミリー, Junya Hayashi , 2021)

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A actor whose promotional tour is interrupted by the coronavirus pandemic finds himself pulled into the toxic relationship between a hotelier/film festival organiser and a formerly homeless man he was trying to help in the first documentary feature from Junya Hayashi, Budget Hotel Family (ビジネスホテル･ファミリー). For one reason or another, the actor tries to help his friend evict the man who causes nothing but trouble, but discovers that there’s a weird bond between them and however much he tries to encourage their separation they somehow end up reuniting. 

While on the road promoting His Bad Blood in which he had starred, actor Yu Toyama is stranded in Aomori in northern Japan unable to return to Tokyo because of the coronavirus State of Emergency. Remembering that an acquaintance from the Abashiri Film Festival, Katayama, owns a small hotel, he asks him if he can travel there directly with the director of this film, Junya Hayashi, with whom he is making a documentary. On their arrival, however, the pair are soon introduced to Itagaki, a 74-year-old man Katayama offered a place to stay after discovering him washing clothes at the river. 

Toyama explains that Katayama is a friendly man who makes a point of taking care of filmmakers who visit the Abashiri Festival and has formed strong and enduring friendships with many of them. His family own a small, budget hotel named “Family” which Toyama is shocked to discover has become quite rundown and is currently suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic. In fact, Katayama is currently training to become a taxi driver to help make ends meet. From what he says, it seems Katayama had a history of taking in people in need and offering them a place to stay while they got back on their feet, but Itagaki has been continually taking advantage of his hospitality and Toyama attributes some of the hotel’s decline to Itagaki’s problematic presence. 

During their first meeting, Toyama seems to find Itagaki amusing and even talks about offering him some work after admiring his drawings displayed on walls around the room. But on interviewing him alone, his view begins to change. Itagaki seems entitled and manipulative, calling Katayama all sorts of names while accusing him of having been violent towards him and suggesting he may go to the police to have Katayama arrested. There is something undeniably chilling in the direction his conversation takes as he makes wild accusations that Katayama is planning to kill him but if he tries anything he’ll give as good as he gets. 

Any good will Toyama might have had towards Itagaki dissipates, but then Katayama doesn’t deny that there have been physical altercations between them in the past, while it also seems clear that Katayama has been drinking a lot and may not have a full comprehension of what has actually been going on. In any case, though he has repeatedly asked Itagaki to leave, he never does and for whatever reason Katayama seems incapable of cutting him off completely. It seems in some ways he may be lonely and identifies with Itagaki as he had with the protagonist of His Bad Blood as someone rejected by mainstream society, feeling unable to abandon him knowing no one else is going to help Itagaki and possibly for good reason in light of everything he’s put him through.

Not only has Itagaki outstayed his welcome he often goes drinking in local bars and starts tabs in Katayama’s name while he even manages to get kicked out of hospital for ignoring the curfew and starting a fight with a doctor, having the audacity to tell them and the hotel they sent him to that Katayama will pay his bills. When they eventually get him to move out, the exasperation on Toyama’s face is palpable on seeing him move into a really nice, spacious, modern two-bedroom apartment which whichever way you look at it seems well beyond his means given that he’s long been sponging off Katayama and maybe others claiming he couldn’t survive on his pension benefits. 

The fact Katayama found him at the river lends Itagaki the air of a predatory Kappa who’s already “famous for doing bad things” and is content to bleed Katayama dry while he can’t seem to pull himself free from whatever spell Itagaki has cast over him. The real question might be why, aside from the film, Toyama continues to play the role of referee between these two people who aren’t related but seem to be bound by some inexplicable force despite his warnings that they are obviously not good for each other. The jury seems to be out on whether Katayama has finally escaped but there is a poignancy in his resulting loneliness in the absence of Itagaki’s evident toxicity. 

Trailer (no subtitles)

Industrial Spy (産業スパイ, Eiichi Kudo, 1968)

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Cynical corporate spies find themselves in a battle of wits when one attempts to use the other in a psychedelic effort from Eiichi Kudo, Industrial Spy (産業スパイ, Sangyo Spy). A deliberate attempt to hop on to an ongoing trend sparked Bond mania and the success of Daiei’s “Black” series, along with the novels of Toshiyuki Kajiyama which inspired them, the film was intended as the first in a franchise vehicle for Tatsuo Umemiya whose Youth of the Night series had run out of steam. 

As such, he stars as a jaded young man working as a corporate spy stealing trade secrets on behalf of rival companies. He does not infiltrate them by gaining employment, but makes use of connections, seducing women in administrative positions, and setting honey traps for blackmailing executives sometimes even using his own girlfriend Masami (Reiko Oshida). His main justification is consumerist desire. He tells Masami that if they want nice things they have to take them. They weren’t born with a silver spoon in their mouths, so they can’t afford to act refined and expect what they want to come to them. They have to do whatever it takes or resign themselves to a life of poverty. Masami, however, is beginning to tire of this arrangement and is hurt, more than anything else, when she realises that Kogure has only bought her a new handbag, necklace, clothes and shoes to head off his guilt because he’s about to ask her to sleep with the director of a project to create an experimental engine as part of a job he’s been manipulated into by Sawada (Fumio Watanabe), the head investigator of Nisshin Industries. 

Rather childishly, Sawada convinces him to take the job basically by implying it’s too difficult for him. “There are secrets you just can’t steal,” he sighs, knowing that it’s like catnip to a man like Kogure who can’t resist a challenge even if he’s paying him less than a third of what he asked for. But Kogure has badly underestimated Sawada. When Kogure returns for his payment, he realises that Sawada sold the trade secrets back to the same company he stole them from to curry favour in the hope of worming his way in so he could take it over.  

Both men are in differing ways unsatisfied with their circumstances. Kogure resents his poverty and wants to be allowed into the increasingly consumerist society of Japan’s high prosperity era, but at the same time he isn’t especially greedy. Sawada tells him he’s doing this because money alone is no longer enough for a man to live a full life in the modern era, he must obtain a powerful position too. All Kogure wants is to sleep with the woman he loves, eat good food, and have a good time. Which is to say he only wants to be comfortable rather than wealthy but feels that that life is unattainable to him outside of his current underhanded occupation. Poignantly, after asking Masami to sleep with his mark to obtain information, he realises that he actually does love her and resolves to marry her after the job is done. But for her this was the final straw and she only did as he asked so she’d hate him enough to leave. 

Nevertheless, on learning he was tricked by Sawada, Kogure vows revenge by deliberately messing up Sawada’s plans to win a bid for a dam project on behalf of Nisshin by setting up a rival candidate and getting hold of their offer so they can make a better one. Only, Sawada always seems to be one step ahead and is even more ruthless than he is. While Kogure mourns Masami and is full of regret, pondering how he might win her back while his more straight-laced corporate lackey friend decides it’s time to shoot his shot, Sawada breaks up with his actual girlfriend to foil Kogure’s plan to photograph them together and blackmail him after he’s cynically married the disabled granddaughter of the Chuo Electric CEO who is mediating the dam bid. The older Mr Matsui (Takashi Shimura) is not completely blind to Sawada’s schemes, but blames himself for his granddaughter’s injury and believes it will be difficult for her to marry, so he’s willing to compromise himself corporately if only Sawada will ensure his granddaughter’s happiness.

Of course, that’s not really very high on Sawada’s list and only ever a means to an end. In this, he’s slightly different from Kogure who is equally heartless in some ways, humiliating a young woman who took an interest in him because she was of no use and he thought her cheap and vulgar, but clearly still has some vestige of human emotion even while realising he should probably let his friend chase Masami if he really loves her because she’s better off with him and his steady if dull corporate existence. In the end, though, neither man gets what he really wants and both ultimately lose out on both the money and the prize with Kogure vowing revenge against new enemies by whom he feels, a little unfairly, betrayed. Nevertheless, by ending with some monochrome stock footage of workers at the station, Anpo protestors being beaten by the police, and shots of US jet fighters, Kudo implies Kogure’s actions are a kind of rebellion against capitalism itself and the contemporary state of Japanese society even as he too becomes just another face in the crowd, an anonymous cog in this great shuffling machine.

Heat Wave Island (かげろう, Kaneto Shindo, 1969)

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The death of a bar owner in Onomichi sparks a complex investigation into the condition of the islands surrounding the Seto Inland Sea in Kaneto Shindo’s darkly ironic crime drama, Heatwave Island (かげろう, Kagero). Produced by Kindai Eiga Kyokai, the independent production company founded by Shindo, Kozaburo Yoshimura, and the ubiquitous Taiji Tonoyama, the central thesis is that industrialisation has poisoned the waters surrounding the Japanese heartland, but also that the collection of weird islands had their share of darkness to begin with.

Indeed, having solved the crime, unusually chipper detective Oishi (Rokko Toura) states that it was the island that killed her. “Your traditions turned an island woman’s life to ruin,” he tells the very compromised village chief (Taiji Tonoyama) who refused to let a woman leave the island to seek medical treatment for her baby because of a taboo about setting sail on the night of a shipwreck. That’s not so much a supernatural fear or practical concern as much as a pact between islanders who have been killing shipwreck survivors and looting their boats. Nevertheless, the woman is eventually forced off the island when the men who killed her husband begin fighting over her body. The village chief tells her she has to go to preserve the “unity” of the island while her child, who survived but with brain damage, will be cared for by the other islanders.

Yet all the woman wants is to return to the island to live with her child after gaining the money to build a big house where everyone can see it. Some justification is given for the island’s cruelty in that it has essentially been starved out by post-war industrialisation. The fishing industry is dying, and the island terrain is only suited for growing wheat and potatoes, making farming unviable as a commercial enterprise. A man from another island says that as the salt fields were closed down factories arose in their place and leaked pollution into the surrounding seas, killing off all the fish. He is now bedridden due to industrial illness having worked on Poison Gas Island during the war. His wife now works in one of the “enemy” factories. “That’s how we survive,” he laments of the faustian pact between rural communities and large corporations. 

In any case, most of the young people have been forced into the cities in one way or another where they often lack the skills to find well-paying work and end up in crime and the nightlife industry. The late bar owner, Otoyo (Nobuko Otowa), was herself once from an island village, as was her bar girl Michiko (Toyama Masako). Both of them are dreaming of better lives while filled with a sense of futility. A young man who gave up on fishing to work in factories is injured in a workplace incident and is prevented from leaving hospital until he can pay his extortionate medical bills which the company evidently isn’t going to cover.

The irony is that Oishi is from a farming background too. Rich kids don’t become detectives, Otoyo points out. A poor man’s son commits a crime, and a poor man’s son will catch him, she adds signalling the ways in which the poor work against each other rather than their common enemies such as the exploitative corporations which have ruined the beautiful natural scenery of Japan’s islands along with their traditional communities. Then again, Oishi is a slightly compromised figure in other ways too. He probably shouldn’t be investigating this case given that he used to drink in Otoyo’s bar and seems to have a crush on her, which interferes with his ability to accept some of the less pleasant things they begin to find out about her past. He also has more than a fatherly interest in young Michiko and is unwilling to accept she could be involved with the crime having taken out a sizeable advance on her salary to care for her father who is also bedridden following a stroke.

The implication is that these murders are more like earthquakes, an inevitable result of friction between people caused by conflicting societal forces. Oishi concludes his investigation, but it only seems to result in a further fracture that severs the connection between the islands and the mainland, leaving another woman in a state of limbo waiting for someone who may or may not return. The convoluted, island-hopping mystery taking place under the blazing sun of a sticky summer has its degrees of absurdity, from the weirdness of these retreating cultures to the poignant presence of the dog, who alone seemed to want justice for Otoyo, who, whatever her other faults may have been, was always kind to him when others often weren’t.

Faceless (正体, Michihito Fujii, 2024)

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The Japanese title of Michihito Fujii’s crime thriller Faceless (正体, Shotai), “true identity”, might suggest that there is a mystery surrounding the hero, that he is deliberately misrepresenting himself so that it is difficult to know who he “really” is. But in reality the opposite is true. His cover identities are only ever superficial and, in essence, he is always his true self which is one reason he encounters so many supportive people during his flight from the law in an attempt to clear his name after being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit.

Inspired by Tamehito Somei’s novel, the film is another in a long line critical of the authoritarian Japanese justice system which has a 99% conviction rate. Though its defenders may say that the lack of acquittals proves that cases are only brought to trial when the police are absolutely sure, that isn’t quite the case and the judicial system is often over-reliant on confessions which may be given under extreme duress and are therefore unreliable. Sayaka (Riho Yoshioka), a reporter who becomes determined to prove Keiichi’s innocence, has her own negative experience with the justice system when her father, ironically a lawyer, is falsely convicted of groping a schoolgirl on a train. As her father points out, when so many people are hounding you he can understand why some give in and just say they did it to make it all stop. 

The police officer, Matanuki (Takayuki Yamada), also appears conflicted from the beginning and requests a full investigation of the crime but his superior tells him to just pin it on Keiichi (Ryusei Yokohama). The law is about to change so that 18-year-olds will be tried as adults, so he thinks it would set an example for other young people that they can’t take advantage of their adolescence to commit crimes assuming they won’t be prosecuted fully or that their records will be wiped when they come of age. There had been a minor moral panic at one time about children actively exploiting this legal loophole, though Matanuki’s boss’ dismissive attitude hints at his conservative perspective and authoritarian viewpoint. When Keiichi’s case begins to receive public interest, he tells Matanuki that the conviction must stand and that the “truth is unimportant in this case” because admitting they made a mistake would be disadvantageous for the police force’s reputation. Despite himself, however, Matanuki continues to follow his boss’ orders and pursue Keiichi even if he stops short of following them fully by refraining from firing at him when he tries to get away. 

Asked by Matanuki why he tried to escape from death row, Keiichi tells Matanuki that he wanted to believe the world was good and that if he stood up for what was right people would listen. It’s a trite sentiment that’s undermined by the central flaw of the narrative which is that Keiichi is an ideal wrong man. That he prospers simply being “nice” seems like a kind of cosmic judgement that insists, despite all the bad things that have happened to Keiichi, the universe rewards people who are “good” which is both a moral judgement and highly unrealistic. Like Fujii’s Day and Night, the film hints at the prejudice directed at men like Keiichi who have no blood family and were raised in care while also pointing the finger at similar systemic injustices such as exploitation of labourers denied proper compensation for workplace injuries by thuggish bosses who intimidate them out of pressing for their rights under existing labour law.

As such the film posits solidarity as the best weapon against an oppressive system as the various people who’ve witnessed Keith’s “true self” and been helped by him come to his aid in return. What turns his fortunes is a critical mass of ordinary people standing up and saying that this isn’t fair, giving Matanuki the confidence to defy his boss by going rogue and admitting their mistake publicly at a press conference thereby returning the case to the people and preventing the authorities from covering it up. That justice is eventually served sort of reinforces the idea that this is a good world after all because it’s filled with basically good people who believe in truth and fairness even if the people that govern them don’t, which, though it might be a superficially happy ending for all, is rather optimistic and otherwise ignores that not everybody is so lucky and nothing has fundamentally changed within the justice system to prevent things like this happening again.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Delicate Skillful Fingers (白い指の戯れ, Toru Murakawa, 1972)

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Toru Murakawa is most closely associated with his long and fruitful partnership with Yusaku Matsuda which came to define a certain kind of 1970s cinema, but he began his career at Nikkatsu in 1959 in the sales department before resigning and rejoining a year later as an aspiring director. At Nikkatsu he worked with established directors such as Toshio Masuda and Ko Nakahira, as well as with external directors such as Shiro Moritani before making his directorial debut in Nikkatsu Roman Porno, a line of soft core pornography the studio launched amid the collapse of the studio system, with Delicate Skillful Fingers (白い指の戯れ, Shiroi Yubi no Tawamure), in 1972.

Murakawa would actually leave the studio in the same year having completed two more Roman Porno films, returning to his hometown of Yamagata where he had married into the family of well-known metalwork artist Kenten Takahashi both training with him and helping his older brother Chiaki Murakawa set up the Yamagata Symphony Orchestra. In any case, his temporary withdrawal from the film industry had nothing to with a lack of success in his debut feature. Delicate Skillful Fingers was a critical hit and the first of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno line to feature in Kinema Junpo’s prestigious Best Ten. It was also the debut film for lead actress Hiroko Isayama and, perhaps not entirely coincidentally, the first time the studio put the male star front and centre in their branding campaign. 

Co-scripted by another top Roman Porno name Tatsumi Kumashiro, the film follows the innocent and naive Yuki (Hiroko Isayama), who is so sensitive that the sight of a wrecked car makes her cry in sympathy, as she falls deeper into the world of petty street crime after being chatted up in a cafe by a goofy guy who just happens to have a problem with kleptomania. At least according to his sometime girlfriend Shoko, Jiro (Hajime Tanimoto) came from a wealthy family and attended a fee-paying school, seemingly stealing for the thrill of it rather than financial need. It has to be said that Yuki is rather ditsy, bamboozled into buying food to cook Jiro dinner while entering into a strange dialogue with a robot offering greetings in Chinese as to whether she should give him her virginity which she eventually does, perhaps recklessly, though it ends up not going particularly well, with Jiro having to explain that “the ceremony is now ended” without it seems much fanfare. In any case when he’s picked up by the police and put away for three years because he already had a record, Yuki has to quite her factory job because of persistent police harassment and bizarrely ends up living with Shoko who has predatory lesbian designs on her Yuki responds to but with a degree of internalised shame. 

Shoko’s desire for other women is in someways depicted as an expression of corruption caused by her pickpocket lifestyle as she implies sometime later in suggesting that Yuki will “come to like it” linking the idea of lesbian sex and the act of pickpocketing as implied by “delicate skilful fingers” of the film’s title. Yuki’s bodily submission but mental resistance is intended to suggest her lingering innocence, yet to submit herself to the hedonistic amorality of the pickpocket lifestyle. Rejecting Shoko, she later becomes sexually involved with Jiro’s former cellmate Taku (Ichiro Araki) who is responsible for teaching her how to pickpocket. Taku is otherwise seemingly less interested in sex, but allows Yuki to take the lead while he remains somewhat passive, lying still and still and chewing gum, always with his sunshades remaining firmly on. He even at one point passes her off to an associate in the middle of making love to her, Yuki first resisting on realising what’s going on but eventually giving in to it though clearly not willingly. 

The contrast between the two men, Jiro and Taku, is stark with Jiro clearly asking for consent at each step and waiting for Yuki to confirm it even if in the end he fails to perform whereas Taku seems to be merely using sex which doesn’t interest him to earn her trust and convince her to help him out in his various criminal operations. Yuki is seduced into a world of crime, but remains romantically naive, foolishly sacrificing herself for Taku and insisting she alone was responsible when cornered by the police while he simply walks away and then jokes with a policeman that he’ll look after her when she’s out. Even so, her loyalty to Taku, in contrast with Shoko’s continuing cynicism, proves that she is not fully corrupted by the pickpocket life, even if she foolishly damns herself by needlessly protecting him at the cost of her own future and wellbeing. On the other hand, to so is entirely her own choice just as it was her own choice to sleep with Jiro in the full embrace of her agency. Murakawa’s Nikkatsu debut is a gritty, grimy urban tale of amoral post-war youth but, even in its tragic conclusion, signals the hero’s spineless indifference and hands victory to the heroine who remains uncorrupted but only to her eternal cost. 

Don’t Look Up (女優霊, Hideo Nakata, 1996)

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“Have you ever seen an old movie and not been able to get it out of your head?” For those of us who grew up in the pre-internet age, daytime television was a treasure trove of classic cinema where unexpected discoveries were made. Maybe you only caught a few minutes of a film whose title you never knew, but the images are burned into your brain like nothing before or since. It’s tempting, then, to wonder if it isn’t Muroi (Yurei Yanagi), the nascent director, who’s projecting the darkest corners of his mind onto this haunted celluloid, though as it turns out this film was never actually aired.

If Muroi saw the haunted film as a child, it was because the ghost within it chose to broadcast herself by hijacking the airwaves. As his friend points out, however, perhaps he just saw a newspaper report about an actress dying in an on-set fall and saw it in his mind, creating a movie of his own or perhaps a waking nightmare that continues to plague him into adulthood. In any case, the film he’s trying to make is a wartime melodrama rather than a ghost story, but it’s one that’s clearly built around dark secrets and hidden desires. Hitomi (Yasuyo Shirashima) reveals that her character killed her mother in the film to take her place and later kills a deserting soldier with whom she’s been in some kind of relationship that the younger sister threatens to reveal in fear that should the villagers find out they’ve been hindering the war effort by hiding a man who’s shirked his duty to the nation they’ll be ostracised and people will stop sharing their food with them.

But Hitomi has real-world issues too. There’s something going on with her overbearing manager who seemingly didn’t want her to do this film which is why she’s not on set with her. When she eventually turns up, she seems to have some psychic powers. After handing Hitomi an amulet, she runs from the studio screaming. Hitomi agrees there’s something eerie about this place. As the projectionist remarks, this studio is 50 years old, built during the post-war relaunch of the cinema industry. Many things have happened here. But Nikkatsu is now a ghost itself and these disused production facilities are a haunted spaced. The floorboards creak and the rigging may give way any moment, bringing down with it the dream of cinema.

That’s one reason Muroi is advised not to look up and break this sense of allusion, along with recalling the more recent tragedy of an actress’ accidental fall. As much as Hitomi and Saori (Kei Ishibashi) begin to overlap with the image of the ghostly actress, it’s Muroi who is eventually swallowed by his dream of cinema in his determination to climb the stairs and find out what horrors are lurking in the attic before being dragged away to some other world. Nevertheless, this is a film that could only be made with celluloid. Nakata slips back and fore between the film that we’re watching and the cursed negative with its ghost images from previous exposure. This is evidently a low-budget production too, made using end cuts from other reels. As someone points out, this unused footage would usually be thrown out but has somehow mysteriously ended up infecting their film and releasing its ghosts. The projectionist burns it, describing the film as “evil” and suggesting that it’s better to let sleeping dogs lie.

But Muroi seems unable to let it go, chasing his childhood nightmare in trying to explain the mystery behind the footage. Hitomi describes herself as being haunted by a role long after the film as ended. It’s the same when someone dies, she says. They hang on for a while. The actor too remarks that he feels like the camera hates him, as if he were feeling the ghost’s wrath directly but otherwise unable to see her. Yet we have this sense of history repeating and a curse that’s sure to recur while this film too will remain unfinished and linger in the realm of the unrealised. Nakata too only undertook this film after losing his job to Nikkatsu’s collapse and trying to finance a documentary about Joseph Losey as if captivated by his own dream of the cinematic past and the haunting images of a bygone world.