Tag: Tsuyoshi Ujiki

Fujiko (Taichi Kimura, 2026)

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A young woman’s simple desire to be with her daughter sparks a quiet revolution in Taichi Kimura’s autobiographically inspired drama, Fujiko. Though set in the late 1970s and early 1980s, not that much has really changed in terms of the difficulties faced by those raising children alone even if they’re less likely to be told that it just isn’t possible or that they’ve brought their struggles on themselves by choosing divorce.

Fujiko doesn’t so much choose divorce as have it thrust upon her by her own feisty mother. The family she married into don’t see her as much more than a labourer and are then put out when she has a child because it means she has less time for them. The mother-in-law eventually coopts Fujiko’s infant daughter, while Fujiko’s husband Jiro does nothing, unable to stand up to his mother. Having lost Mari, Fuji goes into a kind of depression before being dragged to a women’s liberation rally by her boss reawakens her desire to fight.

Though Fujiko’s decision making may not be consciously feminist, it’s here that she realises that nothing changes if you just keep quiet. You have to fight for what you really want. But the battle doesn’t end once she’s retrieved her daughter. Life as a single mother is, as many tell her, all but impossible. Securing a place to stay thanks to her boss, Fujiko struggles to find anyone to watch her daughter so she can return to work. It’s only with the intervention of a friend that’s she’s able to overcome these issues and earn her own living.

The other employers’ refusal seems to be down in part as a reflection of social prejudice but also a fear that she’s breaking the rules that govern an employee/employer relationship in having something that will always take priority. Time and gain, it’s the kindness of strangers that saves her as she goes on to forge a more independent way of life. In need of money, she can’t be too picky about what the joy actually is and ends up accepting a position as a cook for an illegal yakuza gambling den only to see the money she’s saved go up in smoke when her placed is turned over. It may seem like the world is against her, but with every setback Fujiko only seems more determined to make it through. 

Fujiko finds a more positive example of supportive family by bonding with an old friend of her father’s who takes her in and helps her get back on her feet while helping her to see what she really wants out of life. Harbouring some resentment towards her mother for favouring her brother as the only boy, making her give up on art college so that he could go to Tokyo University, but equally disapproving of her marriage, Fujiko too struggles with the idea of conventionality that is projected onto her and the suggestion that she’s doing something wrong when the best option is simply remarriage. Given the option of marrying again and gaining a steadier home as a house, she once again has to decide if she’s going to fight for what she wants or be railroaded into settling for a more conventional success.

Rediscovering her father’s music helps Fujiko to get back in touch with herself and encourages her to follow her heart. Using psychedelic animation and propulsive rock music, Kimura lends Fujiko’s story a true punk rock spirit while staging much of the film as a flashback as Fujiko lays out her “sob story” for a prospective client having become an insurance saleswoman. Despite the difficulties she’s facing, the film remains upbeat and positive, seeing it all with a sense of humour as Fujiko does her best to escape the patriarchal net, refusing to be bound either by her first husband’s ineffectuality nor by what her mother insists her life should be. Instead she aims for an uncompromising independence, claiming her position as her daughter’s mother and doing her best to provide for her but also fulfilling herself in the midst of a patriarchal society which tells her that marriage and motherhood are the only rightful goals for a woman.

Fujiko as part of this year’s Nippon Connection.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Fusa (その木戸を通って, Kon Ichikawa, 1993)

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Kon Ichikawa’s Fusa (その木戸を通って, Sono Kido wo Totte) opens on a note of artifice. Misty rain and the verdant green of the forest give way to total darkness in which leaves appear, followed by the hero, Seishiro (Kiichi Nakai) tending a bonsai tree. As light brightens the scene, we see that he is seated beyond the veranda of his home which has taken on the appearance of a proscenium arch framed by the open shoji. It’s almost as if this space, in which Seishiro will enter his own reverie, is one of unreality as distinct from the interior which is busy with the preparations for the marriage of Seishiro’s only daughter, Yuka.

17 years previously, however, it was his own marriage he was preoccupied with when a mysterious woman arrived at his home claiming to have lost her memory and knowing only his name while he was away doing the annual audit. This is a little ironic, because “Seishiro Hiramatsu” hadn’t  been his name for very long and, in fact, he struggled to remember it or answer when called. The second son of an Edo lord, Seishiro had been adopted into the Hiramatsu clan and has made an advantageous match with the daughter of a lord, Tomoe. The presence of the mysterious woman threatens Seishiro’s position and path to advancement when Tomoe happens to catch sight of her, assuming she’s an old flame from Edo trying to rekindle things with Seishiro.

He, meanwhile, assumes the woman’s arrival is part of a plot to discredit him and ruin his engagement, presumably perpetrated by a jealous rival. For those reasons, he instructs his retainer Yoshizuka to have the girl sent away, but he and his wife (Kyoko Kishida) feel sorry for her and wish to take her into the household. Seishiro comes up with the ingenious plan of throwing her out and following her to see if she meets up with whoever sent her, but becomes protective when she is nearly assaulted by a pair of local louts. Despite himself, he becomes absorbed in the mystery, but at the same time both he and the woman, whom they name “Fusa” (Yuko Asano), become worried that if she did in fact regain her memory, she would have to leave.

Fusa sometimes enters a kind of trance state, staring at the mystical forest behind the house in way that gives her a supernatural air. That she arrives so suddenly aligns her with a tradition of ghost story and folklore, suggesting that she may be some kind of forest spirit that like the Snow Woman would have to leave once the spell was broken. She describes herself as feeling as if he had been possessed or were trapped within a dream. As Seishiro learns later, she may not have known his name at all, but only taken it from one of his servants, while her past remains opaque. Nevertheless, they are blissfully happy and conceive a daughter together before Fusa suddenly disappears with the same suddenness as she arrived. She had often had visions of a bamboo path and a wooden door beyond which seem to lurk the secrets of her past, but it may not be possible to return after passing through.

Seishiro continues to believe she will one day remember them and return, but at the same time knows to treasure the small bubble of happiness they once had no matter how long it lasted. The truth is only that she was here and then gone, which isn’t so much of an unusual story and requires little explanation, though Seishiro never really solves the mystery as he had vowed to do. Perhaps like Fusa, he didn’t really want to risk breaking the spell. Based on a story by Shugoro Yamamoto, the film was produced by Fuji TV as a test feature for NHK’s “Hi-Vision” high-definition television channel with the consequence that it was shot on hi-def video tape and later transferred to 35mm for international festival screenings. For those reasons, it’s not a particularly handsome film and obviously low budget, but even so Ichikawa makes the most of the medium, leaning into its soft focus to create an ethereal and mysterious atmosphere. Playing with colour and light, he often frames Fusa as the only one in colour in an otherwise monochrome scene as if perhaps suggesting that it’s Seishiro’s world that lacks reality rather than hers. An ominous violet light seems to emanate from the misty forest, but in truth perhaps all here are ghosts looking for a way to go beyond the wooden door but, at the same time, hoping they won’t find it.

Good Stripes (グッド・ストライプス, Yukiko Sode, 2015)

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Good stripes posterThe international media has become somewhat obsessed with the idea of Japan as a land of wilfully lonely singletons who’ve rejected the idea of home and family either in favour of the easier pleasures of one way virtual romance, or simply because a series of economic and social problems have made married life an unaffordable luxury. This is of course an exaggeration, but it is true enough that younger people have more choices which can, in some cases, lead to more worries and confusion. The young couple at the centre of Yukiko Sode’s Good Stripes (グッド・ストライプス) are in this sense a perfect encapsulation of their generation as they find themselves vacillating in the face of an unexpected crisis.

Midori (Akiko Kikuchi) and Masao (Ayumu Nakajima) have been together four years and truth be told the relationship seems to have run its course. Masao is about to jet off to India for three whole months yet Midori hardly seems bothered. While he’s away she stops responding to his messages, leaving him feeling even more isolated and alone so far away from home. Just when it seems the time has come to part, Midori realises she is pregnant, and as she’s already five months gone the most important decision has already been made for them. Wanting to do the “right” thing, Midori and Masao decide to marry and raise their baby in the conventional fashion yet they do so rather reluctantly and with a degree of mutual resentment.

The more we see of Midori and Masao, the more difficult it becomes to figure out how they got together in the first place. He is a typical middle class boy from a professional home (albeit a somewhat atypical one) and she a free spirit who grew up in the countryside. Midori doesn’t fit with Masao’s supercilious friends, one of whom is extremely rude and often makes a point of making fun of her while Masao eventually joins in rather than defend his girlfriend from what is really a little bit more than good natured banter. Reaching their late twenties they’re at the age where most of their friends are settling down, but they remain somewhat diffident, apparently not planning to stay together forever but not quite getting round to breaking up.

Things being the way they are, it’s all a little unplanned which is perhaps why Masao bristles when Midori finally moves into his well appointed apartment. He doesn’t have anywhere to put her things and is unwilling to shift any of his own, claiming putting up additional shelving would disrupt the balance of the room. Inviting someone else into your life must necessarily unbalance it, requiring at least a period of recalibration until a new equilibrium is reached, but Masao’s brief moment of resentment is perhaps understandable as he wrestles with being railroaded into a decision he isn’t sure he wanted to make.

Nevertheless, he tries to make the best of things by keeping quiet to keep the peace. Later when we meet Masao’s strangely “cute” doctor mother, she wonders if she made a mistake in the way that she chose to raise him. Having left Masao’s father when he was only five, she vowed to raise her son to be chivalrous – always carry the bags, be the first to apologise after a fight etc, but now wonders if she taught him to be superficially polite while inwardly seething with repressed anger and terrified of confrontation. Supportive to a point, Masao’s mother is also perhaps a little exasperated by the youngsters’ halfhearted attempt to embrace responsibility while quietly doubtful if they can really stay the course.

A meeting with Midori’s rowdy country family including her “difficult” spinster older sister and the equally free spirited younger one who makes fireworks for a living, proves eye opening for Masao as the only child of a sophisticated home but it’s an unexpected reunion with his own long absent father which eventually sets him on a course towards addressing his feelings of rootlessness and issues with intimacy. Resentful of his circumstances he begins having an affair with a pretty college friend only to come to hate himself during a torrid night in a hotel in which he suddenly realises what he’s getting up to is “all a bit animalistic”. Reconnecting with his father and realising that while they share certain similarities with each other they are all but strangers perhaps allows him to let go of his longstanding issues of abandonment and pursue his own desires which he’s fond of claiming to have abandoned altogether after discovering in childhood that nothing turned out the way he expected.

Midori and Masao may be two people railroaded into a future neither of them is quite sure they wanted, but in the end being forced to deal with a shared crisis does eventually bring them closer together if only in being forced to address their very separate issues both independently and as a couple. “Why take it out on me?” Midori snaps by accident, sensing Masao’s discomfort in dealing with some surprising revelations from his father, before thinking better of it and reverting to a more supportive position but her words do perhaps get through to her conflicted boyfriend even if he only really comes to accept his responsibility when forced to fish her out of a drainage ditch, reassured by her claims that there’s no need to worry because she’s the 100% boring sort of person that nothing ever really happens to. Giggling at the strangeness of it all, the pair vow their commitment to each other in the presence of the god of overcoming obstacles, together at last just as they prepare for their lives to be “unbalanced” all over again.

Good Stripes was screened as part of the 2019 Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Heat Wave (陽炎, Hideo Gosha, 1991)

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heat-waveHideo Gosha had something of a turbulent career, beginning with a series of films about male chivalry and the way that men work out all their personal issues through violence, but owing to the changing nature of cinematic tastes, he found himself at a loose end towards the end of the ‘70s. Things picked up for him in the ‘80s but the altered times brought with them a slightly different approach as Gosha’s films took on an increasingly female focus in which he reflected on how the themes he explored so fully with his male characters might also affect women. In part prompted by his divorce which apparently gave him the view that women were just as capable of deviousness as men are, and by a renewed relationship with his daughter, Gosha overcame the problem of his chanbara stars ageing beyond his demands of them by allowing his actresses to lead.

Heat Wave (陽炎, Kagero), which was to be the director’s penultimate feature, is a homage to late ‘70s gangster movies with a significant nod to Toei’s Red Peony Gangster series. Set in 1928, the action follows cool as ice professional itinerant gambler Rin Jojima (Kanako Higuchi) whose high stakes life becomes even more complicated when she accidentally runs into her adopted little brother, apparently on the hook to some petty gangsters. Dropping her commitments to help him out of his sticky situation and recover the family restaurant, Rin comes face to face with the yakuza who killed her father in a gambling dispute more than twenty years previously but vengeance is just one of many items on her to do list.

The title Heat Wave was apparently selected for the film to imply that Gosha was back on top form and ready to burn the screen with thrilling action but when producers saw his rushes they knew that their hopes were a little misplaced. Gosha was already seriously ill and was not able to direct with the fire of his youth. Heat Wave is undoubtedly a slow burn as Rin figures out the terrain and designs her campaign with the opposing side coming up with a counter plan, but the gradual acceleration begins to pay off in the film’s elaborate smoke and flames finale as Rin takes a bundle of dynamite to the disputed territory and then fights her way out with sword and pistol aided by an unlikely ally. Downbeat but leaving room for the hoped for sequels, Heat Wave is very much in the mindset of Gosha’s heyday in which, as Rin laments, the good die young and the bad guys win.

In keeping with many gambling films much of the action is taken up with tense games of hanafuda which may prove confusing to the uninitiated and are not particularly engaging in any case, though Gosha does not overly rely on the game to fill the screen. This may be early Showa, but save for the trains the action could almost be taking place a hundred years previously. Rin may have an unusual degree of autonomy as an unmarried woman travelling alone and earning her money through back alley gambling but her world is still a traditional one in which the honour of the game is supposed to matter, even if it is ignored by the unscrupulous who would be prepared to undercut their rivals away from the gaming table by attacking their friends and allies. Rin gains and then loses, reduced to an endgame she never wanted to play and which she fully intends to win by destroying herself only to be saved by her greatest rival.

Gosha’s reputation for vulgarity was not quite unjustified, even if perhaps overstated. Rin apparently inhabits the male world of her profession in a full way as an odd scene in which she’s taken to an inn to watch a live lesbian sex show seems to demonstrate though there is no dramatic purpose to its inclusion save to emphasise Rin’s impassive poise. Though nudity is otherwise kept to a minimum, Rin’s yakuza tattoos are on full show as a clear indication of her position in the underworld. The appearance of such extensive tattooing on female gangsters is a rare sight and Gosha does his best to make the most of its transgressive qualities.

When the producers realised Gosha was not as filled with intensity as they’d hoped, they hatched on the idea of attaching a hard rock song to the end to give the film more edge (apparently much to the consternation of the composer). This might explain the strange entry to the credits sequence which is accompanied by a very up to the minute burst of synthesiser music accompanied by computer graphics loading the faces of the stars across the screen in strips. Perhaps meant to bring the ‘70s inspired action into the present day the sudden entry of the modern world is jarring to say the least though perhaps it kept viewers in their seats long enough to enjoy the post credits sting of Rin giving it her best “you shall perish”, presumably to whet appetites for a sequel. Even if not quite as impressive as some of Gosha’s previous work, Heat Wave makes up for its flaws in its exciting finale which brings all of his choreographical and aesthetic abilities to their zenith as Rin basks in both victory and defeat with the legacy of the good people who took her in burning all around her.

Selection of scenes from the the film (no subtitles)

Future Memories: Last Christmas (未来の想い出 Last Christmas, Yoshimitsu Morita, 1992)

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b27a8478bde0a2deBased on the contemporary manga by the legendary Fujiko F. Fujio (Doraemon), Future Memories: Last Christmas (未来の想い出 Last Christmas, Mirai no Omoide: Last Christmas) is neither quiet as science fiction or romantically focussed as the title suggests yet perhaps reflects the mood of its 1992 release in which a generation of young people most probably would also have liked to travel back in time ten years just like the film’s heroines. Another up to the minute effort from the prolific Yoshimitsu Morita, Future Memories: Last Christmas is among his most inconsequential works, displaying much less of his experimental tinkering or stylistic variations, but is, perhaps a guide its traumatic, post-bubble era.

After a short segment set in 1971 in which one of our two heroines, Yuko Nando (Misa Shimizu), tells her classmates of her dream to become a best selling children’s author, we flash forward to 1981 where Yuko is a struggling artist unable to find success with her publishing company. A decade later, Christmas 1991, Yuko seems to have made little progress and despondently finds herself bonding with a mysterious woman offering a fortune telling service at the side of the road.

Ginko Kanae’s (Shizuka Kudo) life also seems to have spiralled downwards since 1981. A career as an office lady led to a fateful party after which another girl ended up going home with the guy she liked, and then she ended up being rebound married to the second choice salaryman she wound up with. Hence she’s reading fortunes on a less than busy side street at Christmas. The two women bond and swap phone numbers, but tragedy is about to befall them both as Yuko has a heart attack and dies at an office golf outing and Ginko has an accident on the way back from attending Yuko’s funeral. Never fear, the two women are soon cast back to 1981 with the next ten years of memories intact to help them make “better” choices and hopefully save their futures from ruin.

1992 was the start of a difficult era for Japan, the collapse of the bubble economy left behind it not just financial instability and social uncertainty, but a lingering feeling of foolishness and betrayal among those who’d been promised so much during the bubble years only to have the rug cruelly pulled from under them. It’s not surprising that many people of around Yuko and Ginko’s ages may have liked to travel back to 1981 and either relive the boom years or try and prevent the resultant tragedies from occurring. Unsurprisingly, the pair’s first pass at a do over sees them striving for conventional success, using their future knowledge to their advantage – Yuko by appropriating the idea of a popular 1991 manga to become an award winning artist, and Ginko becoming a financial guru. Both women come to feel conflicted about their “dishonest” choices which see them prosper unfairly, ironically robbing them of the chance to succeed as individuals in their own right and fulfil their own potential in the way they had always wanted to.

After each die at the same point and in the same way once again despite their financial successes, they get a second go, now with twenty years of hindsight to help them work out what’s really important. This time each chooses a path filled with more individual expression and the expectation of happiness. Romance is the name of the game as both women vow to spend more time with the men they love. However, having been through this once before Yuko and Ginko also have an expectation that their time will end once again in December 1991, meaning they feel conflicted about making a life with lovers they’ll be leaving behind. Gradually each starts to wonder if their fates are really as sealed as they fear them to be, or if they’ve been given this chance to start again precisely so that they can change their futures for the better.

In 1992, the idea that everything doesn’t have to be as gloomy as it seems might have been an important one, even more so than it is now. In the original timeline, Yuko and Ginko were, like many in the post-bubble world, victims of circumstance rather than people who’d actively made poor choices and the lessons which they learn are also those of their generation. Financial success is not everything, particularly if it’s gained in a “dishonest” way. More than changing their fates, Yuko and Ginko must first learn how to be happy which lies in self realisation, fulfilled potential, and, ironically, that their fate doesn’t matter so long as they live happily in the now.

Morita’s approach is again a timely one, filled with the music of the era (including a cover version of the title song from previous Morita hit, Main Theme), stock footage, and a curiously retro, nostalgia filled approach for a period that was only a decade earlier. Dissolves, slow motion and double exposures are his concessions to the sci-fi themes, but what he’s really interested in is capturing the essence of the era more so than crafting an emotionally affecting piece. Necessarily of its time, Future Memories: Last Christmas is among Morita’s weaker efforts but does serve to shine a light on early ‘90s pop culture as it found itself in a moment of profound self reflection.

Original trailer (no subtitles but lots of Christmas Cheer…and…Wham)

Last Quarter (下弦の月 ラスト・クォーター, Ken Nikai, 2004)

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Last Quarter posterTo begin on a cynical note, Last Quarter (下弦の月 ラスト・クォーター, Kagen no tsuki Last Quarter) is a film with a wide variety of marketing hooks. The first being that it’s an adaptation of a much loved short manga series by the well respected mangaka Ai Yazawa (Paradise Kiss) so it has its shoujo pedigree firmly in place. Secondly, pop star HYDE of L’Arc-en-Ciel is central to the production as he both stars in the movie as the ghostly love interest/deathly spirit and repeatedly sings his own songs throughout the film including over the end credits. Thirdly, it also stars actress Chiaki Kuriyama well known to overseas audiences thanks to Kill Bill and Battle Royale. You’d think with all these high quality ingredients first time director Ken Nikai would be able to cook up quite a feast though he does somewhat over egg the pudding.

After a brief dream sequence, the action kicks off at the 19th birthday party of British rock obsessed Mizuki (Chiaki Kuriyama) which takes place in a Mod inspired bar. Unfortunately, her best friend gets very drunk indeed and takes this opportunity to show Mizuki a photo of herself and Mizuki’s boyfriend in a compromising position. Mizuki throws a shoe at the no good philanderer and walks out on her own party ending up at a mysterious Western style mansion occupied by a sad man playing a guitar. She hits it off with “Adam” and decides to jack in her unhappy family life with her father and step-mother to leave for England with him. Sadly, she gets hit by a car on her way home only to wake up trapped inside the house and having lost all memory of who she formerly was. Soon enough, another girl, Hotaru (Tomoka Kurokawa), turns up and, assuming she’s a ghost, decides to help her “cross over” , but it’s all a little more complicated than Hotaru and her team had bargained for.

Last Quarter takes on an oddly imbalanced feel as it veers into star vehicle territory putting HYDE and his title song centerstage at the expense of Mizuki who ought to be the protagonist of the story. Understandably, as she’s fallen under the curse of the house, Mizuki is a mostly passive force throughout the film, entirely reliant on the efforts of the gang of three who are trying to help her by figuring out what’s really going on. The mystery element itself is quite an intriguing one but is often frustrated by the importance placed on the supernatural romance. Stretching plausibility to the limit, the events in question span 30 years and two continents to spin a yarn of pure love enduring beyond the grave. Pure love and grudge movies aren’t usually allowed to mix and they don’t quite here although Last Quarter certainly has elements of both.

Last Quarter’s biggest failing is in its production values which are generally on the low side. Nikai aims for an urban gothic aesthetic and achieves something close to sense of European decadence but opts to avoid the darkness inherent in the genre for a fairytale atmosphere. The effects are very highly stylised and old fashioned but Last Quarter doesn’t even attempt to make that work in its favour so much as offering it at face value.

In essence, Last Quarter often feels like an overblown music video for its rock star actor even if he actually has a relatively small role. Director Nikai has often worked with the band before and (apparently) there is a degree of recurring symbolism here that long time fans will instantly pick up on but will leave the casual viewer a little confused. Very firmly aimed at a younger teen female audience, Last Quarter will play best to fans of non-threatening supernatural romance but even then they’d be best advised to avoid thinking any of this through and simply enjoy the ghostly shenanigans for the ridiculous rag tag narrative they are. An interesting mix of ‘60s mod rocker cool with its parkas and vespas, and full on gothic with byronic heroes sitting in decaying mansions in the middle of creepy forests singing about their broken hearts, Last Quarter is incoherent to say the least but fans of its rockstar leading man will likely find their perseverance rewarded.

Last Quarter is available with English subtitles on R1 DVD in the US courtesy of Geneon.

Unsubtitled trailer: