Nakano Spy School / School of Spies / Rikugun Nakano gakko (1966)

Before I wander off into social commentary, I should start by saying this is a remarkably well-made, and in its last half, unusually taut movie. I should not have been surprised, since it was directed by Yasuzo Masumura, but I was. Raizo Ichikawa is Jiro, a university graduate in 1938 who has been in something …

Sword Devil / The Curse / Ken ki (1965)

One of the pleasures of "foreign" movies is that what you think will be an entirely predictable genre film turns out not to be so predictable after all.  This certainly happens in Ken ki. As often occurs in Japanese films, the tone and sense of realism constantly shifts and it takes some genuinely unexpected turns …

Green Mountains (Pt. I) / Blue Mountains / Aoi sanmyaku (1949)

The "Americanization" of social customs during the Occupation years, and Japanese resistance to that Americanization, was most often expressed itself in movies through the issue of young love. However, I don't think I have ever seen a movie in which the cultural clash is so confusing or hard to understand as in Green Mountains. In …

Color Print of Edo / Nishikie edosugata hatamoto to machiyakko (1939)

  Over his long career, Utaemon Ichikawa regularly appeared is a series about a character known as the Bored Hatamoto. Despite the title here, this is not one of that series, but it does illustrate Ichikawa's unique blend of samurai skill and good-hearted humor in a very rare pre-war film made when he was still …

In Search of Mother / Mabuta no haha (1962)

A persistent theme in Japanese movies after the war was the abandoned child. Naturally, in a society and economy all but destroyed by WWII, there would be many children either orphaned or abandoned by parents who could not feed them, and the theme  carried over into many jidai-geki of the era as well.  Mabuta no …

Hell / Jigoku (1960)

Since its Criterion release, Jigoku has received considerable attention in the US, most of which has been to treat it in terms of a horror film. Since it deals with the punishment of sinners, I first watched it in an attempt to understand the Japanese Buddhist conception of Hell and left with no more knowledge …

Human / Ningen (1962)

Three men set out on a rattle-trap little boat for a neighboring island, where they expect to pick up a cargo and return to their village within less than 48 hours. At the last minute, a local woman jumps on board to take some of her abalone to sell as well. But before evening falls, …

Flame of My Love / My Love is Burning / Waga koi wa moenu (1949)

In an obvious parallel to the changing world in which Japanese women were moving toward some form of independence as a result of the Occupation, Flame of My Love examines one of the earliest attempts to gain equality for Japanese women during the 1880s. Kinuyo Tanaka is Eiko. She is inspired by a meeting with …

Elegant Life of Mr. Everyman / Eburi manshi no yuga-na seikatsu (1963)

Keiju Kobayashi as Eburi-man on his day off In Elegant Life, the Japanese shomin-geki reaches some kind of landmark, satirical yet sympathetic, sad yet wildly funny, in a film of such wit and visual imagination that it is inexplicable how it has been all but unknown outside Japan for so long. Eburi works in an …

Skull / Dokuro (1927)

Skull has so many points of interest that it is worth a look even for people who don't much like silent movies. It is first of all a silent jidai-geki, very few of which survived the war and Occupation years, so we get some idea of how the Japanese approached their own history in the …