Actor’s Revenge / Yukinojo henge (1963)

For Americans, one of the oddest traditions of Japanese theater is the onnagata, the fully adult male who plays women's roles in Kabuki. In An Actor's Revenge, we get one of our most detailed looks at the onnagata life, expressed through a flamboyantly over-the-top melodrama. As directed by Kon Ichikawa, it is also a shining …

Girl Cat Gambler / Toba no mesu neko (1965)

By 1965, the yakuza film was well-established, and at the same time, the major studios, Nikkatsu in particular, were nibbling at the sexploitation market that had begun to open up among independent producers. It was also a time when we see the emergence of more aggressively independent women, often seeking their own revenge rather than …

Shinsengumi Chronicles / Shinsengumi Shimatsuki (1963)

The Shinsengumi have made appearances in other movies mentioned in this blog, but this is the first I have come across that concentrated on them, though the dramatic plot follows a fictional young man played by Raizo Ichikawa.  Much like Ichikawa's role in Shinobi no mono, he is a young man who joins the Shinsengumi …

Chikamatsu’s Love in Osaka / Their Own World / Naniwa no koi no monogatari (1959)

Chubei has been adopted into a family to learn the business and eventually marry the daughter. Dragged by a friend/customer to the pleasure quarter, he is trapped reluctantly into spending his first night with a woman, the popular and lovely courtesan Umegawa. They fall in love, and when a rich man tries to buy Umegawa, …

Fugitive from the Past / Straits of Hunger/ Kiga kaikyo (1964/5*)

I have occasionally commented that a large number of Japanese films seem to  illustrate the idea that "no good deed goes unpunished," but none does so more explicitly and complexly than Tomu Uchida's Fugitive from the Past. In 1957, a successful businessman (Rentaro Mikuni) makes a major charitable donation. Yae, a prostitute in Tokyo (Sachiko …

Hoodlum/Yakuza Soldier / Heitai Yakuza (1964)

Possibly Japan's first "buddy picture," Heitai Yakuza is a fascinating look at the Army during the war through the eyes of the lower ranks. Unlike, for example, Part II of Human Condition, it does this while being entertaining and at times quite funny. It also does something I can not imagine any American movie doing …

Sen and Hideyori / Sen-hime to Hideyori (1962)

Sen was a granddaughter of  Ieyasu Tokugawa and for political reasons was married off at the age of seven to Hideyori Toyotomi. However, Toyotomi organized the last serious resistance to the Tokugawas, which eventually led to the siege and burning of his castle in Osaka and the death of Hideyori. Sen, however, was rescued and …

The Great Duel / Odeiri (1964)

In a sense, Odeiri is the quintessential chanbara of the mid sixties. Artistically, there are many better movies in the genre, but no movie I have found so completely combines all the cultural and stylistic developments of the genre at its date. This is, of course, another way to say that Odeiri doen’t have an […]

Revenge / Vengeance / Adauchi (1964)

Tadashi Imai and Kinnosuke Nakamura had earlier collaborated  in Bushido on a detailed exposure of the cynical emptiness of samurai code, and in this follow-up they push that criticism about as far as it can possibly be pushed, culminating in one of the most ethically appalling swordfights in all of Japanese film. As so often …

Mask of the Moon / Tsukigata Hanpeita (1961)

Set in the chaotic period after the Americans arrived in Japan, Mask of the Moon shares some of that confusion, in part because it mixes fictional and historical characters and in part because everything about the era was just so confusing.  Tsukigata represents the Chosu Clan in Kyoto after they have been banned from the …