Flag in the Mist / Kiri no hata (1965)

Flag in the Mist is an engrossing example of a kind of movie we rarely associate with Japanese cinema. Like so many Japanese films, it starts as one thing and then shifts into something else entirely, but in this case, the shift is hard to describe in any detail without some significant spoilers, so I …

Black Snow / Kuroi yuki (1965)

While the Occupation of Japan officially ended in 1952, in Black Snow Japan is still an occupied country, though it is now 1965. Set just outside Yokota Air Base in Tokyo, the action is perpetually accompanied by the screeching of jets landing and taking off and of military vehicles on the road. And this is …

Escape from Japan (1964)

My first reaction when I saw this movie was that its director, Kuji Yoshida, was pulling a Suzuki by taking an absurd script and filming it as absurdly as possible. However, that does not seem to be the case. Yoshida wrote the script and then walked out of Shochiku reportedly because the studio cut the …

Foundry Town / Cupola no aru machi (1962)

With its propulsive Nikkatsu title music and opening scenes in a metal works, followed by the firing of an old, experienced worker who had earlier been injured at the works, Foundry Town looks like it will be a movie about labor strife or about yakuza invading labor relations.  Shortly, however, it turns to the worker's …

Times of Joy and Sorrow / The Lighthouse / Yorokobi mo kanashimi mo ikutoshitsuki (1957)

The times of joy and sorrow of the title of those of a family of lighthouse keepers from 1932 to 1957. Given the dates, they are necessarily also the times of joy and sorrow for Japan as a whole. With all of that to work with, Kinoshita manages to produce a strikingly undramatic movie that …

Untamed Woman / Arakure (1957)

In its story and characterization, Untamed Woman is a-typical for Naruse's movies with Hideko Takamine and for the most part, it is a-typical for any Japanese movie of its era. As Shima, Takamine becomes Naruse's Insect Woman. Like almost all the women in the josei-eiga of the era and in Naruse's films in particular, Shima …

Black Lizard / Kurotokage (1964) & Black Rose / Black Rose Mansion / Kuro bara no yakata (1965)

Black Lizard is a fairly disappointing remake of the earlier Black Lizard starring Machiko Kyo. Despite some high-sixties scenery, it has lost all the theatrical flair of the earlier movie, taking the silly plot rather straight. Gone is the whip wielding, the massive underground lair, and the implausible furniture switch. But it does offer one …

The Outcast / Hakai (1962)

Japanese society had plenty of problems as a whole in the postwar years, so there were very few movies specifically devoted to the problems of minorities. If those minorities appeared on screen, they were usually ethnic minorities: Korean, Okinawan, or Ainu, with Imai's Kiku to Isamu introducing a new ethnic minority, the children of Black …

Matsu the Untamed / Muhomatsu no issho (1943)

Generally regarded as one of the best movies made in Japan during the war years, Matsu the Untamed, directed by Inagaki, was also remade in a very close version in 1957 known as Rickshaw Man.  Thus, it gives us a very rare chance to make a direct comparison of the two stars, Tsumasaburo Bando  in …

Stranger Within a Woman / Onna no naka ni iru tanin (1966)

Stranger Within a Woman is something of an outlier for the mid-sixties, for the cast, for the director, and for the industry in general. Based on a 15-year-old French novel that Claude Chabrol would also adapt in the early seventies, it starts as a murder mystery, but the perpetrator soon becomes so obvious that it …