Shadow Within / Kage no kuruma (1970)

A man (Go Kato) sees a beautiful woman (Shima Iwashita) on a crowded bus, and she reminds him of a girl he knew in high school. He speaks to her and she recognizes him. She is a now a widow, selling insurance for a living, but he is married to a woman who is as …

500th Post

When I began this blog, it never occurred to me I would reach 500 posts, and if it had, I would never have thought I would reach 500 and still barely have made it to 1970. My general intention had been to post in a roughly historical order, but that plan fell apart very quickly …

Rising Dragon Ghost Story / Blind Woman’s Curse / Kaidan nobori ryu / Hichirimen bakuto – Nobarydu takahada (1970)

Though the final scene suggests the beginning of a series, Blind Woman’s Curse is the last movie of the Rising Dragon series, notable historically for showing us the moment of transition from the cute ingenue period of Masako Ota into the iconic powerful womanhood of the meteor that was the re-named Meiko Kaji. It also …

Yokai Monsters / 100 Monsters / Yôkai hyaku monogatari (1968)

Most of the Japanese "horror" movies I have posted about concerned the ghost of a woman seeking revenge, usually as a black cat, but there were other genres, most notably the "monster awakened" which was initiated by Gojira. Yokai hyaku monogatari takes us into a different world, the realm of Japanese folklore which is packed …

House in the Quarter / Gobancho yugiriro (1963)

The House in the Quarter is a brothel in Kyoto where we follow the young Yuko from her first days to her last. The setting thus gives us a cross between Street of Shame and Woman of Rumor, but concentrated on one single character, like Women Are Born Twice or Twilight Story. There is no …

Apart from Life / Chi no mure (1970)

Kei Kumai spent most of his long independent film career making movies about the parts of Japanese life the Japanese didn’t really want to talk about. As a result, though often recognized by critics, he rarely had real commercial success and only his very last movie saw a commercial release in the US, probably because …

I Want to be a Shellfish / Watashi wa kai ni naritai (1959)

The strange title comes from Shimizu, a gentle barber about to be executed, who decides that in his next reincarnation he wants to be a shellfish because he could live on the bottom of the sea where there is no human cruelty. The cruelty he has seen before his death is part of a complex …

Where Spring Comes Late / Family / Kazoku (1970)

Spring comes late in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan, and it comes late for the family of So and Tami, who left their home on an island south of Nagasaki to make the long rail journey north to find a job for the husband. The story of their trip is one of the warmest, …

Woman in the Typhoon Area / Taifuken no onna (1948)

A gang of smugglers elude the coast guard but run out of fuel and find themselves marooned on a small island weather station, just as a typhoon is about to hit. Once we add that the gang leader has his woman with him, anyone with a subscription to TCM can probably predict what will happen …

Scent of Incense / Koge – Ichibu: Waremoko no sho & Koge – Nibu: Mitsumata no sho (1964)

Kinoshita’s last major movie,* at least until 1983's Children of Nagasaki, The Scent of Incense is a domestic epic that spans sixty years in the life of a geisha and her mother. Released in two parts on the same day, the two halves total almost 3½ hours in length and against the background of Japan’s …