Amagi Pass / Amagi goe (1983)

A 14-year-old boy climbs to Amagi pass in 1940 and an old man forty years later painfully climbs five floors of stairs to hire a printer for his memoirs. Their lives come together in the story of a murder of a wandering laborer at the tunnel at the top of the trail over Amagi. The …

Demon / Kichiku (1978)

Ken Ogata had been a major star on TV since the mid-sixties, usually playing samurai heroes. His occasional big-screen appearances had been in supporting roles, some fairly large but for the most part not particularly memorable. Then suddenly, in 1978-79 he catapulted to the position of one of Japanese film’s most highly regarded actors by …

Three Undelivered Letters / Haitatsu sarenai santsu no tegami (1978)

For me, as I assume for most people, the seventies in Japanese movie making were for a long time little more than a dark hole. Aside from Battles Without Honor, Lone Wolf and Cub, and some cult movies in the pinku violence sub-genre, not much was known outside Japan, and that was mostly known about …

The Incident / Jiken (1978)

The Incident, as it is continually referred to, is the killing of a young woman whose body was found in the woods several days after her death. Although based on an award-winning mystery novel by Shohei Ooka, there isn’t much apparent mystery. Hiroshi is soon arrested and at his arraignment in court admits he killed …

Village of Eight Gravestones / Yatsuhaka-mura (1977)

The detective Kindaichi movie revival begun by Ichikawa’s Inugami Family was quickly followed up by movies at several other studios, the most popular of which was Shochiku’s Village of Eight Gravestones. Tatsuya is called to a lawyer’s office where he is grilled to determine his true identity and then meets his long lost grandfather (on …

Castle of Sand / Suna no utsuwa (1974)

As in most countries, movies in Japan had often depicted police and criminals. However, the modern police procedural was still a very new idea in the seventies, with Castle of Sand possibly the first Japanese movie to follow a case from the police point of view in a step-by-step investigation process such as might actually …

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 …

Zero Focus / Zero no shoten (1961)

One week after her marriage, a young wife sees her new husband off on the train, supposedly to wrap up business at a branch office of his ad agency before moving permanently to Tokyo. He never returns and she sets out to find him. Before she's done, she uncovers a web of secrets and murder …

Scarlet Camellia / Goben no tsubaki (1965)

Sometimes you come across a movie that is far more interesting in concept than in practice, and Scarlet Camellia is a good example. It is a highly unusual movie because it is about a serial killer, a very rare occurrence in Japanese society or films, and even more unusually, the killer is a woman. But …

Stakeout / The Chase / Harikomi (1958)

In general, police procedural movies made up only a small portion of the Japanese film industry.  Crime stories were popular in the newspapers and bookstores, but most of these followed the lead of Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie, featuring an intricate puzzle to be solved by a brilliant private detective. After the war, many of …