Taboo / Gohatto (1999)

The Shinsengumi had disappeared from Japanese films for the most part around 1970, so it is something of a surprise to see them reappear as a major subject in Gohatto. Even more surprising is that it is a movie by Oshima, who had never shown any previous interest in jidai-geki or in films with sword-play …

Hot Little Girl / Shibire kurage (1970)

The story of Shibire kurage is fairly simple – Midori is a young woman supporting herself as a model while saving for her marriage, who through a series of set backs that are not her fault will end up losing her fiancé, her job, and a second possible husband, and will break all ties with …

Yakuza Masterpiece / Ode to Yakuza/ Fine Yakuza Song/ Yakuza zessho (1970)

Though framed by two very standard yakuza scenes, Yakuza zessho is really about a man whose care for his younger sister seems to be more than just protectiveness. Minoru, the leader of a small yakuza clan, has raised his half-sister Akane, now 18, since their mother died.  She is the daughter of the man who …

Life of an Amorous Man / A Lustful Man / Koshoku ichidai otoko (1961)

Saikaku Ihara's Koshoku ichidai otoko of 1682 was one of the most significant and popular novels of the Tokugawa era, all but unknown outside Japan primarily because there have been no translations. The title is usually translated as Life of an Amorous Man, to parallel his later Life of an Amorous Woman that was the …

Oil Hell Murder / Onna goroshi abura no jigoku (1992)

In what would sadly be his last movie before his death in 1992, Gosha turned to Chikamatsu for inspiration. Working from the last screenplay of the great Masato Ide, who had died several years before the film went into production, the movie shifted the focus of Chikamatsu's original to a woman who, though the murder …

Spirit of Tattoo / Irezumi: Sekka tomuraizashi (1982)

Unrelated to the earlier Irezumi, Takabayashi’s Spirit of Tattoo is as its title suggests a meditation on the tattoo as both an art and a mystical experience. The situation is simple: Akane, now in her thirties, is the secretary and apparently long-time lover of Fujieda, a forty-ish librarian with a fetish about tattoos and women’s …

Stolen Pleasure / Tadare (1962)

Made just after Temple of the Wild Geese, Tadare once again places Ayako Wakao in the role of a mistress, but here she is a mistress who will fight for her man. Whether he is worth it, however, is a different question. Wakao is currently the mistress of Asai, played by the epitome of the …

Diary of a Mad Old Man / Futen Rojin nikki (1962)

Diary of a Mad Old man might more accurately be called Diary of a Sad Old Man, as So Yamamura gives us one of the most humiliating portrayals of a man who has lost all self-control until the later Love for an Idiot, also based on a book by Tanizaki. Approaching his 77th birthday, he …

Princess from the Moon / Kaguya / Taketori monogatari (1987)

Folklore and fairy tales are extremely difficult to bring off successfully in live-action movies, so it was a great pleasure to find Kon Ichikawa’s Princess from the Moon. It is in general much easier to maintain the folktale feeling within the artificiality of animation, and in fact the story was re-used in the much more …

Two Wives / Tsuma futari (1967)

One of the last movies made by Masumura with Ayako Wakao, Two Wives pairs her with Mariko Okada. Born in the same year, gaining their earliest major roles at about the same time, the two were the major faces of the new “women’s picture” that emerged around 1960, but they had never co-starred.* The result …