Letters / Tegami (2006)

There are many kinds of social prejudice depicted in Japanese films, and not all are based on race or wealth. Within the Japanese-born population, there are two “blood” stigmas that have continued to remain strong even in the 21st century. One relates to the burakumin, who have been social outcasts for so long that no …

Dead or Alive / Hanzaisha (1999)

So much is going on in Takashi Miike's Dead or Alive that it is hard to know where to start. As in Fudoh, we begin with a blast of violence but much longer. To the sound of ear drum bursting rock, we are thrown into the night in Shinjuku, with intercut street scenes, a woman …

Village of Dreams / E no naka no boku no mura (1996)

Seizo and Yukihiko are twins who both became artists and now as they near sixty have decided to make a joint book about their village when they were young boys. This takes us back to 1948 in a small village near Kochi, which as we have seen in other movies was the back of beyond …

Secret Sword / Hiken (1963)

For many samurai, the sudden and apparently permanent peace that settled over the country after 1615 was a disappointment rather than a relief. The ending of more than a century of war meant the end of any opportunity for advancement through battle deeds and, for the young men, it also meant the end of excitement. …

A Whistle in My Heart / Whistling in Kotan / Kotan no kuchibue (1959)

Kotan is a village just outside an un-named city in Hokkaido. When we first meet the main characters – Masa a 15 year old girl, Yutaka her 13 year old brother, and Fue an older neighbor/cousin, it looks like any other small Japanese village as the teenagers prepare to go off to school in the …

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 …

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 …