Wuthering Heights / Arashi ga oka (1988)

On its surface the least likely European novel for a Japanese adaptation, Wuthering Heights is transformed by Yoshihige Yoshida, Toru Takemitsu, and a towering characterization by Yusaku Matsuda into one of the finest unknown Japanese movies ever made and certainly the best film adaptation of the novel itself I have ever seen. A blind biwa …

Living Koheiji / Koheiji is Alive / Kaidan: Ikiteiru Koheiji (1982)

After more than a decade of silence, Nobuo Nakagawa, the Grand Old Man of Japanese horror movies, re-surfaced in 1982 at ATG. The result, The Living Koheiji, is a cryptic and hypnotic ghost story that is short on shock value but full of visual, verbal, and character complexity far more fascinating than his more famous …

Double Suicide at Sonezaki / Sonezaki shinju (1978)

The love suicide has permeated Japanese popular culture, almost as significant a subject as seppuku itself.* Chikamatsu’s Double Suicide at Sonezaki was one of the major drivers in the subject's popularity, as it was the first play (initially for bunraku then later Kabuki) in which both lovers were commoners. Given its immense popularity on stage …

Demons / Shura (1971)

I have occasionally compared some Japanese movies to Jacobean dramas, but watching Matsumoto’s Shura is like suddenly wandering in to Webster, Middleton, Chapman, Ford, Tourneur, and Kyd all rolled into one and simply restaged in a Japanese setting. Honor, revenge, coincidence, disguise, ghosts, mistaken motivations, sexual obsession, poison, madness, and blood swirl around in a …

Scandalous Adventures of Buraikan / Buraikan (1970)

The American release title of Buraikan is a bit deceptive, suggesting one single central character. In fact we have three major characters, only connected to each other by the slenderest of threads. First we see Naojiro (Tatsuya Nakadai), a neer-do-well ronin who wants to be an actor and who tries to seduce passing beauties by …

Double Suicide / Shinju: Ten no Amijima (1969)

One of the simplest yet one of the most complex of Japanese movies, Shinoda’s Double Suicide adapts Ten no Amijima, one of the most popular of Chikamatsu’s domestic suicide plays, to film. Unlike Mizoguchi’s adaptation of a different love suicide play, however, Shinoda theatricalizes the film medium without ever suggesting he is filming a stage …

An Actor’s Revenge / Yukinojo henge (1959)

The basic story is relatively well known through the 1963 remake of the same title issued by Criterion. However, as I became more interested in Hashizo Okawa, a significant star all but unknown outside Japan, I finally managed to find a DVD of his version of the story. I wish I hadn't bothered. Like Raizo …

Mad Fox / Love, Thy Name Be Sorrow / Koiya koi nasuna koi (1962)

It seems that I say I've never seen anything quite like this in a post every few months, but Tomu Uchida's Mad Fox is unlike any other Japanese movie I've seen. It is certainly unlike any other movie directed by Uchida. Apparently based on a kabuki play, it is also a fairy tale played out …

The Loyal 47 Ronin / Chushingura (1958)

The story of the 47 Ronin had a particular resonance for Japanese audiences, and it has been told on screen numerous times. Thus, it is no surprise to find that Daiei, the studio that was most deeply committed to the jidai-geki and chanbara in the fifties and sixties, should turn to the story for one …

Mask of the Moon / Tsukigata Hanpeita (1961)

Set in the chaotic period after the Americans arrived in Japan, Mask of the Moon shares some of that confusion, in part because it mixes fictional and historical characters and in part because everything about the era was just so confusing.  Tsukigata represents the Chosu Clan in Kyoto after they have been banned from the …