Rhapsody in August / Hachigatsu no rapusodi (1991)

Himself one of the last of the Japanese directors to have experienced the war years as an adult, Kurosawa in 1991 used Kiyoko Murata's novella of a woman spending time with her grandchildren as a basis for a movie about the lasting after-effects of the Nagasaki bombing. While Kinoshita had dealt with the blast and …

Company Funeral / Shaso (1989)

Shaso opens with a title card translated as “Newspapers are written with intelligence but are sold by gangsters.” This is immediately followed by salesmen for two competing papers forging subscriptions and fighting with each other. But we soon turn to boardroom machinations as the President Okabe, whose father founded the paper, squeezes out the CEO …

Roppa’s Honeymoon / Roppa no shinkon ryoko (1940)

Roppa's Honeymoon, which can be found on YouTube, gives us a glimpse of the thirties comedian Roppa Furukawa, who was so popular that he starred in a number of movies that featured his name in the title, like those of the other major comedian Enoken. It is primarily of interest to film historians because it …

Heaven and Earth / Ten to Chi to (1990)

The battles of Kawanakajima have held an unusually strong hold on Japanese popular culture, especially the fourth battle. We have seen movies about this from the viewpoint of Takeda Shingen, the leader of one side, and from the viewpoint of peasants in the supply train. Heaven and Earth revisits the conflict from the viewpoint of …

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 …

Legend of the Eight Samurai / Satomi hakkenden (1983)

One of the most popular novels of 19th century Japan was the sprawling, episodic fantasy Nanso Satomi Hakkenden written over a period of thirty years by Bakin. It had been adapted to stage, film, and TV several times, so it is no particular surprise that Toei and Kadokawa decided it was time for another version …

Burst City / Bakuretsu toshi (1982)

Opening with a great sequence, Burst City soon degenerates into the total chaos it appears to depict. Though this ultimately makes it a movie that today is almost unwatchable, it marked something new in Japan in the eighties and seems to have had an enduring impact on a major part of Japanese youth sub-culture into …

Bandit vs. Samurai Squad / Kumokiri Nizaemon (1978)

Bandit vs. Samurai Squad opens with a dramatic tightrope walk into a rich man’s compound and a robbery. Unfortunately, these are not the bandits of the title, but another clumsier gang that is destroyed by the fast-arriving Samurai Squad, while the gold they steal is stolen in turn by members of the Kumokiri gang. This …

Saga of the Vagabonds / Sengoku gunto-den (1959)

The curious may come to Saga of the Vagabonds because it is a Kurosawa script without Kurosawa directing, produced between Hidden Fortress and Yojimbo. However, it is not really a Kurosawa movie but a revision of a movie originally directed in 1937 by the legendary Eisuke Takizawa, few of whose movies survive today. How much …

Soji Okita (1974)

The Shinsengumi have been a bottomless source of material for Japanese movies since the silent era with many re-tellings of their history, each usually focused on one particular character. It was only a matter of time before the unit commander Soji Okita also got his own movie. If you have seen other Shinsengumi movies, you …