Pacchigi! (2004)

It's 1968 in Kyoto and girls are fainting at rock band concerts. Three friends in high school decide to get “mushroom” haircuts to impress the girls and at last achieve “penetration,” but the girls just laugh at them. It looks like we're in for a trip down nostalgia lane. Then two girls from the North …

Gojoe / Gojo reisenki: Gojoe (2000)

The Gojoe Bridge (also known as Gojo or Goyo) can only be crossed by demons coming in and out of Kyoto, and any man who tries to cross the other way is quickly killed by a demon. This demon is disrupting all of Kyoto, now in the hands of the Heike Clan (also known as …

Moving / Ohikkoshi (1993)

Divorce has appeared in many earlier Japanese movies, but Moving takes an unusual look at the situation as seen through the eyes of the child in the family. Ren is around 11-12, so she is much more aware and verbal that the young children to be found in the background of Sting of Death, for …

Man Who Assassinated Ryoma / Ryoma wo kitta otoko (1987)

During the last years of the Shogunate, Kyoto became “a war zone,” as described by Tadasaburo Sasaki, leader of the Mimawarigumi and here the man who assassinated Ryoma. There are so many conflicting groups that, for a samurai to simply walk the streets is to risk attack and possible death. Unfortunately, any discussion of this …

Ancient City / Old Capital / Koto (1980)

Koto, Kon Ichikawa’s version of Kawabata’s The Old Capital, is if anything even more quiet, subtle, and beautiful, than the 1963 film version made when the book was first published. The temples and palaces of old Kyoto are not visible, but the portrayal of the quiet side streets of the obi weavers and designers have …

Double Suicide at Nishijin / Nishijin Shinju (1977)

Two decades after River of Night, we return to the narrow world of the Kyoto hand-weavers where we also meet one of the most enigmatic Japanese women I have yet come across in movies. Without any particular intention on her part, Yumi seems to leave death in her wake, both as a prostitute and as …

This Transient Life / Mujo (1970)

The Art Theater Guild was established to expand the horizons of Japanese film-makers and audiences, first by showing foreign movies that could not find commercial release and then eventually producing movies of its own, shown primarily in their Shinjuku theater that was the center of Japan’s sixties avant-garde life, though for a time they did …

Shinsengumi: Assassins of Honor / Shinsengumi (1969)

Throughout the 1960s, the decade after the Americans arrived became a popular topic in Japanese historical movies, as we have seen in numerous earlier posts on this blog. That interest came to some kind of peak in 1969, with Toshiro Mifune’s production of Shisengumi, in which he portrayed the group’s most significant and charismatic leader, …

River of Night / Yoru no kawa (1956)

In River of Night, we follow the story of that rarest of creatures in fifties Japanese film, a successful independent woman. Kiwa  (Fujiko Yamamoto) is a kimono designer in Kyoto, noted for her unique, subtle, and unusual designs. She works in the family business with her father, but he acknowledges her as the real artist …

Black Cat / Kuroneko (1968)

An elegant ghost story that often matches Ugetsu in its night-time beauty, Kuroneko is one of the finest of Japanese cat/ghost revenge movies. A mother and daughter alone in the provinces are raped and killed by starving samurai on the run after a battle. They then come back as cats, with the daughter as the …