1750 Days of Turbulence / Gekido no 1750 nichi (1990)

Toei Studios had been the home of the yakuza throughout the sixties and seventies but had been forced by lack of audience interest to abandon their dependence on the genre during the eighties. By 1990, however, the winds seemed to be changing and Toei leaped in again with the massive 1750 Days of Turbulence. As …

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 …

Proof of the Man / Ningen no shomei (1977)

When Mariko Okada’s wastrel son confesses to having killed a woman in a hit-and-run and thrown her body into the sea, she tells him that nothing can be solved by asking the police to punish him. The real proof of a man, she tells him, is to suffer for your sins and live with them …

I Am a Cat / Wagahai wa neko de aru (1975)

I Am a Cat isn’t really about a cat, but rather about the family the cat wanders into. Until the rather surprising ending, we do not hear the cat’s thoughts or see activities through the cat’s eyes (though the traditional Japanese penchant for low camera angles would have been quite useful). Instead, we get a …

Coup d’etat / Martial Law / Kaigenrei (1973)

The coup of 1936 has been the subject of several significant movies. The most straight-forward presentation can be found in Memoirs of Japanese Assassins, with the same coup reflected in the romance of Utage and the teen-age bullies of Fighting Elegy. Yoshida’s Coup d’etat looks at this failed coup through the life of Ikki Kita, …

Scent of Incense / Koge – Ichibu: Waremoko no sho & Koge – Nibu: Mitsumata no sho (1964)

Kinoshita’s last major movie,* at least until 1983's Children of Nagasaki, The Scent of Incense is a domestic epic that spans sixty years in the life of a geisha and her mother. Released in two parts on the same day, the two halves total almost 3½ hours in length and against the background of Japan’s …

The Affair / Flames of Love / Joen (1967)

Oriko (Mariko Okada) is an unhappily married woman when she meets a sculptor who had previously had an affair with her mother. Her husband mistakenly thinks she is having an affair with the sculptor and divorces her. Meanwhile, she has at least once slept with another man, a common laborer, who also may have been …

Dancer/ Dancing Girl /Maihime (1951)

Despite the Japanese actors and the occasional traditional dress, Maihime is the most fully "American" women's picture I have found. This foreign feel is even more surprising since it is directed by Naruse from an adaptation by Shindo of a Kawabata story. The English title suggests another adaptation of Kawabata's Dancing Girl of Izu, but …

Woman of the Lake / The Lake / Onna no mizumi (1966)

Onna no mizumi personifies so much of what most people think an "art house" movie is like that it is difficult to actually get to the content of the movie itself. Yoshishige Yoshida technically had left Shochiku after Escape from Japan and formed his own production company with his now wife Mariko Okada, and together …

Illusion of Blood / Yotsuya kaidan (1965)

Yotsuya kaidan has been one of the most consistently popular kabuki plays in Japanese history and has been directly adapted into movies and TV on a regular basis, possibly even more often than the Chusingura story. Its mixture of the loving woman done wrong, the desperate ronin, visual horror, insanity, betrayal, and mistaken identity provide …