Salaryman Kintaro / Sarariman Kintaro (1999)

Anyone coming to Salaryman Kintaro expecting a “typical” Takashi Miike movie will be surprised, to say the least. Kintaro is a young salaryman now working in the offices of Yamato construction. His honest company runs up against corruption in the government and construction industry and he tries to fight it head on, only to eventually …

Getting Any? / Minna yatteruka! / (1994)

Before he became known as Takeshi Kitano the movie director, Beat Takeshi was one of Japan's most popular comedians. Getting Any? is his only foray into screen comedy as a writer/director. As the title suggests,*  it is about sex, or more specifically the lengths to which a young man might go to get some. Asao …

Freeway Speedway / Shuto Kosoku toraiaru (1988)

Freeway Speedway is exactly what the title indicates: A young man tries to become the fastest driver on Tokyo freeways. Despite its cliché-ridden script, terrible acting, and all-but-non-existent direction, it does mark some significant new directions in Japanese movie-making. Pretty much anyone who has ever seen a similar movie could write its apparently twenty page …

His Motorbike, Her Island / Kare no otobai kanojo no shima (1986)

His Motorbike, Her Island accomplishes the seemingly impossible. Combining a showcase for not one but two of Kadokawa’s girl “pop idols,” the introduction of a young male to potentially join them as a teen idol, a teen-romance story line, a Japanese ghost story, and a 90-minute ad for Kawasaki, Obayashi somehow also managed to make …

Coastal Road / Wangan doro (1984)

By the early eighties, a “new woman” was appearing in Japanese movies and presumably in society, a female who was able to support herself respectably and to make her own decisions about love, sex, and/or family. Rarely has this women been more fully realized than in the movies of this era by Yoichi Hashima, with …