Rainbow Kids / Dai yukai (1991)

Two petty criminals are met at the prison by a pal who leads them into his plan to kidnap a rich old lady. They are young bumblers but, rather than resisting or escaping, the old lady takes over her own kidnapping to lead us through a twisting but charming comedy written and directed by Kihachi …

Four Days of Snow and Blood / 2.26 (1989)

The attempted military coup in  February 1936 is symptomatic of so many issues in Japanese history that, in a way, it is remarkable how little attention it has been given in Japanese movies. It was one of several examples depicted in Memoirs of Japanese Assassins, but Gosha's 2.26 is the first detailed reconstruction that I …

At This Late Date, the Charleston / Chikagoro naze ka Charusuton (1981)

Even by the eighties, the war had not faded from Japanese consciousness and there was still a great deal of survivor’s guilt, which Okamoto manages to turn into the often hilarious At This Late Date, the Charleston. After an attempted rape, Jiro, the second son of a wealthy family, is thrown into a jail cell …

Battle Cry / Tokkan (1974)

I’m not sure I have the vocabulary to properly describe Okamoto’s Tokkan. It is certainly funny, at times genuinely farcical, but it is also a historical tragedy, a rather bloody war movie, a heist movie, a love story of sorts, a sex romp without nudity, and a folk tale. We begin with a very old …

Tatsuya Nakadai

[Update 7/30/21. Somehow I had forgotten the powerful Immortal Love (see comments below), so the list of great movies with major participation by Nakadai should include it, and probably some more from the eighties that I have not yet gotten to.] In general, when we talk about great acting on stage, we talk about actors …

Battle of Okinawa / Gekido no showashi: Okinawa kessen (1971)

In 1971, after a number of successful war films built primarily around Toho’s special effects team, the studio turned to the Battle of Okinawa. a war movie focusing on people in (depending on your point of view) the bravest or most pointless last stand of the war. From its title shared with Gunbatsu, it was …

Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival / Zatoichi abare-himatsuri (1970)

In 1968-69, Shintaro Katsu seemed to be making a major change of direction. He finished both the Bad Reputation and the Hoodlum Soldier series and appeared to be closing down Zatoichi as well. This hardly means Katsu took a break from filming, appearing in half a dozen or so other movies every year. He had …

Red Lion / Akage (1969)

Akage is the last fabulous iteration of Toshiro Mifune in his gonzo mode of Seven Samurai. He is an illiterate peasant (as it happens, called Gonzo) who lost his farm to taxes and has ended up in an all-peasant unit of the great rebellious army marching on Edo in 1867-8. His unit precedes the main …

Goyokin (1969)

A lone figure walks into a deserted town, wind blowing through the torn paper screens and crows circling on the ground and in the air. Instead of Toshiro Mifune, however, the figure is a woman, and the deserted village is her home, where she has returned from five years of servitude to get married. When …

Human Bullet / Nikudan (1968)

As if in answer to his own portrayal of the final days of WWII at the top level of the government in Japan’s Longest Day, Kihachi Okamoto followed with a look at those days from the bottom in Human Bullet.* Independently produced by the Art Theater Guild, it is a much more personal work which, …