Maborosi / Maborosi no hikari (1995)

Maborosi is another of those slow, unresolved, contemplative movies that you can either fall in love with or simply quit watching part way through, frustrated by waiting for something to happen. In fact, a great deal happens but, in a long Japanese film tradition, most of it occurs either off-screen or far away from the …

Tugumi / Tsugumi* (1990)

Tsugumi is a girl who was “born weak” but with a lot of parental care and sacrifice has surprised the local doctor and lived to nineteen. Her closest friend Maria returns to visit her during the summer break from university in Tokyo and in that quiet slow manner so unique to a certain kind of …

The Bride Talks in Her Sleep / Hanayome no negoto (1933)

Like The Neighbor's Wife and Mine, Gosho's Bride Talks in Her Sleep is designed to show off the new sound technology that Shochiku was slowly introducing as their studio standard. It is also a light-hearted look at student and salaryman life in the early thirties, very much the same feel as Ozu's silent student comedies …

Memories of You / Kaisha monogatari: Memories of You (1988)

Memories of You, like 24 Hour Playboy, has jazz at its heart, but the two movies could not be more different. The Japanese title is Company Story and most of the movie revolves around the office of the symbolically named Tokyo Co., where Hanaoka is about to retire on his birthday, which is also Christmas …

Crowded Train / Manin densha (1957)

In Manin densha the crowded train becomes a metaphor for the new world facing both the salaryman and the educated in postwar Japan, where education quickly outraced the business world. Wherever our hero Tamio goes, whether it is university graduation, the commuter train, the office, or the search for a mate, the world is just …

Death of a Tea Master / Sen no Rikyu: Honkakubo ibun (1989)

Among the many mysteries of Japanese culture, the tea ceremony remains arguably the least comprehensible to outsiders. Though similar rituals began in China and continue to be observed in some form in China and Korea, the Japanese seem to have taken it to an extreme, converting the brewing and drinking of a cup of tea …

My Older Brother / Watashi no niisan (1934)

A gruff man walks along a bridge at night. Several taxis stop to offer him a ride but he refuses until at last he gets into one, giving a very vague address. Along the way he takes off his belt and tries to strangle the taxi-driver, fails, and escapes. Is there a mad killer on …

Final Take: The Golden Age of Cinema / Kinema no tenchi (1986)

To the strains of “My Blue Heaven," Yoji Yamada’s Kinema no tenchi takes us back for a nostalgic look at 1933-34 at Shochiku Kamata studio* as Japan is beginning the transition from silent movies to sound. This is no Singing in the Rain, however, for everyone who moves to talkies adjusts easily. Rather, it is …

Flames of Blood / Hono-o no gotoku (1981)

Tai Kato’s last fiction movie, Flames of Blood takes us once again into the world of the Shinsengumi, but from the viewpoint of a complete outsider. Kato continued to make documentaries, so the movie was not an intentional farewell, but it is hard not to see the movie as a summation of Kato’s style and …

Beast in the Shadows / Edogawa Rampo no injû (1977)

One of the most unexpected and generally unknown aspects of Japanese movies in the seventies was the revival of the murder mystery as a top of the bill feature. That examples of this genre are all but unseen in Europe or America is no surprise, of course, since every nation produced plenty of those in …