Tokyo Sonata (2008)

Though it was widely seen and written about on its initial release, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Tokyo Sonata is so full of forgotten detail that it is more than worth a second or a third look. While it is the story of a salaryman who loses his job and almost loses his family, it is far more …

Blue Spring / Aoi haru (2001)

Blue Spring takes us inside a boys' high school in the last weeks before graduation, and it is unlike any Japanese school we have seen on film. The first thing we see is an adult desperately running away across the school playing field, with a gang of boys chasing after. The hallways, toilets, and stairways …

Roadside Stone / Robo no ishi (1964)

Ieki's Roadside Stone is the third filmed version of Yuzo Yamamoto's 1937 novel and like the first film it tells the story of young Goichi who is sent to an apprenticeship rather than to “middle school,” which his family can not afford. It makes some significant changes to the earlier version, in part because it …

Love Is in the Green Wind* / Koi wa midori no kaze no naka (1974)

Miyoji Ieki's last movie follows young Junichi through his last spring classes and summer vacation. He is roughly what Americans would call an eighth grader, so we are in the realm of sexual awakening and first love, still trapped in the mind of a childish boy. Junichi (Yusuke Sato) has had that incredible growth spurt …

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 …

Family Game / Kazoku gemu (1983)

The family was the fundamental unit of Japanese society, but by the eighties it was seen by many to have gone adrift. This uneasiness is the subject of The Family Game, a satirical look at the family in the age of the salaryman that is often more revealing than it is funny. From the very …

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 …

Garden of Women / Onna no sono (1954)

Opening with student orators addressing crowds of other students and a march on the college administration, Garden of Women could have come straight out of Berkeley in the sixties, but it is 1953/4 and the students in their neat uniforms are all from a private Japanese girls' college. In a long flashback about events leading …