These directors make independent productions, and in fact are true "indies" - in contrast to earlier independents who in many cases still leaned on the studios. They have learned their trade in documentary films (Kawase, Koreeda), commercials or music video (Iwai), the straight-to-video market (Miike, Mochizuki) or pink films (Nakahara, Zeze). Although there are individual differences, their films are made cheaply, and often very quickly. In this respect, they are also different from the more consciously "high art" independent films made by ATG and others in the late sixties.
While the shift in the 1960s with the New Wave films of Oshima, Shinoda, Yoshida and Imamura meant a move away from "sentimental humanism" to a tougher and more ideological stance, the paradigm shift of the 1990s is a step towards a much harsher (even stomach turning) and more cynical view on life. This is undoubtedly because of the severe economic downturn in this period, but it is also helped by the fact that most directors had learned the trade in often violent and cruel genre films. Thematically, they respond to the issues of unclear identity and uncertain future generated in the nineties by the crash and subsequent long stagnation of the Japanese economy. But this is always on the level of personal issues, the directors of the nineties are generally not interested in the larger themes of politics or history (in strong contrast to the New Wave of the 1960s).
The style of filming is often minimalist and detached, with very long shots and a static camera. This is not so much influence from Ozu, as is sometimes thought, as from the Taiwanese New Wave (Hou Hsia-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang). Their films also often have the character of documentaries.
In the nineties, the studios have dwindled to the Big Three (Toho, Shochiku and Toei) and although they only rarely engage in the risky business of producing new films themselves, they remain important distributors because they own most of the cinemas in Japan. Toho even manages to become the largest owner of multiplexes. The studios continue to use the systems of block-booking and advance ticket sales for their home-made films. The films they produce are made via committees (iinkai), ad-hoc combinations of a studio (for the distribution), TV station, advertising agency, publisher, and trading or other company. The companies which take part in these ad-hoc combinations do so to promote themselves and for tax breaks. They also try to generate sales from spin-offs. None of those concerned is interested in making a good film. In short, the films produced by these committees are glossy but forgettable junk.
Toho has the largest theater chains and is financially most successful with its target of ten billion yen in annual distribution revenues. But the only films it makes itself are the Godzilla movies, which were restarted in 1984. This Heisei Godzilla series, however, is a safe, nostalgic rip-off of the older films, with no new creativity. But the series is successful with old fans, in and outside Japan. In 1995 the last release appears, as later becomes clear for strategic reasons, as Toho wanted to make the way free for the 1998 American Tristar Godzilla film. Toho again revived its money-making monster in 1999 for the "Millennium Series." For the rest, Toho earned money by distributing Itami Juzo's films as well as the anime made by Studio Ghibli. Its own Doraemon series, about a kid and his robot cat, aimed at kids, also continued. Toho also made several film versions of popular TV dramas, most notably the detective drama Odoru Daisosasen ("Bayside Shakedown") with Fuji TV, which became a great box office success.
Shochiku is hard hit when Atsumi Kiyoshi, the actor playing the ever popular Tora-san, dies in 1996. Happily, it had already launched its new series Tsuri Baka Nisshi ("Fishing Fool's Diary") in the last years of the previous decade, and this proves to be a stable income generator also in the 1990s. The studio makes an effort to revitalize its line-up via Okuyama Kazuyoshi, the maverick son of its president, who acts as producer and occasionally also director. Besides making several films which are successful at the box office, such as Hachiko Monogatari and Rampo, Okuyama also sets up Cinema Japanesque for producing and distributing independent films. Although one of its successful projects was Cannes winner The Eel by Imamura Shohei, the project fails to generate new income and in 1998 the Okuyamas are ousted from their positions. An earlier project, to distribute the films of Kitano Takeshi, also failed after a disagreement about Sonatine, which flopped in Japan. In the late nineties, Shochiku severely restructures, and also closes down its Cinema World theme park and Ofuna studios. Financially, Shochiku is in the 1990s the least successful of the Big Three.
Toei is under risk-averse management that tries to stop the gap left by Toei's pride, the yakuza films (which continue being made with other action films as straight-to-video films by Toei Video in the V Cinema series - in the late 1990s released at the rate of two a month), by various overblown costume dramas which mostly flop. The company also shows its conservative political colors in the many war films it continues making, which are increasingly revisionist, such as Pride-Unmei no Toki about the war crimes trial of Tojo Hideki. Its anime subsidiary, already set up in the late 1950s, continues generating good income with stuff like Dragon Ball Z. A much needed cinematic success is Shitsurakuen, a film about a passionate adulterous affair ending in love suicide, which made suicide seem romantic as it was spliced between steamy sex scenes. Financially, Toei did better this decade than Shochiku, but remained far below Toho.
Kadokawa, finally, continues cramming advance tickets down the throats of its partners (which are forcibly bought by, for example, a newspaper company and then given away to loyal customers) to be certain of good financial results by this tricky system. The films it makes are dull and plodding, the directors safe hacks - all just a waste of celluloid. Its greatest success is Ten to Chi to ("Heaven and Earth"), about the warlords Uesugi Kenshin and Takeda Shingen, a film (helmed by Kadokawa Haruki himself) which cost a whopping 5 billion yen and ends with a 30 min. battle between mounted samurai that took 50 days to film. The result was a boring history lesson, leading to the interesting circumstance that a box office success (based on advance ticket sales) actually played to half empty theaters. Another Kadokawa film was Rex, about a little girl and her baby dinosaur - a shameless rip-off of both E.T. and Jurassic Park, which only served to demonstrate how superior the average Hollywood product was to these terrible "mainstream" Japanese films.
Interestingly, the only studio that could take on Hollywood and Disney, was the small upstart producing animated films, Studio Ghibli. Co-founders Takahata Isao and Miyazaki Hayao rejected the Japanese industry custom to create recyclable formulas - every film they made was a stand-alone. Moreover, the money they spent on each film was twice the usual budget (two billion yen), in order to achieve technical and artistic excellence. In fact, with every film they made they again were betting the company - but it paid off, not only in financial, but above all in artistic terms.
Not only in indies, with the directors listed above, but also in anime films we thus find true auteur directors - besides Ghibli's Miyazaki Hayao, these are Ishii Mamoru and Kon Satoshi.
1990
March: A department store fire in Amagasaki, Hyogo, causes 15 fatalities.
April: International Flower Exposition opens in Osaka.
November: The Heisei Emperor is formally enthroned.
This year, there are 1,838 screens; 239 films are produced (among a total shown of 704) and attendance stands at 146,000,000.
Deaths in the film world:
Actress Kogure Michiyo (72), known for her starring role as the headstrong housewife who begins to tire of her dull, earnest husband in The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (1952).
Actress Takamine Mieko (71), who appeard for example in Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941) and The Inugamis (1976).
(May)
"Dreams" (Yume) by Kurosawa Akira is an
omnibus containing eight autonomous episodes based on actual dreams of
the director. Some are threatening (dead soldiers marching through a
tunnel), others are fun (a meeting with Van Gogh, played by Martin
Scorcese) and again others are very poetic (a foxes' wedding, or at the
end of the film, a sort of rural paradise with Ryu Chishu imparting
various nuggets of wisdom). Through it all Kurosawa spreads the
humanistic message that we should be kind to each other, and have a
humble feeling of respect for the unknown. The superb use Kurosawa makes
of Dolby sound in this film has been noted by critics. Cannes Film
Festival. (Warner Bros. / Akira Kurosawa USA)
My Rating: A-
(June)
"A-Ge-Man: Tales of a Golden Geisha" (Ageman) by
Itami Juzo is a comedy about a geisha (Miyamoto Nobuko) who brings luck
to her men ("ageman"), but is rather out of luck herself as the various
males in her life only want to take advantage of her. The film is a
critique of Japanese gender relations, where the men, like spoiled boys,
think they can do anything they want. The (ex-)geisha's most important
relation is with a bank manager (Tsugawa Masahiko), who is a notorious
philanderer, but we also meet a lascivious priest (again driving a
Rolls, as in Ososhiki), an elderly kuromaku (behind the
scenes politician who pulls the strings) and a debauchee who is pushing
to become the next prime minister. Itami directs vicious criticism at
corrupt money politics - in fact the political satire is so fierce that
it overshadows the gender theme (although both are linked) and, about
halfway through, the film stops being funny. (Itami Productions)
My Rating: B+
(August)
Roningai (aka "Street of Masterless Samurai") by Kuroki Kazuko (Makino Masahiro, who directed the original 1928 film as well as another version in 1957, is also credited as a sort of homage) is an enjoyable and well-crafted period film, starring Harada Toshio and Katsu Shintaro, the last one in his final role before his death in 1997. A group of masterless samurai living in a ghetto street near Edo's red light district decides to help the local prostitutes when a group of vigilantes starts killing them off for "moral" reasons. Kuroki deliberately mimics the visual style of silent chambara. A vibrant film, the best period drama made in the 1990s. (Nippon Television Network (NTV) / Shochiku Company / Yamada Right Vision Corporation)
My Rating: A+
(September)
"Boiling Point" (San tai yon ekkusu Jugatsu) by Kitano Takeshi is a cruel black comedy about a baseball player and gas-station attendant (played by a stone-faced and completely clueless Ono Masahiko) who with a friend travels to Okinawa (a bit like in the later Sonatine) to buy a gun in order to revenge his coach, an ex-yakuza, who on the teenager's behalf has gotten into trouble with the local gang. In Okinawa, he falls into the hands of a psychotic gangster (Kitano) who has been kicked out of the mob. Lots of gratuitous violence, sexual aggression, sadism, but also humor: the films starts and ends with Ono in a toilet near the baseball grounds, making the whole film possibly the daydream he had while s(h)itting there. The peculiar title is explained as follows: 3-4x in baseball denotes a "victory snatched from the jaws of defeat at the last bat;" Jugatsu is "October," the month in which the pennant race to clinch the division title in a regular baseball season is held (and in which the film takes place). Kitano's most experimental film, without any music, and in my view, one of his best. (Bandai Visual Company / Shochiku-Fuji Company / Yamada Right Vision)
My Rating: A+
(September)
Roujin Z (lit. "Old Man Z") directed by Horiyuki Kitakubo and written by Otomo Katsuhiro, is a comedy in anime form about technology run amok. An near-vegetative elderly patient is strapped to a special robotic nursing bed, Z-001, which will act as his caregiver instead of a human nurse. But when the loneliness of the old man is communicated to former nurse, she decides to rescue him from the government's experiment. But then the bed detaches itself from its moorings and escapes from the hospital with the man in its grasp. This leads to a wild chase through the streets of Tokyo. It finally appears that the bed is actually a government-designed, experimental weapons robot... This anime focuses on three important issues: health care for the elderly (and lack of nurses), traditional values versus modern technology, and covert plans to re-militarise Japan.
(Tokyo Theaters Co. / The Television Inc. / Movic Co / TV Asahi / Sony Music / Entertainment A.P.P.P.)
(November)
"The Cherry Orchard" (Sakura no Sono) by Nakahara Shun, a former pink film director, is an ensemble drama that enfolds in real time in the two hours before a student performance of Chekhov's play at a private girls' school. Bold and sharply observant, bringing out the emotional tensions in the lives and hearts of the four main characters, who are depicted as individuals, not types. Remade by the same director in 2008. Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film of the Year. (New Century Producers / Suntory)
My Rating: B
1991
April: Tokyo Metropolitan Government moves its offices from Marunouchi to Shinjuku.
May: Shigaraki train disaster causes 42 fatalities.
June: Pyroclastic flow at Mount Unzen results in 43 deaths.
June: Tohoku Shinkansen line is extended from Ueno Station to Tokyo Station.
Deaths in the film world:
Actor Uehara Ken (82), who appeared in such films as Where Chimneys Are Seen (1953);
Director Imai Tadashi (79), a social realist filmmaker, who is best remembered for Until We Meet Again (1950).
(May)
"Rhapsody in August" (Hachigatsu no Rhapsody)
by Kurosawa Akira. An American relative from Hawaii (Clark, played by
Richard Gere) visits his Japanese aunt Kane (Murase Sachiko) in Nagasaki
and hears about the atomic bombing and how it killed her husband. The
film was criticized in the U.S. as it seemed to depict the Japanese
solely as victims and whitewash their aggression which led to the war -
especially in the segment where Clark apologizes to his aunt. This was
mistaken for an apology on behalf of America for dropping the bomb. But
in fact Clark, as a member of Kane's family, is apologizing for the
failure of the American relatives to fully realize the pain the
grandmother has been suffering from her husband's death by the atomic
bomb - quite another matter. The film does not de-historize, but faces
the past by remembering it. It is true that there are many Japanese
revisionist war films made by studios as Toei or Toho, but Kurosawa's
film is entirely different. There is, however, another point of
criticism possible: although there are also very beautiful scenes, the
film sometimes is too much like a history lesson. Cannes Film Festival.
(Feature Film Enterprise II / Kurosawa Production Co. / Shochiku Eiga)
My Rating: A-
(May)
Yumeji by Suzuki Seijun is part of the
"Taisho trilogy" of this director, although it appears with a time lag
of almost ten years after Zigeunerweisen and Kageroza. But
it is a film in the same surrealist style, now about a real-life
painter, Takehisa Yumeji (1884-1934), who mainly painted delicately
emaciated women. He also had several intense but unhappy love affairs.
Instead of making a biopic, however, Suzuki takes us into the head of
the painter and shows the colorful images he found there. Again a very
beautiful and highly stylized film. Stars former rock musician Sawada
Kenji as the painter, which in fact is its only weak point. (Genjiro
Amato Pictures)
My Rating: A-
(September)
"A Scene at the Sea" (Ano natsu, ichiban shizukana umi, lit. "That summer, a most quiet sea") by Kitano Takeshi is a peaceful beach film about a young deaf-mute garbage collector who has found an old surfing plank and practices every day to master the waves, planning to eventually take part in a competition, while his equally deaf-mute girlfriend sits patiently watching him from the beach, smiling and folding his clothes. The surfer is played by Claude Maki, an actual surfing champion and singer (who would also appear in Kitano's Brother), the girlfriend by Oshima Hiroko. This film marks the first collaboration between Kitano and composer Hisaishi Joe, who would compose the soundtracks for all of Kitano's films until Dolls. This was also the first film edited by Kitano himself - as he would do from now on. With its paired-down, visual-based style of storytelling, detached camera (never sentimental, sometimes even cruel in its objectivity) and assured pacing, this is almost a silent film, a very pure example of Kitano's style in a delicate and lyrical mode. Tokyo International Film Festival. (Office Kitano)
My Rating: A+
(September)
"My Sons" (Musuko) by Yamada Yoji takes up where Ozu's Tokyo Monogatari left off. The sons of a widower from Iwate Prefecture are both living in Tokyo, one as a married salaryman with a tiny apartment, the other still single and only doing part time work. There are two plot lines: the family wonders what to do with the old man (in the end he remains alone in his large farm house), and that of the younger son who finally finds a more stable job with a steel company (doing tough, dirty and dangerous work very unpopular with the young) and falls in love with a beautiful girl who is however a deaf mute. This typical shoshimin eiga for the modern age is by far not as good as Yamada's non-Tora-san films from the 1960s and 1970s: both the script and the acting are too emphatic, and several actors seem miscast, most of all Mikuni Rentaro as an Iwate tobacco farmer - he is much too suave. Tanaka Kunio as truck driver is also hamming away in a terrible fashion, showing how limited his acting talents are. In addition, in various monologues Yamada too much drives his criticism of contemporary Japan home, although his meaning is already obvious from the images alone. The Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film of the Year and Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year are not really deserved - any of the above films is better. Tokyo International Film Festival. (Shochiku)
My Rating: B+
1992
March: Nozomi services begins on the Tokaido Shinkansen.
July: Yamagata Shinkansen opens.
October: Emperor Akihito visits the People's Republic of China for the first time.
Deaths in the film world:
Wakayama Tomisaburo (62), actor in mainly chambara and period films, best known for his role as Ogami Itto in the Lone Wolf and Cub movie series;
Gosha Hideo (63), director of mainly chambara films as Goyokin and Hitokiri (both 1969).
(January)
"Sumo Do, Sumo Don't" (Shiko funjatta) by Suo
Masayuki. An amusing but rather predictable tale about a young man
forced to participate in his university’s lamentably bad sumo wrestling
team for an important tournament. Of course, he has never before taken
part in sumo... the members of the unusal team, which also includes a
foreign student, gradually develop love and respect for the traditional
sport. Became a box office success thanks to the presence of Motoki
Masahiro, a popular idol singer (also known for his later role in Departures). The Japanese title refers to the stamping in the ring by sumo wrestlers as a warm-up (shiko wo fumu).
Won both the Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film of the Year and the Japan
Academy Prize for Picture of the Year. (Cabin Company Ltd. / Daiei)
My Rating: A
(January)
"Tokyo Decadence" (Topazu) is a cultish pink film written and directed by author Murakami Ryu (known for such violent and erotic novels as Almost Transparent Blue and Coinlocker Babies, as well as the story on which Miike Takashi based Audition).
This was his fourth endeavor as director. The film stars Nikaido Miho
as a high-class prostitute called Ai, catering to perverted businessmen
who want to engage in various forms of SM and bondage - some of which
are rather dangerous. Ai also is looking for a former lover and comes
under the influence of a fortune teller, who is surprisingly played by
one of Japan's internationally most famous contemporary artists, Kusama
Yayoi. The score is by Sakamoto Ryuichi. Despite this impeccable
pedigree, the film is rather repellent - it is painful to watch the
indignities Ai has to undergo and how that slowly but inevitably leads
to her mental breakdown. (Cinemabrain / Japan Video Distribution (JVD)
Co. Ltd. / Melsat Inc.)
My Rating: B+
(February)
Tetsuo II: Body Hammer by Tsukamoto Shinya is not a sequel of Tetsuo, but a new fantasy based on the same theme of flesh morphing into machine (a theme inspired by the inhumanity of life in the metropolis). This version is in color (mostly hues of blue, gray and brown) and less hectic. A mild-mannered salaryman morphs into a sort of Terminator (a canon grows out of his breast) when his young son is kidnapped by a group of shaven-headed punks. The punks belong to a cult whose leader wants to use the salaryman for a guinea pig experiment, but things get soon out of hand. Fantasporto Film Festival, Portugal. (Kaijyu Theater / Toshiba EMI)
My Rating: A
(February)
"The Operating Room" (Gekashitsu), a fifty-minute film by famous Kabuki onnagata Bando Tamasaburo, based on a Shinpa story by Izumi Kyoka, became a popular success. The story, set in the Meiji period, tells about the forbidden passion of a married woman (Yoshinaga Sayuri) for a dashing young surgeon. Filmed as a dream, in soft focus. The next year Bando Tamasaburo - whose first film this was - made a second one, with the same actress, this time based on a story by Nagai Kafu about a prostitute, called Yume no Onna ("Yearning"). Although it would probably have been too campy, it is a pity Bando himself didn't play in these films - he could have revived the tradition of using onnagata instead of actresses in early Japanese films! (Asahi National Broadcasting Company / Genjiro Arato Pictures)
My Rating: B+
(May)
"The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion" (Minbo no onna) by Itami Juzo features the director's wife Miyamoto Nobuko as a lawyer who helps businesses (in this case, a hotel) harassed by the yakuza. "Minbo" is the contraction of a legal term for "gangsters ripping off the public via various scams." The film starts funny enough, but soon Itami falls into a sort of teaching mode of "how to deal with the yakuza." The end of the film is therefore a foregone conclusion before we are even halfway through. After the freshness and inventiveness of Ososhiki and Tampopo, it seems that Itami's imagination is exhausted here. (Itami Films)
My Rating: B+
(July)
"Porco Rosso" (Kurenai no buta) by Miyazaki Hayao shows the director's passion for airplanes and other flying machines. The sweeping aerial scenes are dazzling, the airplane designs finely detailed. The story is set on the Adriatic coast in Italy, where an aviator who has turned into a pig (out of guilt for the fact that many of his comrades died in WWI), continues to patrol the skies and rid the land of the menace of pirates. Having seen the horrors of war, he will not allow the innocent to be oppressed. He flies into action when the pirates kidnap a boatload of little girls, and finally has to fight a brazen American aviator who has taken the side of the enemy. (Japan Airlines / Nibariki, Nippon Television Network / Studio Ghibli)
My Rating: A
1993
July: G7 summit is held in Tokyo.
July: The Yokohama Landmark Tower, Japan's tallest building until the opening of the Abeno Harukas skyscraper, is completed.
Deaths in the film world:
Ryu Chishu (age 88) of Ozu and Tora-san fame dies this year.
Makino Masahiro (age 85), the director of more than 260 films, mainly in the chanbara and yakuza genres.
Honda Ishiro (age 81), famous for his kaiju and tokusatsu films, including several entries in the Godzilla franchise.
(March)
In "Moving" (Ohikkoshi) by Somai Shinji a sharp twelve-year old girl, Renko (a wonderful performance by amateur Tabata Tomoko), is confused by the divorce of her parents (very modern parents for Japan in 1993, as both are working). She engages in various schemes to bring her parents together again, but eventually has to accept the inevitable. In the meantime, she quickly grows up and leaves her childhood behind her. A beautiful film, shot in a documentary style on location in Kyoto. (Yomiuri Television)
My Rating: B+
(April)
"Madadayo: Not yet" by Kurosawa Akira is based on the life of the (in the West almost unknown) cult writer Uchida Hyakken (1890-1971; Hyakken for example wrote the story Zigeunerweisen on which Suzuki Seijun's film was based), which Kurosawa follows from the spring of 1943 when Hyakken leaves his teaching position to concentrate on his writing to 1962 when he celebrates his 75th birthday (the script is based on episodes from Hyakken's own writings). The film concentrates on the relation Hyakken had with his students - throughout the years, they continue having annual reunions. Kurosawa depicts an ideal situation where sensei and disciples fully trust and respect each other - a thing very much of the past in contemporary Japan. The title refers to the children's game of hide-and-seek, where the seeker asks "Madada kai" (Are you ready) and either gets the answer "Madada yo" (Not yet) or "Mo ii yo" (Yes, I'm ready). On a higher level, this refers to the game of hide-and-seek the elderly Hyakken plays with Death - the other theme of the film is the evanescence of life. By the way, Hyakken's love of cats is also important in the film, a feeling he had in common with many other Japanese writers. (Dentsu Music and Entertainment / Daiei Motion Picture Company / Kurosawa Production Co.)
My Rating: B+
(May)
In Sonatine by Kitano Takeshi a
world-weary gangster (played by the director) is dispatched to
Okinawa with a band of his killers to help out a friendly gang in a turf
war with rivals. Kitano's first yakuza film, but a strange one as all
traditional elements are skipped. As it turns out that no assistance is
actually needed in the gang war, what is left is a sort of Waiting for Godot
on the balmy southern beach, kidding around with childish games and a
local girl, while waiting for instructions from home. The central
character is completely nihilistic and emotionally drained, suffering
from a strong death wish long before he commits suicide in the last reel
- just look at his silly, empty grin when he plays Russian roulette. As
usual in Kitano's films, violence flashes up in daily life like a
lightning bolt, out of the blue. An existential meditation on death and
violence, imbued with a heavy sense of the futility of everything, as
many Japanese films at the end of the millennium. Flopped at the box
office, as the film was too nihilistic for the average Japanese. Cannes
Film Festival. (Bandai Visual / Shochiku)
My Rating: A+
(November)
A Class to Remember (Gakko) is a drama about teachers and students at a night school in Tokyo's shitamachi (downtown area) - a project by Yamada Yoji that was 15 years in the making. Nishida Toshiyuki plays Kuroi sensei, a conscientious and dedicated teacher, who feels strong responsibility towards his students and is also full of warm human feelings. He teaches night school where the rejects of the Japanese educational system come to learn what they missed when they were younger - they are the outcasts of Japanese credential-obsessed society, doomed to a life on the fringe: an elder Korean woman running a yakiniku restaurant, a young woman who is former paint-thinner addict, a middle class girl who refused to attend junior high school in the past, a laborer who has never learned to read and write, a Chinese man who came to Japan with a Japanese war-orphan mother, etc.). The stories of these students are told in individual sketches. Unfortunately, all their troubles are presented in an utterly sentimental way, with lots of crying and whining (point zero is reached during a class discussion about happiness, when all students declare sniffing and wailing that there greatest happiness is night class with their present teacher) - this film was one of the most terrible tearjerkers I have ever seen. Yamada should have kept himself more in check, but the public lapped it up - Yamada has not for nothing been the most popular director among "average Japanese" for the last 40 years. (Shochiku)
My Rating: A
1994
April: The Shinjuku Park Tower, designed by Kenzo Tange and featured in the film Lost in Translation, is completed.
April: An Airbus of China Airlines crashes while landing in Nagoya, killing 264.
June: Members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult commit the first sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, killing 8 and injuring 200.
August: While riding a moped, Kitano Takeshi is involved in a collision with a car in Shinjuku and is seriously injured.
September: Kansai International Airport in Osaka opens. All international services are transferred from Itami to Kansai.
October: Oe Kenzaburo receives the Nobel Prize in Literature.
For the first time in 18 years, the number of movie screens increases due to the proliferation of multiplexes.
Deaths in the film world:
Tono Eijiro (86), actor who appeared in 250 films, including by Kurosawa (Seven Samurai, Yojimbo) and Ozu (Tokyo Story, An Autumn Afternoon); he also was the title character in the long-running television jidaigeki series Mito Komon;
and actress Otowa Nobuko (70), the wife of director Shindo Kaneto, who appeard in many of Shindo's films as Children of Hiroshima (1952), The Naked Island (1960), Onibaba (1964), Kuroneko (1968), and A Last Note (1995).
(May)
"The Mystery of Rampo" (Ranpo) by Mayazumi Rintaro / Okuyama Kazuyoshi. Edogawa Ranpo continues to fascinate the Japanese and 1994 was the centennial of his birth. As also Shochiku had turned 100 (when counting from its Kabuki activities, which were 25 years older than its cinematic endeavors), producer Okuyama Kazuyoshi decided to celebrate both memorials in style with a big Ranpo film. Edogawa Ranpo is played by Takenaka Naoto, but this is not a straight biopic. With a media mix of special effects, animation, wild imagery and period drama, the film tries no less than to plumb the mind of Ranpo, at a time he was battling the censorship of the state. As Okuyama was not satisfied with director Mayazumi's rather sedate version, he reshot 70% of the film himself to make it into the cinematic event he had in mind. Although both versions were released, the unrestrained visual extravaganza of Okuyama has won the day. A fitting homage to a great author. By the way, in this centennial year, more Ranpo films would be made, such as a new adaptation of Yaneura no sanposha by Jissoji Akio which had already been done by Tanaka Noboru in the eighties. Cannes Film Festival. (Daiwa Building / Daiwa Securities Group / Obayashi Corporation / Orix / Shochiku / Team Okuyama)
My Rating: A+
(July)
Pom Poko (Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko, lit. "Heisei-era Raccoon Dog War Ponpoko"), an anime feature film by Takahata Isao of Study Ghibli, is an ecological story of how a group of tanuki
(raccoon dogs) struggle to prevent their virgin forest home from being
destroyed by the urban development of a "New Town" (inspired by
real-life construction of a suburb in the Tama Hills west of Tokyo in
the 1960s). They use their magical shape-shifting powers to oppose the
human encroachment, faking ghostly hauntings to scare away the
construction workers. They even hold a ghostly parade, but the effect is
lost when a local theme park claims credit for that as a form of
promotion. In the end, the tanuki have to admit defeat and they scatter among the human race. The phrase "Pom Poko" in the title refers to the sound tanuki make when drumming on their bellies. Pom Poko
becomes the number one Japanese film on the domestic market in 1994,
earning ¥2.63 billion in distribution income, and grossing ¥4.47 billion
in total box office revenue. The film wins Best Animation Film at the
49th Mainichi Film Awards. (Tokuma Shoten / Nippon Television Network /
Hakuhodo / distributed by Toho).
My Rating: A
(October)
In Crest of Betrayal (Chushingura Gaiden Yotsuya Kaidan), a period film made for the commemoration of the Shochiku Centennial, Fukusaku Kinji mixes two famous stories: that of the revenge of the 47 ronin (Chushingura) and the ghost story of Yotsuya. The first story (the true-life tale of 47 samurai warriors secretly banding together to assassinate the official responsible for the death of their master) has of course been countless times filmed, also by Fukasaku himself in the 1970s, in The Fall of Ako Castle (Ako-jo Danzetsu, 1978). Of the second story (about the revenge of a disfigured female ghost on her lover, who had poisoned her in order to marry a woman of better standing) exist such famous versions as Nakagawa Nobuo's 1959 Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan. Fukasaku links the stories via the character of Tamiya Iemon, the "48th samurai" and also the man who has poisoned his lover to rise on the social ladder. Fukasaku describes a Japan that resembles that of the early 1990s: a once prosperous economy in decline, and overall shifting morals. Beautifully photographed with striking, dreamlike images, this period film shows us Fukasaku Kinji in great form.
My Rating: A
(November)
After the Japanese box office failure of Sonatine, Kitano Takeshi made Getting Any (Minna yatteruka?), a compilation of comedy sketches which starts with a pleasant half-wit who dreams of having car sex and ends with him where he belongs: (literally) on a big shit heap. This was not the way to win back viewers in Japan – the film met mostly silence and misunderstanding, and it was at first sight also not a way to remain popular at international film festivals. But the movie is in fact quite interesting and fits Kitano's biography like a glove. Kitano started out as manzai comedian in the 1970s, parts of a duo called the Two Beats, with in-your-face-jokes that were often cruel and politically incorrect. In the 1980s Kitano also set up his own group of young manzai comedians whom he trained. So manzai was very much part of his life, and in this film manzai-type comedy forms not only the inspiration, but also the subject – in the sense that even manzai is spoofed. The main character is played by Dankan, one of Kitano’s manzai disciples. Note the deadpan face which is typical. Via small sketches that could be part of a Monty Python film, Dankan proceeds from car sex to being a film star, which gives Kitano the opportunity to insert spoofs of samurai movies (Zatoichi, which he would later remake), yakuza movies (ninkyo movies, another genre that would become very close to his heart) and pink films, to end with Toho monster movies. Finally (after the end credits!), the dangerous fly is spliced on Tokyo Tower. To emphasize Kitano’s dual personality, the film is announced as “the fifth film by Kitano Takeshi” and “the first film by Beat Takeshi” (using his manzai name – this is also his television name, but this film has nothing to do with Kitano’s TV work). On a cultural note, the film ironically demonstrates the totally wrong ideas some Japanese young men can have about women. The film was premiered at the London Film Festival. (Office Kitano)
My Rating: A
[Reference works used: Currents In Japanese Cinema by Tadao Sato (Tokyo, 1987); The Japanese Film: Art and Industry by Joseph L. Anderson and Donald Richie (reprint Tokyo, 1983); A Hundred Years of Japanese Film by Donald Richie (Tokyo, 2001); Japanese Film Directors by Audrie Bock (Tokyo, 1985); A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors by Alexander Jacoby (Berkeley, 2008); A New History of Japanese Cinema by Isolde Standish (New York, 2005); The Japanese Period Film by S.A. Thornton (Jefferson & London, 2008); Eros plus Massacre, An Introduction to the Japanese New Wave Cinema by David Desser (Bloomington and Indianopolis, 1988); Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema by David Bordwell (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1988); Kurosawa: Film Studies and Japanese Cinema by Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto (Duke University Press: Durham, 2000); The Waves at Genji's Door by Joan Mellen (Pantheon Books: New York, 1976); Japanese Classical Theatre in Film by Keiko I. Macdonald (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1994); From Book to Screen by Keiko I. Macdonald (M.E. Sharpe: New York and London, 2000); Reading a Japanese Film by Keiko I. Macdonald (University of Hawai'i Press: Honolulu, 2006); Behind the Pink Curtain, A Complete History of Japanese Sex Cinema, by Jasper Sharp (Fab Press: Godalming, 2008); Contemporary Japanese Film by Mark Schilling (Weatherhill: New York and Tokyo, 1999); The Midnight Eye Guide to New Japanese Film by Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp (Stone Bridge Press: Berkeley, 2005); Kitano Takeshi by Aaron Gerow (British Film Institute: London, 2007); Iron Man: the Cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto by Tom Mes (Fab Press: Godalming, 2005); Agitator: The Cinema of Takashi Miike by Jasper Sharp (Fab Press: Godalming, 2003); Nihon Eigashi by Sato Tadao (Iwanami Shoten: Tokyo, 2008, 4 vols.); Nihon Eigashi 110-nen by Yomota Inuhiko (Shueisha; Tokyo, 2014). All images are linked from Wikipedia.]
History of Japanese Film by Year