But that is not all: also indies and serious films in this period are often limited, due to insufficient depth, the lack of a good narrative, and dearth of social vision; there are also problems with editing and cinematography, and in general too little critical stance. We could say that the creative wave that came up in the 1990s ("The New Wave of the Nineties") peaked before its time and that some directors who were part of the Wave didn't completely fulfill their high expectations.
Japanese cinema is in the grip of risk avoidance, not only the mainstream (which always plays on safe and follows Hollywood-type investment models), but also indies and other independent films. Subjects are based on already popular manga, television drama, trendy novels and older films, and TV celebrities (who are not always good actors) are used as protagonists to get fans into the theater. The strange circumstance, that one after another great classical films (that in their original form are widely available on DVD) are being remade, is a good indication of the regrettable lack of creativity that plagues Japanese cinema today.
But despite all this, Japanese cinema remains interesting as a window on Japanese culture and society.
2010
January – A gunman kills three people at a bar in Habikino before turning the gun on himself.
January – Japan Airlines files for bankruptcy protection.
Kinema Junpo Award: Dear Doctor
Japan Academy Film Prize for Picture of the Year: Confessions
Deaths in the film world:
Anime film director Kon Satoshi dies at age 46. Actress Takamine Hideko dies at age 86. The actors Ikebe Ryo and Kobayashi Keiju die at respectively the ages of 92 and 86.
(January)
About Her Brother (Ototo) by Yamada Yoji was advertised as a tribute to the then 81-year old Ichikawa Kon, who in 1960 made a famous film of the same title. It is not a remake so much as meant to be an homage to the veteran director. Yamada only borrows the idea of a sister covering for the mistakes of her rowdy brother, in fact the situation he had already borrowed in his Otoko wa tsurai yo films. So this is rather a "remake" of Tora-san, but unfortunately Shofukutei Tsurube (a popular rakugo artist and TV personality, who did a better job in Dear Doctor) is no Atsumi Kiyoshi and the film gets bogged down in sentimentality and tears (the rowdy brother has to die a lonely death), despite the efforts of Yoshinaga Sayuri as the sister and Aoi Yu as her daughter.
(February)
Caterpillar by Wakamatsu Koji is an even fiercer anti-war statement, based on a story by Edogawa Ranpo that was also filmed in Rampo Noir (2005), of a war veteran (Kasuya Keigo) who is just a torso and a battered head, like a caterpillar. He can see, but not hear or talk. The ugly lump of flesh of the medal-decorated war hero is considered as a military god by the village from which new men are constantly leaving for the killing fields, until only women, children and the elderly are left behind. But our amputee can only eat, sleep and have sex (he still functions below the waist, although his wife has to do all the work). The wife (Terashima Shinobu in a Berlin Silver Bear winning performance) first is shocked, then decides to stand by her man and care for him, but gradually realizes that she also can exploit her husband's condition and so take revenge on him for his brutish behavior towards her in the past. To pester him, she starts pulling him in a cart through the village, where everyone has to pay their respects to the "war god"... Berlin International Film Festival.
(February)
Sweet Little Lies by Yazaki Hitoshi (of Strawberry Cakes fame), based on the novel by Ekuni Kaori, is the quiet but clinical story of the disintegration of a marriage, after just three years. Nakatani Miki plays a housewife who designs teddy bears as her hobby and Omori Nao is her IT-employed husband, who locks himself all his free time in his hobby room playing video games. Their emotional distance is so large that they communicate by mobile telephone even in their small apartment. Although they find it convenient to be married, there is no emotion, let alone love, between them and mentally they have little in common. So not surprisingly, when both in turn are aggressively approached by potential adultery partners, they swallow the bait of seduction: the wife with a musician, an arty type (Kobayashi Juichi) she meets in her teddy bear gallery, and the husband with a former schoolmate he sees at a class reunion (Ikewaki Chizuru). We then follow the parallel affairs and the games both play to keep up the deception. The end, however, is a surprise, because both decide to "return home" again... Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival.
(May)
Kitano Takeshi makes The Outrage, a conventional yakuza flick as they are made by the dozen for the straight-to-video market in Japan. It was clearly aimed at a segment of his foreign audience that craved more violent yakuza films from him, but all he comes up with is a dull and tired story. On top of that, we by now have had enough of Kitano's signature sudden bursts of violence, with chopsticks rammed into eyes or ears. After three autobiographical films which became increasingly trivial, Kitano apparently unashamedly tried to go for the foreign box office. As they liked it in Cannes, Kitano even made a sequel, Beyond Outrage (2012), that gives addicts to cheap violence more of the same (and is marginally better). Instead of "Glory to the Filmmaker," this should be called "The End of a Filmmaker." Kitano Takeshi made some excellent films in the 1990s, starting with Violent Cop, and leading to such highlights as Sonatine and Hana-Bi, with in between more peaceful films as A Scene at the Sea and Kids Return, but in the new century seems to have completely lost his way, despite his one-off commercial success with Zatoichi. Cannes Film Festival,
(May)
Haru's Journey, lit. "Journey with Haru" (Haru to no tabi) by Kobayashi Masahiro is a road movie in which a young woman, Haru (Tokunaga Eri), living in Mashike, Hokkaido, as a teacher, has just seen her school closed down due to the decline in population. She wants to find work in Tokyo, but these last five years she has been taking care of her widowed grandfather, Tadao (Nakadai Tatsuya), an embittered and angry man who has difficulty walking. They start a trip by train to find a family member who is willing to take grandfather in so that Haru can go to Tokyo. But Tadao has not made things easy as his past egoistic behavior has rather estranged him from his brothers and sister, as well as from his son (Haru's father - who in his turn has discarded Haru). This humanistic film is supported by an excellent cast: Otaki Hideji and Sugai Kin as Tadao's eldest brother and his wife; Tanaka Yuko as the wife of the second brother; Awashima Chikage as the sister who operates a ryokan in Naruko (Miyagi); Emoto Akira and Miho Jun as the younger brother and his wife; and Kagawa Teruyuki as Tadao's son / father of Haru. The film is not only the story of an estranged family, it is also the story of how the uneasy relationship between Haru and her grandfather softens and grows, so much that she finally even decides to return to Hokkaido with him.
(June)
Confessions (Kokuhaku) by Nakashima Tetsuya is a safe journeyman product, based on a popular thriller by Minato Kanae. Like the novel, the film is hopelessly unrealistic, with countless plot holes, but I bring it up here for the insight it offers into Japanese society. The little daughter of a female teacher (Matsu Takako) has been killed by two underage pupils in her class. As the law can't do much, she decides to take revenge by herself and laces the school milk of the two kids with the AIDS virus (conveniently, her boyfriend has AIDS). Although neither of them becomes ill, as a result one boy turns into a hikikomori obsessed with avoiding contact with others so as not to infect them; he eventually kills his mother. The other boy still comes to school but is bullied by the rest of the class as an AIDS victim (the film here shows the sad workings of Japanese society where victims are sometimes bullied). This boy is an inventor (he also had invented the electrical shock purse that killed - or at least stunned - the little girl) and now makes a bomb with which he is planning to blow up himself including the school at the graduation ceremony. The teacher has read his webpage on which he announces this plan (!) and removed the bomb. Instead, she has put it in the university building where the boy's mother works (he hankers after his mother who has discarded him), so when the boy activates the bomb with his mobile phone, he blows up his own mother. The end. The biggest plot hole is of course that there seems to be no police to arrest a teacher who has tried to kill two of her own pupils. And by re-planting the bomb, she becomes a mass-murderer herself - but such niceties are never addressed. The reason I bring up this film is that it was so popular in Japan it was even sent in officially to the Academy Awards - although it is unimaginable that a film about a teacher killing her own pupils would ever win an Oscar. But the movie aptly reveals the feelings of revenge against criminal youths in Japan.
(July)
Family X by Yoshida Koki is a story about alienation and the breakup of a family. A mother on the verge of a breakdown (Minami Kaho), her husband who is only nervous about losing his work (Taguchi Tomorowo) and their uncommunicative son and "freeter" (Kaku Tomohiro) live "together apart." That there is little communication between them is underlined by the fact that they are almost never filmed together. A simple but heart-rending family tragedy. PIA Film Festival.
(September)
The best film of the year is Villain (Akunin) by Lee Sang-Il. Although his Hula Girls showed the potential birth of a safe hack, Lee makes much good in this noir thriller based on an interesting novel by Yoshida Shuichi. It is a story about alienated and lonely young people who meet via dating sites. One young woman (Mitsushima Hikari) who uses these sites to earn money from the men she meets and who brags to her friends about her success in love, meets her destiny on a lonely road. The young man (an unresponsive Tsumabuki Satoshi, but in a way that fits his role) who inadvertent kills her (in fact, it is more like manslaughter) soon after meets the woman of his dreams (a very good Fukatsu Eri), and she the man of her dreams, but it is too late... He looks like a sociopath with his bleached hair, but is in fact a tragic anti-hero. We also have a grandmother (Kirin Kiki) who is cheated out of her savings by gangsters and a father (Emoto Akira) who wants to physically avenge the death of his daughter. An impressive exploration of society's ills. The film earned a much deserved Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film in 2011.
My Rating: A+
(September)
Cold Fish (Tsumetai Nettaigyo) by Sono Shion is a return to extreme violence and gore by this provocative director in a film about bullying - not at school but in society. The weak and unsuccessful fish store owner Shamoto (Mitsuru Kukikochi), who is despised by his slutty (second) wife (Kagurazaka Megumi) and rebellious daughter, is sucked up into the orbit of the powerful and unscrupulous Murata (a tour de force performance by Denden). Of course, Murata's fish store Amazon Gold is many times larger than Shamoto's and he employs sexy girls to entice customers. As one of these, Murata also hires Shamoto's disobedient daughter and next seduces his wife. He also does other things: when someone gets in his way, Murata kills him and then cuts up the body and incinerates the parts - something Shamoto is forced to participate in. The first to go is Murata's business partner, for Shamoto will take the place of the poor man - after helping cut up his body in a church. During this all, Shamoto is bullied by the stronger and more successful entrepreneur and his wife, who is his partner in crime (Kurosawa Asuka). In the end something snaps in him, and then he takes a terrible revenge on Murata and all others who have used him as a doormat... showing that the bullied do not become heroes, but are just as mean and vile as their oppressors, as they can only imitate them. There is not inconsiderable gore, but it is all cartoonish. This is not a horror movie, but a (very) black comedy about social breakdown. Venice Film Festival.
(September)
A rather unnecessary movie is Thirteen Assassins (Jusannin no shikyaku) by Miike Takashi. What is the use of remaking excellent classical films? Doesn't this stem purely from a lack of creativity? The original film by Kudo Eiichi simply can't be improved upon, and Miike's almost shot-by-shot remake is just another piece of evidence of the sad lack of ideas in Japanese cinema in the second decade of the 21st century. Premiere at Venice Film festival.
(September)
Here Comes the Bride, My Mother! (Okan no yomeiri) by woman director Oh Mipo starts out in a fresh way. A mother (Otake Shibobu) one day comes home and introduces a young guy with bleached hair (Kiritani Kenta) as "the bridegroom" to the daughter in her twenties with whom she lives together (Miyazaki Aoi) - not a man for her daughter, but for herself. This causes the daughter to start sulking, despite the efforts of the groom to ingratiate himself by being friendly to her. So the first part of the film consists of quiet comedy, before entering into darker territory: Tsukiko, the daughter, is in fact sitting at home - the only thing she does outside is walking the dog - like a hikikomori because she was stalked and harassed by a male colleague in the office where she used to work. Then we get a plot twist which unfortunately spoils the film by dousing it in melodrama: the mother is revealed as having a terminal illness and her boyfriend who knew this is just marrying her to make her last days happy... Why does the director need such a trashy plot twist to justify the second marriage to a much younger man of the mother, as if women in their forties have no right to make new choices in their lives? A disappointment, despite the setting in Kyoto along the Keihan line.
(September)
Norwegian Wood (Noruwei no mori) by Vietnamese/French director Ahn Hung Tran, based on the popular novel by Murakami Haruki, is beautifully filmed (thanks to the richly saturated images of cinematographer Pin Bing Lee), but hampered by the simplistic and sentimental love story that lies at its basis. It is about sub-twenties who are suffering from sexual and emotional angst. Kizuki commits suicide for the silly reason that he is unable to perform the act with his girlfriend Naoko. Naoko looses her mental stability because she blames herself for this and is put away in a mental hospital; she will finally commit suicide as well. Toru, Kizuki's best friend, is in love with Naoko, who still loves Kizuki, but he also meets the forward Midori (the only person who seems to be in charge of herself in this film) and, typically indecisive, finds himself shuttling between both of them. Despite the good performances (especially Kikuchi Rinko of Babel-fame as Naoko), this is mainly a juvenile tearjerker lacking the humor of the original novel. Venice Film Festival.
(October)
"Abraxis" (Aburakurasu no Matsuri) by Kato Naoki is wonderful film about Jonen, a young Buddhist priest and family man - priests are allowed to marry in Japan - who used to be a rock guitarist (played by actual rocker Suneohair). As he is struggling with inner doubts and demons, his spiritual mentor suggests that he once more holds a concert. Jonen decides to reunite for that concert with his old band, but instead of going to Tokyo, selects the grounds of his temple in a quiet coastal town in Fukushima for the concert (the film was made just before the earthquake and tsunami). He has posters made and puts these up himself all over the town. Suneohair gives a sensitive portrayal of Jonen and shows off his guitar playing in a celebration of non-conformity. An excellent feature film, showing the small happenings of daily life, based on a novel by Zen priest / author Genyu Sokyu. Note the sake that Jonen drinks in the film: Daishichi!
(October)
How many 98 year old directors still make films (how many people reach that age)? Shindo Kaneto (in what would be his last film) has made an incisive anti-war film, Postcard (Ichimai no hagaki), which earned a belated Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film in 2012. It is the tragedy of a peasant women who looses first one, then a second husband and her parents in law to the folly of war. With excellent performances by Otake Shinobu and Toyokawa Etsushi. A warning for our times... Tokyo International Film Festival.
(October)
Heaven's Story by Zeze Takahisa is a film full of anger, frustration and feelings of revenge - and it lasts four and a half hours, divided into nine episodes. The film follows family members of murder victims and shows how their lives were changed by these terrible events; the film also shows in Babel-like fashion, how the lives of a dozen people intersect over a period of ten years, connected as they are by murder and loss. Revenge will of course create new painful reverberations in this net of connections. The film is as dark as previous work by this initial pink film director, such as Raigyo. A massive monster of film that does not wholly succeed in its high aims, but is still an interesting experiment, showing that there is at least one director left who dares to take risks.
(October)
Into the White Night (Byakuyako) by Fukagawa Yoshihiro is a crime story based on a popular novel by Higashino Keigo. It is a well-made film, shot in a dark and minor mode, focusing on character development and therefore justifiably taking its time. It shows how the murder of their parents by two children (one of them abused and mistreated by both victims) follows the main characters throughout their lives, leading again and again to new crimes. It also shows the utter and altruistic devotion of a boy and young man to the beautiful girl he once saved, and whom he keeps helping, even onto his own death. His love is never requited and is of a kind you'll only find in Japanese culture. The film also shows how different the characters of both protagonists are, he (Kora Kengo) totally unselfish, but cruel on her behalf, she (Horikita Maki) from the start calculating, using the people around her for her own purposes and not allowing anyone to cross her. And, for more than two decades, we also follow the police officer (Funakoshi Eiichiro) who ultimately discovers the truth. The crime is initially shelved, but he keeps doggedly coming back to it and gradually unravels the web of lies, even after he has already been pensioned off. Tokyo International Film Festival.
2011
February: The Japan Sumo Association cancels the Spring Tournament because of a match fixing scandal, the first time the event has been canceled since 1946.
March: Great East Japan Earthquake. A 9.0-magnitude earthquake hits offshore of Japan's Miyagi prefecture, resulting in tsunami waves as high as 10 meter, causing an accident at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. 15,899 deaths, 6,157 injured, 2,529 people missing.
Kinema Junpo Award: Villain
Japan Academy Film Prize for Picture of the Year: Rebirth
Deaths in the film world:
The actor Harada Yoshio dies at age 71.
(May)
"Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai" (Ichi Mei) by
Miike Takashi again leaves one with the big question: why try to remake
one of the undisputed masterpieces of Japanese cinema that everyone can
find on DVD (Harakiri by Kobayashi Masaki)? This is truly an
excess of the postmodern remake bubble and evidence that many film
makers in Japan have no original ideas anymore. It is a flat and
ineffective version (who cares for 3D?), with the annoying overuse of
CGI many contemporary films suffer from. The best that be can said is
that this crappy remake will hopefully inspire some viewers to seek out
the 1962 original - which is truly one of the great films of Japanese
cinema. Premiere at Cannes Film festival,
(June)
"I Wish" (Kiseki) by Koreeda Hirokazu is a joyful film about two brothers, small boys, who have been separated because of the divorce of their parents: Koichi lives with his mother in Kagoshima and Ryunosuke with his father in Fukuoka. Their greatest ambition is to reunite their estranged parents. Then they hear the Shinkansen route is being extended from Hakata to Kagoshima. This will not only bring them closer together, but they also believe that a miracle will occur when two Shinkansen trains pass each other in opposite directions. While not reaching the dizzying heights of Still Walking, this is a delightful film with excellent performances.
(June)
"Tokyo Park" (Tokyo Koen) by Aoyama Shinji, the director who has previously given us Eureka and Sad Vacation, is a youth film about a boy whose hobby is photography and who likes to take stealthy pics of women in parks. This setting seems a bit like Antonioni's mysterious Blow Up, but Aoyama only tells a dull tale about a man asking the youth to photo-stalk a woman (apparently his wife) and her kid through Tokyo's parks. The mystery is too thin to keep viewers interested for a full two and a half hours; the rest of the film is filled with rather boring discussions the boy has with his dead room mate (yes, he has a problem coming to terms with his grief), with his girl friend, a gay barman and with his stepsister who is secretly in love with him. The acting is bad - the protagonist (Miura Haruma) is played totally unconvincing - and the cinematography is as humdrum as your daily TV show.
(June)
Hiroku Ryuichi makes a film that is inferior to his best ones as Vibrator and It's Only Talk. "The Egoists" (Keibetsu, lit. "Contempt"), although based on a novel by Nakagami Kenji, one of Japan's greatest postwar authors, is a sort of "pink" melodrama that flounders due to the incredibly mawkish plot. Moreover, one of the protagonists, Kora Kengo, sports such a weird colored hairstyle that is impossible to take him serious. He plays a gambler (originally the scion of an important local family who has gone astray) who has to flee Tokyo because of his debts. He takes his pole-dancing girlfriend with him (Suzuki Anne), and returns to his hometown (Shingu in the novel), hoping to lead a normal life. That is difficult as the locals look down upon them (the "contempt" of the title) and his family rejects his girlfriend as a suitable marriage partner. Their hot love affair therefore finally descends into self-loathing and ennui. Of course his past also catches up with him and in a long scene that takes its cue from Godard's Breathless, he is killed in the local deserted shotengai. A sentimental love story, played out on the template of doom, without redeeming elements.
(September)
Themis (Himizu) by Sono Shion is a brutally violent story based on a cruel manga, to which he has added a background story borrowed rather opportunistically from the 3.11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, which happened earlier in the year. In other words, this is not a film about the disaster and its human tragedy, but we have a director who (mis-)uses the disaster to make his film more topical. Accidentally, the movie itself is also a total disaster: caricatures of people are killing each other, fighting each other, shouting at each other, and continually hyperventilating. Every inch of the film is blown up. All the usual Sono Shion elements are there, but - besides that we are getting tired of even more weird sects or scenes of meaningless violence - this time it doesn't work. (In his Kibo no kuni ("Land of Hope") of 2012 Sono tries a more serious approach to the Fukushima disaster, but that later attempt plays out like an overblown TV drama and was selected as the worst film of the year 2012 by Eiga Geijutsu). Premiere at Venice Film Festival.
2012
April: In Kyoto, a car crashes into a pole and hits multiple pedestrians, resulting in eight dead (including the driver) and twelve injured. The accident, which was later attributed to the driver's epilepsy, was the worst traffic accident since 1996.
May 22: Tokyo Skytree officially opened to the public.
October: Amagasaki Serial Murder Incident: The Sumida family in Amagasaki forces at least eight people to kill each other after torture over a period of twenty years.
December: The Sasago road tunnel in Yamanashi Prefecture collapses, resulting in 9 fatalities.
Kinema Junpo Award: Postcard
Japan Academy Film Prize for Picture of the Year: The Kirishima Thing
Deaths in the film world:
The actress Awashima Chikage, known from firlms by Ozu, dies at age 87. The actress Yamada Izusu dies at age 95. Film director Shindo Kaneto dies at age 100.
(February)
"Our Homeland" (Kazoku no kuni) is the first feature film of Yang Yong-hi, made after a series of documentaries in which this director explored issues in her Korean/Japanese family. The film is based on a little known fact of contemporary history: the emigration to North Korea of many Koreans living in Japan (who today still are split in adherents of the South and the North) in the 1950s-1970s, lured by false promises of the Communist paradise. Director Yang follows the story of Sonho (Arata Iura) who as a teenager was sent to North Korea by his father, an ardent supporter of the North, and also staff member of the North Korean culture center, a quasi embassy. Now Sonho is allowed to briefly return to Japan to seek medical care for a serious illness. He meets his family - his father, his mother who runs a small cafe, his younger sister who is a teacher (and the center of the film, played by Ando Sakura), and his uncle - but is all the time under the strict supervision of a North Korean security agent who traces his every step. Sonho would like to persuade his sister to move to North Korea, but has no chance as she rightly hates the regime. And then, out of the blue, after just a few days with his family and one initial medical check-up, without explanation Sonho receives the order to immediately return to North Korea (where he has left his own family behind), although he had permission to stay in Japan for three months. This is not a perfect film (interestingly, the Koreans in the film are even more non-verbal than Japanese usually are, and because of this the film looses something in expressiveness), but it deftly brings out the tensions caused by history in the relations of a family. Winner of the Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film. Berlin International Film Festival.
(July)
Helter Skelter by Ninagawa Mika is just such a colorful spectacle as the director's previous Sakuran, but it is also more lacking in content and often just plays out as a gorgeous fashion show. Top model LiLiCo (a perfect Sawajiri Erika), the most popular model in Japan, is adored by millions of fans, has in fact turned into an arrogant and narcissistic bitch - as her manager Michiko (Terajima Shinobu) knows all too well. But only her stylist Kinji (Arai Hirofumi) and her agency director Hiroko (Momoi Kaori) know another secret: the beautiful shell of the super star is artificial, created by hundreds of beauty operations. Then one day, dark spots appear in LiLiCo's face - is her beauty beginning to peel off? This happens just when a rival, Kozue (Mizuhara Kiko), starts challenging her top status... Not only wonderful eye-candy, but also excellent performances all around.
(September)
"Dreams For Sale" (Yume uru futari) by Nishikawa Miwa is unfortunately a much lesser film than her previous work as Yureru or Dear Doctor. It is the story of a married couple, Satoko (Matsu Takako) and Kanya (Abe Sadao), whose restaurant burns down. Needing money to build a new place, and after the husband has accidentally received a large sum of money for his equally accidental one-night stand with regular customer Reiko (Suzuki Sawa), the wife comes up with a nifty scam whereby Kanya has to make up to lonely unmarried women and con them out of their savings by pretending to love them. Kanya is indeed able to lend the willing ear these solitary souls crave for. His first victim is prim Satsuki (Tanaka Lena), and there is still comedy here, but afterwards the film drifts into melodramatic territory when the new victims are obese Olympic weightlifter Hitomi (Ebara Yuki), abused prostitute Kana (Ando Tamae), and divorcee with a young son Takiko (Kimura Tae). Not surprisingly, Kanya gets emotionally involved with his victims, spending more and more time with them, and the marriage starts to crack (Satoko in contrast discloses her underlying selfishness by the joy she takes in the suffering of other women) - until a few contrived plot twists bring Kanya in jail and Satoko working at a fish market to pay back the money they have "loaned." The film not only wavers between comedy and melodrama, but also has totally unwarranted moments of knockabout farce, in which the protagonists' exaggerated performances are in the worst tradition of over-acting.
(November)
That Miike Takashi has lost his magic touch was already clear from his delving into remakes. "Lesson of the Evil" (Aku no Kyoten), based on a novel by Kishi Yusuke, is a revolting film about a psychopathic teacher who kills off scores of his high-school pupils (and has an affair with one of them). The director revels in one shot after another of blood-smeared pupils or exploding chests - Miike apparently doesn't realize that such crimes are all too real elsewhere in the world. As is usual with him, he refuses to confront his material from a moral point of view, but just makes a slasher gore film as pure "entertainment." But alas, the plot is full of holes and the actors are hamming away in a terrible fashion. Rome Film Festival.
2013
June to October: 2013 heatwave causes 1,077 fatalities.
August: An explosion at the Fukuchiyama Firework Festival event kills 3.
October: A fire at the Abe Orthopaedic Surgery Hospital in Fukuoka kills 10.
October: A typhoon kills 17 people in Oshima Island; on the mainland, the storm causes major traffic disruptions and kills one woman in Machida, Tokyo.
December 6 – Special Secrecy Law passes the National Diet
Kinema Junpo Award: Our Homeland
Japan Academy Film Prize for Picture of the Year: The Great Passage
Deaths in the film world:
Director Oshima Nagisa dies at age 80.
(January)
The remakes roll on, and it gets even more ridiculous. One of the best films ever made in the world is Tokyo Story by Ozu Yasujiro. It is the perfect masterpiece. Yamada Yoji has had the audacity to remake this in a modern setting as "Tokyo
Family" (Tokyo kazoku). The new film is dull and plodding and not even good when we
forget it is a remake. Compared to Ozu's immortal masterwork, Yamada's
film is an ant trying to be a unicorn. Designated as "worst film of the
year" by the Eiga Geijutsu magazine.
(March)
"The Great Passage" (Fune wo Amu) by Ishii Yuya is an office drama, set at a publishing company, about the making of a dictionary called "The Great Passage." The small dictionary team has to fight against many odds to complete their ten-year task, such as the danger that the project will be canceled. The protagonist is new member Matsuda Ryuhei, an emotional nerd whose coming of age story this is (his name is "Majime," which means "serious" but is written with different kanji). Shishido Jo plays his extroverted colleague, and it is nice to see Kato Go and Ikewaki Chizuru in small roles, while Miyazaki Aoi is a suitable love interest as the granddaughter of Majime's landlady. In fact, this is a typical Shochiku film promoting all-Japanese values: diligence (even when the task is boring and sheer endless), perseverance ("gambaru"), perfectionism (when one small miss is found, the group spends day and night rechecking all materials), excellent teamwork and "wet" human feelings. It is therefore interesting for the insight it provides into Japanese culture and the values that ideally drive the Japanese. (Hong Kong International Film Festival) (premiere).
(May)
"Like Father, Like Son" (Soshite Chichi ni Naru)
by Koreeda Hirokazu is a breakthrough to the mainstream for this
director, although to do so, he unfortunately makes several compromises
and delivers a film that is rather below his best work. The strength and
interest of his best film Still Walking was the lack of an all
too obvious plot, the feeling of just looking in on a day in the life of
an ordinary family. In this new movie, Koreeda introduces a
Hollywood-type plot that is just too obvious from the beginning, and
that leads to an iron conclusion we can see coming from afar. Moreover,
the acting of protagonist Fukuyama Masaharu, who is originally a singer,
is just below par - the kids in the film do a better job. Fukuyama
plays a career yuppie who suddenly is informed officially that his
six-year old son has accidentally been switched at birth with another
baby, who is the son of a poor but laid-back family. Should they be
switched back? The question is nature versus nurture, with the father
opting for the bloodline (moreover, he already thought his son was too
weak to be his real offspring) and the mother for the life lived
together, for the shared culture. As the opinion of men still prevails
in Japan, the kids are temporarily switched back to the real parents,
but of course that doesn't work out. We knew so from the very start. But
despite its flaws, this film is well worth watching. (Cannes Film
Festival) (premiere).
(June)
"The Ravine of Goodbye" (Sayonara Keikoku) by
Omori Tatsushi, based on a novel by Yoshida Shuichi, is about a
difficult subject that some might find offensive: a woman, Kanako (Maki
Yoko), has been raped by fellow student Shunsuke (Onishi Shima) in
high school, something which destroys her life as she can not keep
future boyfriends or even hold a job. So when 15 years later she meets
her rapist again, she starts living with him. Shunsuke is burdened with
guilt, Kanako can't escape her past - she should not be considered as a
victim fallen under the spell of her victimizer, but rather as a woman
who in Shunsuke finds a refuge from the world outside. Moreover, she
has power over him. This story is presented obliquely, as it comes out
gradually through the investigation by two journalists of the murder of
a child of a family living next door in which Shunsuke may have been
implicated (the journalists are played by Omori Nao and Suzuki Anne).
(September)
R100 by Matsumoto Hitoshi (of Big Man Japan fame) has an interesting premise but fails to make the most of it by undermining its own story but not taking it serious enough. A man working as sales manager in a department store, living alone with his young son as his wife is in hospital, joins a mysterious SM club, where the rules are rather different: the membership is for a whole year and cannot be canceled, and what is more, the "playground" is everywhere - wherever the man is, he can suddenly be attacked by a vicious dominatrix swinging her whip through the air, or placing a well-aimed a karate kick in his face. When this escalates and the man is even attacked at his workplace or in the hospital when he visits his wife, things get badly out of hand. In the end, he seeks refuge in the farm of his father-in-law, where a large group of leather-clad women approaches like an army of zombies... Filmed in bleached colors, which are almost black and white. The title is a joke about the rating: not R15 or R17, but "R100." Toronto International Film Festival.
(September)
The remake machine rolls on. This time the perpetrator is Lee Sang-Il, who made the excellent The Villain (2010) discussed above. Now he derails by remaking Clint Eastwood's Western The Unforgiven in
a late Edo samurai setting. Again, the original (as all originals) is
much superior, and Lee has ended up making another unnecessary film.
There are so many historical novels in Japan, was there really no
original story to be found? Venice Film Festival.
(September)
"The Devil's Path" (Kyoaku) by Shiraishi Kazuya is a well-made crime drama about the omnipresence of evil in everyday society. A dogged but tired young reporter (Yamada Takayuki) is contacted by a death row inmate, the yakuza Sudo (Pierre Taki), who seven years ago has committed various murders at the instigation of his boss, a real estate agent called "sensei" (Lily Franky). That boss went scot-free and Sudo now seeks revenge. So he confesses to a series of nihilistic crimes which have not yet been discovered, such as the live burial of a victim and ramming another man into an incinerator. Most sickening for its casualness is the third murder of an elderly man, with the complicity of his family and (initially) the victim himself, in order to pay off a debt with his life assurance. The man is first fed lots of shochu and finally slowly killed by electric shocks from a stun gun, while the killers are rolling on the floor from laughter. This removes any sympathy we may have felt for Sudo, putting his confession in a cynical light. The reporter struggles against his boss who at first doesn't believe in the importance of the article he is writing, and also against his family situation, where his wife is unable to continue caring for his mother suffering from Alzheimer. Performances are excellent, especially Lily Franky, who, expertly cast against type, appears as a demon in human guise. An unembellished study of human nature at its most evil, the only flaw in this film is the cinematography, which doesn't rise above the level of a TV movie.
(November)
"Pecoross’ Mother and Her Days" (Pekorosu no haha ni ai ni iku)
by Morisaki Azuma is the story of the sixty-two year old Yuichi
(Iwamatsu Ryo), a Nagasaki-born baby-boomer with a shiny bald head
(leading to the nickname "pecoross," a small onion), who is a "bad"
salaryman who spends most of his days stealthily drawing manga or making
music. He lives with his son Masaki and his eighty-nine year old mother
Mitsue (Akagi Harue) who the last ten years, since the death of her
husband, is suffering from dementia. This is described not with disgust
as in some other films, but with humor and sweet sorrow. Mitsue goes out
to buy sake for her dead husband, or sits all day waiting for Yuichi to
comeback from work at the parking lot of his car. As she keeps going
out on her own, it becomes unwise to leave her alone in the house, so
Yuichi decides to entrust her to the care of a nursing home. Mitsue,
however hates that, and keeps to her room like a hikikomori,
drawing further and further back into herself and into her past life
(which we get in flashbacks). She even imagines that her little
daughter, who died at a young age, is coming to visit her... Based on an
essay manga by Okano Yuichi. Kinema Junpo Award for Best Film. The
director, Morisaki Azuma, is himself 87 and therefore the oldest active
film maker in Japan. Surprisingly, he has made a light and heart-warming
movie about a serious subject. It is regrettable this wonderful film is
not better known.
(November)
Kaguyahime
2014
January: Mitsubishi Materials Yokkaichi plant explosion kills five persons.
March: Abeno Harukas open in Osaka, the tallest structure in Japan.
July: Sasebo schoolgirl murder: A 15-year-old high school student kills her female classmate by strangulation, dismembering and decapitation.
August: Hiroshima landslides cause 74 fatalities.
September: Mount Ontake eruption causes 63 fatalities (worst eruption disaster since 1991).
Kinema Junpo Award: Pecoross' Mother and Her Days
Japan Academy Film Prize for Picture of the Year: The Eternal Zero
Deaths in the film world:
The actress Awaji Keiko (age 80), known for her role in for example Stray Dog by Kurosawa.
Director Suzuki Norifumi (80), known for cult films as The School of the Holy Beast as well as the Torakku Yaro series.
The actor Takakura Ken (83),
and Sugawara Bunta die at the respective ages of 83 and 81.
(March)
"The Light Shines Only There" (Soko nomi nite hikari kagayaku) by Oh Mipo is the tragic story of three young people set in Hakodate. Tatsuo (Ayano Go) is traumatized because he has caused an accidental death of a colleague in his job as stone worker - he now spends his days playing pachinko and his nights drinking; his new friend Takuji (Suda Masaki) is on parole after stabbing a man; and his sister Chinatsu (Ikewaki Chizuru) provides for the family by working as a prostitute. Tatsuo and Chinatsu set tentative steps towards a relation, but it is clear that luck will not be on their side. A grim film, but as there are no strange plot twists, much better than Oh's previous comedy. Not only the acting, but also the cinematography (by Kondo Ryuto) are first class. Osaka Asian Film Festival.
(May)
Another director who surprisingly has lost her magic is Kawase Naomi. "Still the Water" (Futatsume no mado)
is for the first time set outside Kawase's native Nara Prefecture, on
Japan's southern island of Amami-Oshima. It is a coming of age story
that unfortunately is overshadowed by boring touristy images of various
festivals and songs and dances. Instead of making a film like a
documentary, as many directors who started filming in the 1990s
did, including Kawase herself, Kawase here just inserts documentary
elements in a feature film, without proper justification. Her first
work, Suzaku, remains my favorite among her films. Cannes Film Festival.
(August)
Miike Takashi makes "Over Your Dead Body" (Kuime), a dull version of the classical ghost story Yotsuya Kaidan that
has already been filmed countless times. Although this a not a straight
remake as Miike introduces a new perspective by presenting the play in
the form of a rehearsal by actors whose lives start running parallel to
those of the protagonists of the play, the film never comes to life. The
reason is that Miike forgets to fill in the lives and characters of the
contemporary actors - we mainly see them in their luxury cars riding to
and from the studio - and for the rest we have to watch a rather boring
rehearsal. As regards Yotsuya Kaidan, I advise you to watch the version Nakagawa Nobuo made in 1959.
(September)
Kabukicho Love Hotel (Sayonara Kabukicho) by Hiroki Ryuichi is an ensemble drama and dark comedy set in a short-stay hotel. Telling the stories of the hotel’s guests, staff and self-deluded manager (Sometani Shota), Hiroki captures every nuance with his gently probing camera. Toronto International Film Festival.
(October)
"Pale Moon" (Kami no Tsuki) by Yoshida Daihachi stars Miyazawa Rie as Rika, working at a bank where she is in charge of wealthy customers to whom she has to make home visits, and unhappily married to a busy salaryman. She thinks she has found something more in life when she meets the young nephew of one of her clients, a student half her age, and starts an affair with him. Unfortunately, the bland boy is played by a juvenile who considering his non-existent acting, still has to go to Theater School. But also from the side of Miyazawa there is not a single spark of screen passion, so their relation is unconvincing, to say the least. Rika is more like an elder sister or surrogate mother, also when she starts stealing money out of the accounts of her clients, first to help the boy through college, later to buy him increasingly expensive presents. Yoshida nowhere makes plausible why she would take such a high risk, nor what she gets out of it. The boy leaves her finally in the lurch for a girl his own age and Rika's embezzling is caught by her shrewd supervisor, Ms Sumi (played by Kobayashi Satomi), a colleague who supports the system although she has reached a dead end in her career. The direction by Yoshida is dull like a TV film, the story is predictable, and even Miyazawa Rie, who elsewhere is a forthright presence, seems nervous and uncertain. This film is unfortunately too flawed to be a statement about the empowerment and liberation of a forty-year old woman in stratified Japanese society. Tokyo International Film Festival.
(September)
The remake merry-go-round takes another swing. Another famous film gets the treatment, this time Ichikawa Kon's Fires on the Plain (Nobi),
based on a novel by Ooka Shohei, remade by Tsukamoto Shinya. Where
Ichikawa's artful and humanistic work was a "horror of war" film,
Tsukamoto's giallo product is a mere "war horror" film, with
stacked corpses, decapitated heads and other splatter effects. When the
subplot of cannibalism kicks in, we are finally and truly in
zombie-land. Tsukamoto plays the lead character, inviting a negative
comparison with the excellent Funakoshi Eiji of the earlier film. More
than that, this awful movie almost invites a reevaluation of Tsukamoto's
earlier work as a director. (Venice Film Festival) (premiere).
(October)
Miike Takashi also makes "As the Gods Will" (Kamisama no iu-tori), an old-fashioned splatter-fest based on a manga about "killer dolls:" a Daruma doll, a Maneki-neko cat, four Kokeshi dolls, a wood-carved ice bear and even a set of Matrioshka dolls. It is another gleeful carnage of high-school teenagers, although this time the story is so cartoonish and silly (taking its cue partly from Gantz) that it is less offensive than Aku no kyoten. But isn't this all old hat? Rome Film Festival.
[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)]
History of Japanese Film by Year