Japanese Films

Miss Oyu  ( お遊さま ) is a 1951 film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi  and based on Junichiro Tanizaki ’s 1932 novella The Reed Cutter  ( 蘆刈 ). The story revolves around two sisters and their relationship with a man named Shinnosuke. He falls in love with the older, more refined—yet oddly childlike—sister, Oyū Kayukawa. Although she is a widow, he is unable to marry her because she has a son from her previous marriage—a restriction observed among certain upper-class families at the t

Souls on the Road  ( Rojō no Reikon ), directed by Minoru Murata and released in 1921, is one of Japan’s most remembered silent films and is often seen as an early step toward a distinctly Japanese cinematic style. When his career as a violinist ends in disgrace after collapsing on stage in the capital, Koichiro returns on foot to his mountain village with his wife and daughter. At a snowy forest crossroads along the way, they are accosted by a pair of recently released convi

Onibaba  (鬼婆, 1964) is a Japanese horror film directed by Kaneto Shindo. Set in the aftermath of a fourteenth-century civil war near Kyoto, the story focuses on two (nameless) women who kill soldiers for their weapons and gear. They live in a hut surrounded by a seemingly boundless, inescapable sea of tall grass. There’s a deep hole there too, where they drop their stripped victims before trading the booty for millet and the occasional fowl. When the slovenly Hachi returns fr

The Burmese Harp  (ビルマの竪琴, 1956) is a Japanese anti-war film directed by Kon Ichikawa and based on a children’s novel of the same name by Michio Takeyama. It opens at the end of World War II, with a group of weary Japanese soldiers traversing the Burmese landscape. One plays a harp (saung), to which the others sing. They arrive at a village where the locals welcome them with food and shelter, but after the meal the villagers quietly slip away, and the soldiers realize that Br

Yojimbo  (用心棒, 1961) is an Akira Kurosawa classic starring Toshiro Mifune as a rōnin who wanders into a desolate backwater village in the turbulent years leading up to the end of the Tokugawa shogunate in the 1860s. The film opens with the hero drifting along dusty country roads and, in a gesture left to chance, tossing a stick into the air to decide which direction to take when it lands. Two rival gangs are fighting for control of the village when the rōnin arrives. He befri

The Inland Sea  is a 1991 documentary-style film by Lucille Carra, adapted from Donald Richie’s 1971 travelogue of the same name. Only fifty-six minutes long, it is premised on Richie’s notion that “one is meant to wander, turning at random along these straight and open corridors filled with the rustling of the forest, the whispering of the sea.” We are taken on a journey that mirrors his travels, rich observations, and roaming contemplation. The film remains faithful to the

“ Life is a path of suffering that leads to death… ” So begins What Made Her Do It?  (1930, Japanese: 何が彼女をそうさせたか), a silent film based on a Shingeki play and directed by Shigeyoshi Suzuki. Sumiko, an innocent girl who dreams only of attending school, is sent by her father to Nitto to live with her uncle, whom she hasn’t met. On the way she becomes lost and, tears streaming down her face, eats her last shred of bread as a train of cheerful passengers passes. Desperate and alo

Yasujiro Ozu’s 1932 silent comedy I Was Born, But...  is still entertaining today. (Japanese: 大人の見る絵本生れてはみたけれど) One of Ozu’s earliest surviving films, it zeroes in on two brothers who, with their parents, have moved from Tokyo to a relatively backward neighborhood in the suburbs. Fearing a beating from a gang of bullies, the boys play hooky from school. The chief bully claims that eating sparrow eggs toughens you up, so there’s a kind of black market trade among the school ki

Days of Youth  (学生ロマンス 若き日, 1929) is a silent comedy by Yasujiro Ozu. The seven or eight films he directed before this are considered lost, making Student Romance: Days of Youth , as it’s also known, his earliest surviving picture. This playful story follows two university students (Ichiro Yuki and Tatsuo Saito) who, during winter exams, take a skiing trip to Akakura and compete for the affection of the same girl (Junko Matsui). Although what remains is now blotchy, faded, an

I’ve at last ventured into the Battles Without Honor and Humanity  series (Japanese: 仁義なき戦い; also known in English as The Yakuza Papers ). Battles Without Honor and Humanity  (1973), the first in the eleven-film series, is a chaotic, ultra-violent tale of the yakuza syndicates that formed in Hiroshima Prefecture during the years immediately after World War II. The story unfolds in a documentary-like style, with a sporadic omniscient narrator and captions showing dates and nam

Sansho the Bailiff  (1954; also called Sanshō Dayū , Japanese: 山椒大夫) is a film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi that Japanese cinema fans, or any cinephile, shouldn’t miss if they want to see this director at the peak of his craft. A noble governor is banished and must leave behind his wife and two small children. He gives his son a statuette of Kannon, the goddess of compassion, and tells both children, “Without mercy, man is like a beast. Even if you are hard on yourself, be mer

The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum  (残菊物語, or Zangiku Monogatari) is a 1939 film by Kenji Mizoguchi. Running about 140 minutes, it’s longer than many of his other pictures, giving us a broader and more developed view of the major themes he’s known for: patriarchal Japanese society; women’s roles as harlot and/or mother, and to a lesser extent as sister and/or lover; sacrifice (especially that of women in the 1800s and early 20th century); and poverty as a catalyst for both s

Sanjuro  (椿三十郎, or Tsubaki Sanjuro) is a black-and-white film directed by Akira Kurosawa, released in 1962 and starring the charismatic Toshiro Mifune. Once again I got ahead of myself by watching the sequel before the prequel, in this case Kurosawa’s Yojimbo  (1961). After recently rewatching some of Kurosawa’s larger works, such as Rashomon  (1950), Seven Samurai  (1954), and Ran  (1985), Sanjuro  felt like a smaller-scale film, though still unmistakably Kurosawa in its sty

The Downfall of Osen  (折鶴お千, or Orizuru Osen) is a 1935 silent film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, with benshi accompaniment. It stars Isuzu Yamada (who also appears in Mizoguchi’s 1936 films Osaka Elegy  and Sisters of the Gion ) and is based on a novel by Izumi Kyoka, which, as far as I know, hasn’t been translated into English. This is one of Mizoguchi’s most acclaimed early films, but it didn’t hold my attention as much as The Water Magician , to which it’s similar in terms

Akira Kurosawa’s final epic, Ran  (乱, which can mean riot, war, disorder, or disturbance), released in 1985, is based both on legends of Mori Motonari and on King Lear by William Shakespeare (itself derived from the legendary British king Leir). Ran  tells the story of Hidetora Ichimonji, a Motonari-Lear figure played brilliantly by Tatsuya Nakadai, during the Sengoku period (1573–1603). The aging warlord has a dream that leads him to divide his realm among his three sons, mu

The Water Magician  is a 1933 silent film (with benshi accompaniment) by Kenji Mizoguchi. Takino Shiraito (played by Takako Irie) is a water magician in a traveling funfair in northern Chubu, somewhere between Kanazawa and Naoetsu. She’s famous for her artistry in controlling long paddles that direct streams of water into shapes and patterns that enthrall her audiences. She meets a miserable carriage driver who rides her into town on horseback after his carriage breaks down.

Tokyo March  (東京行進曲, or Tōkyō kōshinkyoku ) is a 1929 silent film directed by Kenji Mizoguchi, originally screened with live benshi accompaniment. Dressed in formal black-and-white Western attire, often with bow ties, the benshi provided narration alongside musical performances. This melodramatic love story, only 24 minutes long (what remains of it anyway), incorporates several themes Mizoguchi would later become known for. These include the struggles of destitute geisha and

In the Realm of the Senses  is unlike anything I’ve seen. Intensely disturbing, sexually explicit, beautifully framed and shot, and based on actual events, it’s considered a masterpiece by some and controversial filth by others. This 1976 French-Japanese art film was written and directed by Nagisa Oshima, one of Japan’s masters of cinema. It has been cut into less graphic versions in some countries, was edited in France and listed as a French production to bypass Japan’s stri

I watched Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Shoplifters  (2018) and really enjoyed it. Our Little Sister  (2015), also written and directed by Kore-eda, is a drama starring Haruka Ayase, Masami Nagasawa, Kaho, and Suzu Hirose. It has a Yasujiro Ozu feel to it, along with the Japanese sense of impermanence, or mono no aware . Three sisters live together in an old house in Kamakura that once belonged to their grandparents. Their father left fifteen years ago and, with another woman, lived in

Osaka Elegy  (Japanese: 浪華悲歌, Naniwa Elegy ) is a 1936 film written and directed by Kenji Mizoguchi and featuring many of the same actors as his other 1936 picture, Sisters of the Gion . The film starts off with a spat between Sonosuke Asai (Benkai Shiganoya) and his wife Sumiko (Yoko Umemura). He has “married up” in the family, she reminds him, after he expresses his longing to return to their sweet honeymoon days. He now despises her. Sonosuke, who owns a drug company, invi