Plot:
An oddball science teacher, Makoto Kito, decides to risk life and limb to steal plutonium from an atomic power plant in order to undergo the hazardous task of building his own home-made atomic bomb. He simultaneously builds a dummy bomb to send to the authorities, who know the plutonium is missing, to prove he means business. Calling himself “Number Nine”, Kito’s first demand: Don’t preempt his baseball game!Read More »
Orin (Shima Iwashita) is a blind woman in the early 20th century who as a young girl became a goze, or itinerant entertainer, one of the few options available to women like her in Japan at the time (one of the others was to be a prostitute). Orin’s life is largely miserable, her misery the result of traditionalist attitudes, but she never grasps that her society is punishing her merely for the twin crimes of being a woman and disabled.Read More »
The story of a high school boy (Toshiyuki Nagashima) in Tokyo returning to his home town of Nagano upon the death of his father.
Kaerazaru hibi was nominated for the Award of the Japanese Academy in 1979 for Best Director and Best Screenplay. Director Toshiya Fujita won the Readers’ Choice Award given by Kinema Junpo in 1979 as Best Japanese Film Director for the film.Read More »
Based on a novel by actress Mieko Harada, screenwriter Hiroshi Saito won the “Best Screenplay” award at the Yokohama Film Festival for this film.
Sex isn’t something one plans. It just happens. Yoko is a 23 year old pink collared worker. After college she is kept close with Yokoyama and Ishida, two male college friends who both harbor feelings for her. Yokoyama is straight as an arrow, yet impulsive when it comes to love. Ishida is more the outspoken type. When Yokoyama proposes to her, Yoko wonders if the old marriage myth is true. Is settling down with an ‘ordinary’ guy the key to a happy marriage?Read More »
Episode I: Playgirl Mariko Hayashi has a way with men and her little yellow book is filled with details of prospective husbands.
Episode II: Office Wife Outwardly Shinko is a television actress and does not admit that Yamada, her personal sponsor, has used his influence to give her a part in the series. Yamanaka had fallen completely under her charms, but …
Episode III: Three Women Tashiro is the sort of man whom women love not too wisely but too well. There was Tokie, his wife, then Yasuko, who had left her sweetheart for him and never let him forget it. Michiyo Ito had taken up with him on a two months’ basis, but she had followed him back to Tokyo at the end of his business trip.Read More »
In April 1895, the talented young Rentaro Taki comes to Tokyo from his home in Kyushu to enrol in the prestigious National Academy of Music. Hoping to become a pianist, he meets another student there, Yuki Nakano, who shares the same aspirations. With his elder classmate Suzuki’s encouragement, Rentaro practices furiously to perfect his technique, but loses his health in the process. Over the years, his health, as well as his devotion to and achievement level in music, fluctuates, as two friends adjust to the varying roles they can each potentially play in his life. Yuki receives the Japanese government’s first music scholarship to study in Berlin. At the same time, Rentaro composes wonderful music and songs like Bloom in the Moonlight which are still very popular in today’s Japan, while Suzuki quits the music school and becomes a hard labourer due to family crisis.Read More »
Quote:
John Lone, the star of the Oscar-winning The Last Emperor (89), portrays a Chinese revolutionary in Shadow of China. Pursued by the Communists, Lone escapes to Hong Kong, where he builds up a multimillion dollar business enterprise. He hopes to use his international clout to effect changes in Mainland China, but he is defeated by revelations of his earlier underhanded business practices, and by the “dangerous” aspects of his previous political activities.Read More »
Quote:
Hirotaka Tashiro’s remarkably assured first feature focuses on a long ignored problem: the plight of the foreign worker in Japan. In the sparsely populated rural areas of Japan, the female population is far smaller than the male. An attempt is made to counter this imbalance by arranging marriages with Filipino women. Fey, a young Filipina, came as a mail-order bride. Although she tries hard, she cannot get on with her husband, either verbally or emotionally. After a year, she flees her snow-country husband with only the clothes on her back and sets out in search of work in Toyko. She wanders through Toyko asking for help in churches and at the Philippine Embassy. She needs to find work to earn enough money for a flight home.Read More »
