Japan

Synopsis:
As Japan gears up for the 1964 Olympic games, the cops start to crack down under pressure from the public and the press, adding a new dimension in the war for power among the yakuza families of Hiroshima. Takeda (Akira Kobayashi) tries to keep a lid on things, but hotheaded underlings create chaos, with one boss whacked in neutral territory and the craven boss, Uchimoto, informing on an assassination attempt by his own minions. While the police round up hundreds of yakuza foot soldiers, Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) plots to finally take out longtime nemesis, boss Yamamori.Read More »

Synopsis:
The successor to Hiroshima’s most powerful yakuza family, the Muraokas, is whacked in broad daylight on a busy city street. What unfolds is a yakuza succession crisis, as the weaseley Uchimoto (Takeshi Kato) dithers and the slimy, backstabbing boss Yamamori steps in as the Muraoka’s new boss. Bunta Sugawara’s would-be independent yakuza, Shozo Hirono, is caught in the middle, having to play powerbroker. But the opposing factions seek support from powerful families in Kobe, making all out war inevitable.Read More »

Synopsis:
Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka (Kinya Kitaoji, who went on to star as Rhett Butler in the Tokyo stage version of Gone with the Wind), finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hit man and falls in love with boss Muraoka’s niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo (Sonny Chiba) draws our series’ hero, Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara), into a new round of bloodshed, culminating with the tragic demise of the young Yamanka.Read More »

Synopsis:
In the teeming black markets of postwar Japan, Shozo Hirono (Bunta Sugawara) and his buddies find themselves in a new war between fractious and ambitious yakuza. After joining boss Yamamori, Shozo is drawn into a feud with his sworn brother¹s family, the Dois. But that¹s where the chivalry of traditional yakuza film ends and the hypocrisy, betrayal, and assassinations begin. A rare and critical perspective on the history of Japan after World War II, BATTLES WITHOUT HONOR AND HUMANITY is a tour-de-force that revolutionized the yakuza genre and launched Kinji Fukasaku and Bunta Sugawara to international stardom.Read More »

Synopsis:
Sanshiro Sugata (Susumu Fujita) wants to learn jujitsu. But after he witnesses the power of judo firsthand, he abandons his jujitsu training to study with judo master Shogoro Yano (Denjirô Ôkôchi). Under Yano, Sanshiro learns the combative elements of the art, and he also masters satori — the quiet, meditative aspects of judo style. With both in hand, he fights for the respect of his former teacher and for the love of his teacher’s daughter, Sayo (Yukiko Todoriki).Read More »

Quote:
In 1972, Miyuki tells her ex-lover Kazuo that she’s going to Okinawa with their son. Kazuo decides to film her. He narrates his visits to her there: first while her flatmate is Sugako, a woman Miyuki is attracted to; then, while she works at a bar and is with Paul, an African-American soldier. Once, Kazuo brings his girlfriend, Sachiko. We see Miyuki with her son, with other bar girls, and with Sachiko. Miyuki, pregnant, returns to Tokyo and delivers a mixed-race child on her own with Kazuo and Sachiko filming. She joins a women’s commune, talks about possibilities, enjoys motherhood, and is uninterested in a traditional family. Does the filmmaker have a point of view?Read More »

Kawase’s contribution to the 2009 Jeonju Digital Project.

A Japanese-Korean man (Kitamura Kizuki) travels to a village in Nara to fulfill his late grandfather’s final wish. A local woman (Nakamura Yuko) shows him around town, but the relationship grows into something beyond visitor-and-guide.Read More »

Quote:
The success of The River Fuefuki encouraged Kinoshita to return to period filmmaking once again with this “epic” chamber drama about a geisha mother and her daughter. Based on the popular novel by Ariyoshi Sawako, the story begins as Ikuyo (Nobuko Otowa) is forced into prostitution from poverty; she soon becomes known as a woman who will agree to her clients’ basest desires. Although shielded from her mother’s profession, her daughter Tomoko (Mariko Okada) is deeply ashamed by her mother’s degradation—while still accepting her financial support. But when Mariko attracts the attention of a boy from a well-to-do family, the danger arises that he might discover Mariko’s secret. Read More »

Quote:
With its focus on the emotional aftermath of a religious cult’s terrorist attack on Tokyo, “Distance” was always going to invite comparisons with the Aum cult’s nerve gas attack on the city’s subway system in 1995.

Yet, rather than simply recreating that tragedy, “Distance” takes us into a far more complex, and decidedly more unsettling, drama about loss and bereavement.Three years after the fictional Ark of Truth group has contaminated Tokyo’s water supply with a genetically-engineered virus, leaving 128 people dead and 8,000 injured, four of the dead cult members’ relatives meet to pay their respects to their loved ones at the lake where their ashes were scattered.Read More »