Japan

letterboxd wrote:
The film opens with kidnappers of a corporate executive making an unusual ransom demand: that a wizened executive from another company haul large bags of money through downtown Tokyo as the media documents his every move. When the first old man almost dies from exhaustion, a second, and eventually a third elderly corporate fat cat is ordered to do the same. The police detective assigned to the case (Tetsuya Watari) and his younger partner (Masatoshi Nagase) are livid with indignation at this sorry spectacle. They learn that these four men were involved in a massive industrial spill that poisoned an entire rural hamlet 20 years previous. Suddenly, the detective – who studied in the States and apparently absorbed some John Wayne-like mannerisms in the process – isn’t sure who are the victims and who are the villains.Read More »

Jin Kawada (Tasuku Emoto) is a doctor, who provides home medical care. He is very busy with his work and has little time left to spend with his family.Read More »

A beautiful hostess of a small restaurant moonlights as a well-trained assassin tasked with taking the life of a wealthy businessman…Read More »

Bangkok, an endlessly expanding megalopolis. In its heart is Thaniya Road, a red-light district, frequented only by Japanese men. Luck is one of the reigning queens there. Living alone in a luxury apartment, she provides for her large family in the northeastern provinces, near the Laotian border. One day Luck comes across Ozawa, a Japanese client with whom she had fallen in love five years earlier. An ex-soldier with the Japanese Defense Army, he barely ekes out a living, and has a modest room on skid row. When Ozawa has to go to Laos, she accompanies him to introduce him to her family and childhood friends. During this short stay, weary of his life in Bangkok, Ozawa starts dreaming of a quiet life in this little village, but becomes aware of the scars left by colonialism.Read More »

A psychotherapist suffers from the onslaughts of Satori, the demon whose name is paradoxically homonymic to the word used for enlightenment experiences in the Zen tradition. Many people mistakenly believe that such a state is the goal of Zen practice; however, the demon strikes at people who are in a state devoid of thought or feeling. Satori’s influence spreads from the psychotherapist to a couple who grow increasingly uninhibited.Read More »

The setting is postwar Japan in this standard melodrama from director Yoshishige Yoshida. Shinko (Mariko Okada) is a young teen living in Akitsu when she meets Shusaku (Hiroyuki Nagato). He is a student who comes to Akitsu just before the end of the war to try to regain his health, and Shinko helps take care of him. The couple fall in love, but when they both hear that Japan has surrendered, they attempt suicide together and fail. The two lovers separate as Shusaku leaves town in the aftermath of their failed attempt, then fate tragically intervenes nearly two decades later.Read More »

Doppelgänger, Kurosawa Kiyoshi

Michio Hayasaki, a brilliant developer of medical instruments, is working on a robot chair, equipped with artificial limbs, for people who are completely paralysed. He feels he is being pressed by his employer Medical Cytech to come up with a successful design at short notice and he is in danger of burning out. Then, one evening, he thinks he sees his double. Hayasaki has the shock of his life: superstition suggests that meeting your double means you will soon die. But, after a confrontation with his maladjusted doppelgänger, it becomes clear that Hayasaki could take advantage of his violent tricks. The double reduces Hayasaki’s lab to rubble, clears another double out of the way, hires an assistant for Hayasaki and comes up with a new lab. But in the end, one of them will have to perish…Read More »

Quote:
According to the code of the gamblers, Tokijiro, though he dislikes killing, has to join in the fighting when afforded a night’s stay and meals at the home of a town boss. He will be tested again and again in the bloody tale.Read More »

letterboxd wrote:
Toyoichi Otomo suffers from psychological and spiritual troubles after a horrific industrial accident. He lives with his elderly mother and wife near Mt. Aso in rural Kyushu. He seeks solace in a small religious group run by Buddhist nun Chishu-bo who claims to be the 68th descendant of famed 11th century poet Izumi Shikibu. The members of her sect regard her as a living saint. Yet instead of balming his soul, she riles his libido by playing a sexual cat-and-mouse game with the fragile Toyoichi. When she does bed him, it leads to a miracle healing – followed by a terrible calamity.Read More »