Ayako Wakao portrays a downtown rice ball shop girl whose heart is set on her business. Involved in her life are three young men—stage actor Goro, businessman Kokichi and Sanpei Pachinko.

Triangle Moods .1961.1080p.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H264-LGK98.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 30 min
Size: 	9.58 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	1920x816 
Aspect ratio:  	2.35:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	14.9 Mb/s
BPP: 	0.396
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch E-AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/FF976331F2D6A04/Triangle_Moods_.1961.1080p.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H264-LGK98.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:none

The post Shigeo Tanaka – Tokyo onigiri musume AKA Triangle Moods (1961) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Rouven Linnarz wrote:
Although she would go on to make feature films as an actress, Kinuyo Tanaka’s last project as a director would be the 1963 jidaigeki “Love Under the Crucifix”, a work based on the novel “Ogin-sama” by Toko Kon. At the same time, given her development as a filmmaker, this is truly an interesting climax to a career which saw her progressing more and more, developing her skills, especially when it comes to cinematic storytelling. Additionally, the themes that defined her previous works such as “Love Letter” and “Forever a Woman” also found a fitting conclusion in a feature that, even though it was not set in the present as her other movies, it certainly made a very relevant point about gender roles within Japanese society as well as the conflict between duty and desire as expressed in the story of the main characters.

The story begins in 1587, as the Japanese lords were threatened by the growing influence of Christianity and an increasing number of them being converted to this new faith coming from Europe. However, as a means to create a feeling of unity among the many provinces, Sen no Rikyu (Nakamura Ganjiro II), a nobleman with a profound knowledge of tea rituals, is asked by a military commander to have his daughter, Ogin (Ineko Arima) to be married to a rich merchant named Mozuya (Hisaya Ito). Having instructed him in the tea ritual and finding him a very respectable man, Rikyu does not object, but eventually makes it his daughter’s decision whether she will marry him or not. Given her affection for Ukon Takayama (Tatsuya Nakadai), also a former student of her father and a firm supporter of Christianity, she seeks his approval and possibly his love for her, which he refuses, believing in his duty to remain pure and without sin.

Two years later, Ogin has become the merchant’s wife, but the marriage is unhappy and without children. When Mozuya meets Ukon during a tea ceremony, seeking to negotiate a new trade agreement, although he is well-aware of the days of Christianity being numbered in Japan, Ogin feels attracted to the young man once more. However, at one point ,both of them finally see an opportunity to give in to their feelings for each other, resulting in a catastrophe for them and their families.

Similar to, for example, “Love Letter”, Tanaka shows both of her main characters, Ogin and Ukon, as prisoners of certain restraints, of faith and society. From the first time we see these two together, there is an invisible wall between them, with Ukon shutting down his feelings for the young woman by citing concepts such as purity and sun, setting up the foundation of what will be their ultimate downfall. Both Nakadai and Arima excel in their scenes together, highlighting the conflict of their characters of having to choose between their duty and their desire, making the titular “love under the crucifix” a difficult goal to achieve.

Whereas other directors have used the historic setting and costumes of the jidaigeki as a means to explore greed, hybris and jealousy, in the case of Tanaka’s final feature it is the importance of rituals and concepts in favor of feelings and peace. Apart from the implications of Christianity and its role within the history of Japan, much time is spent showing the strict routine of the tea ceremony, with most of the encounters in the feature following the ritual. Masahige Narusawa’s screenplay seemingly wants to connect the idea of the ceremony to the way people, especially women, must follow certain expectations or face punishment for disobedience. When Ogin witnesses another woman on her way to be crucified, she learns of her crime of not wanting to commit adultery with a lord, creating one of the many instances of foreshadowing in “Love Under the Crucifix”.

In conclusion, “Love Under the Crucifix” is a terrific final feature for Kinuyo Tanaka as director. Using the structures of the jidaigeki, she tells a compelling story about the conflict of duty and desire, with Tatsuya Nakadai and especially Ineko Arima giving great performances as two people having to decide between their feeling for each other or obeying to the set of rules imposed onto them.

2.81GB | 1h 41m | 1024×428 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/E83ABF26C9585A9/Love.Under.the.Crucifix.1962.Kinuyo.Tanaka.576p.BluRay.x264.mkv

Language:Japanese
Subtitles:English,French

The post Kinuyo Tanaka – Ogin-sama AKA Love Under the Crucifix (1962) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Yuzo Kawashima’s adaptation of Toyoko Yamasaki’s first novel.

622MB | 2h 02m | 720×288 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/B1317780D1991F7/Noren_(The_Shop_Curtain)_(1958)_–_Yuzo_Kawashima.mkv

Language:Japanese
Subtitles:None

The post Yûzô Kawashima – Noren AKA The Shop Curtain (1958) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Winner of Cannes’ Special Jury Prize, Odd Obsession is one of acclaimed director Kon Ichikawa’s (Tokyo Olympiad, The Burmese Harp) greatest works. This captivating blend of comic satire and drama follows an elderly man’s attempts to satisfy his younger wife (Machiko Kyo, Rashomon, Gate of Hell). When “potency” injections fail, Mr. Kenmochi incites his own jealousy by orchestrating an affair between his wife and his doctor, who happens to be his daughter’s fiance. The wife and doctor are eager to oblige Kenmochi, his daughter is furious, and the scheme proves both a success and a deadly disaster. With dazzling imagery, rich irony, and superb acting, Odd Obsession illuminates the ongoing battle between personal desire and societal convention.

2.04GB | 1 h 47 min | 1024×432 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/3180493887DD255/Odd.Obsession.1959.WEBRIP.576p.x264.E-AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English, Japanese

The post Kon Ichikawa – Kagi AKA Odd Obsession (1959) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Winner of Cannes’ Special Jury Prize, Odd Obsession is one of acclaimed director Kon Ichikawa’s (Tokyo Olympiad, The Burmese Harp) greatest works. This captivating blend of comic satire and drama follows an elderly man’s attempts to satisfy his younger wife (Machiko Kyo, Rashomon, Gate of Hell). When “potency” injections fail, Mr. Kenmochi incites his own jealousy by orchestrating an affair between his wife and his doctor, who happens to be his daughter’s fiance. The wife and doctor are eager to oblige Kenmochi, his daughter is furious, and the scheme proves both a success and a deadly disaster. With dazzling imagery, rich irony, and superb acting, Odd Obsession illuminates the ongoing battle between personal desire and societal convention.

9.68GB | 1 h 47 min | 1920×816 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/33DB504B432A80C/Kagi.1959.1080p.WEB-DL.DD%2B2.0.H.264-SbR.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Kon Ichikawa – Kagi AKA The Key AKA Odd Obsession (1959) (HD) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis
The Kohayakawa family is thrown into distress when childlike father Manbei takes up with his old mistress, in one of Ozu’s most deftly modulated blendings of comedy and tragedy.

Dennis Schwartz: “Ozus’ World Movie Reviews” wrote:
This Technicolor film is the deft blending of comedy and tragedy; it’s the penultimate film of arguably Japan’s best filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu (“Early Spring”/”Tokyo Story”/”Late Spring”). It’s co-scripted by the director and his regular screenwriter Kôgo Noda. It features the extended Kohayagawa family, who run a small sake brewery in post-war Japan and in failing times are thinking about merging their business with a larger company.

It opens at night; there’s a flashing neon sign in the Osaka skyline proclaiming the ‘New Japan.’ This, of course, signals the film’s theme about change. In a bar sit two nervous middle-aged men, Isomura (Hisaya Morishige), a widowed steel mill owner, and Kitagawa (Daisuke Katô), the brother of the boss of the family run sake brewery and elderly family patriarch Kohayagawa Manbei (Ganjiro Nakamura). Kitagawa is fixing up the businessman with his widowed niece Akiko (Setsuko Hara), without her knowledge. Akiko is a clerk in an art gallery, whose scholarly professor husband died six years ago and left her with a son she dotes on. After briefly meeting Isomura, Akiko rushes home to take care of her son.

The widowed patriarch, Manbei, is still energetic and independent-minded. His errant behavior and delicate condition have alarmed his three daughters, the unmarried youngest one Noriko (Yôko Tsukasa), the married middle daughter Fumiko (Michiyo Aratama) and the eldest Akiko. As of late, Manbei’s reverted to a childlike stage and disappears during business hours without saying where he’s going. Fumiko’s husband, Hisao (Keiju Kobayashi), who is now in charge of running the business, has one of his office workers trail his father-in-law one day and discovers he’s visiting his former mistress Sasaki (Chieko Naniwa), whom he might have fathered with her a now twentysomething daughter called Yuriko (Reiko Dan). She’s a happy-go-lucky typist, who only wants a mink stole from him as a gift and is dating two American blondes from her firm. Fumiko is the most concerned that dad is not acting sensible and is ignoring the business at a time when things are going bad and he’s most needed. The family’s personal concerns are to hook Noriko up with a wealthy suitor, who in turn can help the business, and find a suitable match for the conflicted Akiko.

Manbei has a heart attack, but soon recovers and continues his playful ways and once again sees his old flame. But after taking his mistress to the racetrack and to some nightspots, he succumbs in her apartment. The funeral scene is stunning. There’s smoke coming out of the chimney of the crematorium and the crows are waiting while perched atop
the cemetery gravestones. A peasant lady informs us that someone has died and says “it’s the cycle of life.” There’s a soulful crossing of the bridge by the mourners dressed in black. It signals the old has passed on and it’s now up to the younger generation to make their own way in the world. The father did his job, as he kept the business solvent during his watch and no matter how undependable he was he still managed to keep the family together. It’s now up to the children of the brewer to decide if they want to sell out to a big brewery and the eligible daughters must decide if they want to marry.

Through this trying domestic scene Ozu charts some of the pressing changes in postwar Japan and the altering of Japan’s once rigid traditionalist society. For him, there’s clearly a changing of the guard and the new things on the horizon will undoubtedly replace the old things that can’t satisfy society any longer. Though there’s a bittersweet and unsettling tone to the dramatics, the wily patriarch is cheerfully memorable. He’s quite a character, and his lively antics give the film a wonderfully playful tone. Manbei in his deathbed also gives the film its most poignant moments. When he dies from a heart attack, his mistress says his last words were “Is this it? Is this really it?

1.74GB | 1 h 42 min | 766×576 | mkv
https://nitro.download/view/3A9FB225CB57ABA/Kohayagawa-ke_no_aki_(1961).mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English

The post Yasujirô Ozu – Kohayagawa-ke no aki AKA The End of Summer (1961) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Yukio Mishima’s acclaimed 1956 novel Kinkakuji (The Temple of the Golden Pavilion) was inspired by an actual incident in 1950 when a disturbed monk burned down one of Kyoto’s most beautiful temple buildings. The temple requested that the name be changed to Shukakuji for this adaptation, which opens out the book’s internal monologue, structuring the anguished protagonist’s progress towards final conflagration through flashbacks as the police piece together their investigation. Raizo Ichikawa’s central performance attracts sympathy for this stuttering temple acolyte from a broken family, who sees in the Golden Pavilion a purity of beauty in direct contrast to his own imperfect existence. It’s a purity in danger of being defiled, however, as post-war occupation and reconstruction open the site to tourism, so he resolves to destroy pavilion in order to preserve it. Ichikawa’s fragmented direction draws together this awful logic, leaving the audience dangling exquisitely between understanding and outright horror as flames obliterate a priceless cultural monument. The director’s favourite among his own films.

Kon Ichikawa - (1958) Conflagration.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 39 min
Size: 	1.41 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x428 
Aspect ratio:  	2.40:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 849 kb/s
BPP: 	0.176
Audio
#1:  	Japanese 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/C44BBE09F40C9A2/Kon_Ichikawa_-_(1958)_Conflagration.mkv

Language(s):Japanese
Subtitles:English, French here

The post Kon Ichikawa – Enjo aka The Temple of the Golden Pavilion (1958) first appeared on Cinema of the World.