Tag Japan

Theater of Life: Youth Version [Fragment] (Jinsei gekijō – Seishun hen, 人生劇場・青春篇),1936

A young Japanese man in traditional clothing from the early 20th Century, sitting in a semi-darkened room, his head bowed in grief

Production Company Nikkatsu (Tamagawa) Scenarists Yagi Yasutarō (adaptation); Kameya Gentoku (screenplay) Source Ozaki Shirō (novel) Cinematographer Yokota Tatsuyuki Performers (Note: actors credited in the cast list but who don’t appear in the extant version are noted with an asterisk.) Kosugi…

Uchida the Sellout?

An old Japanese man wearing a cap, sitting outdoors on a chair and holding a cigarette in his hand

Photo above: Uchida Tomu directing a film, probably Swords of Death (Shinken shōbu, 1971) Note: As I’ve already done several times for this blog, I am interrupting my series of reviews of the films of Uchida Tomu to post my…

A Fugitive from the Past (Kiga Kaikyō;飢餓海峡), 1965

A middle-aged Japanese man with a mustache is looking towards the camera with a distressed expression

Other titles: The Hunger Straits, Straits of Hunger (literal English titles); Starvation Straits (alternative English title) Le détroit de la faim (literal French title); Szökevény a múltból [A Fugitive from the Past] (alternate Hungarian title) Production Company Toei (Tokyo) Scenarist…

The Outsiders (Mori to mizuumi no matsuri; 森と湖のまつり), 1958

A young Japanese man in modern clothes carrying a rifle crouches behind some shrubbery and looks into the distance, with a lake in the far distance behind him

Other titles: Festival of Lakes and Forests (literal English title) Production Company Tōei (Tokyo) Scenarist Uekusa Keinosuke Source Festival of Lakes and Forests (Mori to mizuumi no matsuri) [novel] by Takeda Taijun Producer Ōkawa Hiroshi Cinematographer Nishikawa Shōei Art Director…

Crown of Life (Seimei no kanmuri, 生命の冠), 1936

Two modern Japanese women, a young girl and a middle-aged housewife, in traditional dress looking solemnly at someone beyond camera range

The Crown of Life (alternate English title) Production Company Nikkatsu Tamagawa (Chōfu) Scenarist Yagi Yasutarō Source Yamamoto Yūzō (play) Cinematographer Yokota Tatsuyuki Performers Oka Jōji (Arimura Kotarō); Takihana Hisako (Masako, his wife); Izome Shirō (Kinjirō, his younger brother); Hara Setsuko…

Introduction

Young Uchida photo

The Girl in the Book It all began, like most encounters with Japanese Cinema in the West, with Donald Richie. Many years ago, probably in the 1980s, I bought a coffee-table book by Mr. Richie – the great American popularizer…