Four Seasons of Children

Film by Hiroshi Shimizu, featuring an early role for frequent Ozu and Naruse collaborator Hideko Takamine.

A pair of blind masseurs, an enigmatic city woman, a lonely man and his ill-behaved nephew—The Masseurs and a Woman is made up of crisscrossing miniature studies of love and family at a remote resort in the mountains. With delicate and surprising humor, Hiroshi Shimizu paints a timeless portrait of loneliness and the human need to connect.

Introspection Tower is another film in which Shimizu explores education and how it affects the students and the teachers. The film is set at a reformatory for delinquent children at a remote location somewhere in the Japanese countryside.

A penniless orphan loses the woman he loves, when her family arranges a marriage to a wealthy playboy. He believes she was blinded by greed, and becomes a miser.

A group of female doctors travel to a remote village during their summer holiday to offer free medical care to villagers. There they must battle prejudice and superstition as much as disease.

Michiko gets pregnant after a rape. She marries a boring business partner of her father to avoid the shame. Later she meets the rapist again who is now a union leader in opposition of her husband.

Created by Shochiku’s cultural film department on behalf of the Ministry of Education, this film tells an ironic anecdote juxtaposing the fate of a cooper’s son with that of the son of a middle-class salaried worker, and championing the virtues of honest poverty and diligence. An educational film preaching a fable-like message, it is however filled with humorous scenes that offset the film’s didacticism. Original director Yoshio Nishio fell ill and was replaced halfway through the shooting by the admired filmmaker Hiroshi Shimizu; though finished in May 1931, the film was shelved and never given a general release. Shot as a silent film, this version of the film features musical accompaniment, sound effects, and a spoken commentary track by a benshi narrator, thus bearing witness to the variety of forms taken by sound film during this transitional period.