Toru Takemitsu
A documentary on the first century of Japanese cinema from the point of view of the controversial Japanese filmmaker Nagisa Ōshima.
When a prostitute is found dead in a Los Angeles skyscraper occupied by a large Japanese corporation, detectives John Conner and Web Smith are called in to investigate. Although Conner has previous experience working in Japan, cultural differences make their progress difficult until a security disc showing the murder turns up. Close scrutiny proves the disc has been doctored, and the detectives realize they're dealing with a cover-up as well.
Exquisite exploration of landscape and Toru Takemitsu's music for a Japanese moss garden.
In 1971, author and film scholar Donald Richie published a poetic travelogue about his explorations of the islands of Japan’s Inland Sea, recording his search for traces of a traditional way of life as well as his own journey of self-discovery. Twenty years later, filmmaker Lucille Carra undertook a parallel trip inspired by Richie’s by-then-classic book, capturing images of hushed beauty and meeting people who still carried on the fading customs that Richie had observed. Interspersed with surprising detours—a visit to a Frank Sinatra–loving monk, a leper colony, an ersatz temple of plywood and plaster—and woven together by Richie’s narration as well as a score by celebrated composer Toru Takemitsu, The Inland Sea is an eye-opening voyage and a profound meditation on what it means to be a foreigner.
The story of the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, based on Masuji Ibuse's novel.
Late in the 1500s, an aging tea master teaches the way of tea to a headstrong Shogun. Through force of will and courageous fighting, Hideyoshi becomes Japan's most powerful warlord, unifying the country. Rikyu, through the tea ceremony and floral arrangements, tempers his lord, helping Hideyoshi focus on a single flower or be in a simple room where the shape of a cup is of most importance. But other forces fuel Hideyoshi's ambitions: the Portuguese bring a globe and guns, and he believes he can conquer Korea and China. When Rikyu raises doubts about invading China, Hideyoshi demands an apology, and Rikyu himself must find courage in the way of tea.
Beautiful young Kinu Yamabe is drawn to low-born Onimaru, who's vital and charismatic, but viewed by his father as a demon, and by most of the remaining family as a stain to the family name. But after her first period, Kinu suffers the fate of any women born near the Sacred Mountain: she must leave the Mountain and serve as priestess But she has a plan to stay near her old home - which involves marrying into a rival branch of her family.
The 1986 Eurythmics tour of Japan. It is the end of the world tour during which Annie Lennox (vocals) and Dave Stewart (guitar) promote their latest album "Revenge". It is also, between concerts, the shock of discovery: a world of sounds as cultivated by the Japanese, both brutally technological and highly refined traditional expressions.
The tragic story of Gonza, a handsome ladies man, set in the Tokagawa Period, a time in which appearences are very important. Gonza competes with Bannojo for the honor to perform the tea ceremony to celebrate the birth of an heir to the lord of their clan. To see the sacred tea scrolls Gonza promises to marry the daughter of the family which possesses them, even though he is unofficially engaged to another. When studying the scrolls with Osai, the mother of the house, Bannajo sneaks into the house and steals their obis and runs through the town proclaiming the two as adulterers.
This gripping docudrama is a fictionalized account of what could happen to a Japanese family when one of their sons shames them in front of the entire nation.
In 1985, Chris Marker traveled to Japan to attend the filming of “Ran,” directed by Akira Kurosawa. Marker analyzes the progress of filming; the infinite patience of a team under the orders of a meticulous director down to the smallest detail; the antithetical mixture of the modern with the traditional; of the real with the fictitious; of life with cinema… and literature.
Tatsuo, a reverent lumberjack, seeks to disrupt plans to build a marine park on his family land, instead promoting his traditions in reactionary ways.
With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare's King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa's late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.
Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí (1852 - 1926) designed some of the world s most astonishing buildings, interiors, and parks; Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara constructed some of the most aesthetically audacious films of the second half of the twentieth century. Here, their artistry melds in a unique, enthralling cinematic experience. Less a documentary than a visual poem, Teshigahara's Antoni Gaudí takes viewers on a tour of Gaudí s truly spectacular architecture, including his massive still-unfinished masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia cathedral, in Barcelona. With camerawork as bold and sensual as the curves on his subject s organic surfaces, Teshigahara immortalizes Gaudí on film.
The story of a Japanese man who as a 16-year-old went to Maui to work in the sugar cane fields in order to support his family back in Japan. Now 89 and still living in Hawaii he is visited by his granddaughter who brings him a letter from his disinherited and recently dead son. This brings back memories of his life with his wife and family following the attack on Pearl Harbor, in particular of his son who had gone off to join the war for the Americans.
One of the major documentaries on a specific chapter in modern Japanese history, this look at the trial of Japanese militarists accused of war crimes is excellently handled by director Masaki Kobayashi. Kobayashi and his assistants had to plough through 30,000 reels from the proceedings of the International Military Tribunal which took place between May, 1946 and November, 1948. It took two days to read the charges against the 100 alleged war criminals in the docket (only 28 top officials are actually in the courtroom, which was limited in space), and the final judgment took one week to read.
This rare documentary is one of the very last efforts from preeminent documentarist/activist Susumu Hani best known for his feature films. This one is a short documentary about the 1945 atomic bombing and its devastating consequences. The film came out of the "10 Foot Movement". A movement organized by the Japan Peace Museum, which mobilized Japanese citizen activists to buy back small segments of film footage of the effects of the atomic bomb from the U.S. National Archives. The film combines recent footage of survivors of the atomic bomb with American archival footage, portraying the sorrow of atomic bomb survivors in the cold war period.
Rennyo was the key figure responsible for the restoration of Shin Buddhism in Japan, in particular the Honganji lineage that had a slump in its fortunes during the Middle Ages. According to the legend, his motivation was a pivotal childhood incident at the age of six when his mother summoned him and told him about his destiny to revive the fortunes of the Honganji school to which he was the next in line. She then mysteriously disappeared from the temple. Taking her words to heart, from a background of great poverty and hardship, at the age of 16 he set out to spread the word across the land.
After a handful of groundbreaking films detailing the tragedy and suffering of the mercury-poisoned Japanese town of Minamata, documentary master Noriaki Tsuchimoto revisits the subject of Minamata through the eyes of the celebrated husband-and-wife painting duo Iri and Toshi Maruki. Tsuchimoto follows the Marukis from their quaint homestead studio, where they paint slews of ghastly, psychotropic mural panels depicting the effects of Minamata disease, to the streets of Minamata, where they meet and paint portraits of several victims of mercury poisoning.
Set in Japan's Tenpyou era (729-749 CE), four young monks are sent to China to study Buddhism and bring a high priest back to Japan with them. The film tells the tale of the four monks' youth and the life and times of the high priest Ganjin.
'Ki or Breathing' is a spare concoction assembled from slow motion shots of nature and set to a score by the much-acclaimed Tohru Takemitsu.
An adaptation of “The Courier for Hell” (“Meido no Hikyaku”) by Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653-1725).
A very beautiful Japanese woman is in love with Persian carpets. She is being chased by lecherous Saburi Shin and a handsome young photographer. Lecherous Saburi Shin knows what she wants, and is able to produce it for her.
A young man has an affair with an older woman. He is very jealous of her husband and decides that they should kill him. One night, after the husband had plenty of sake to drink and was in bed, they strangle him and dump his body down a well. To avert any suspicions, she pretends her husband has gone off to Tokyo to work. For three years the wife and her lover secretly see each other. Finally, suspicions become very strong and people begin to gossip. To make matters worse, her husband's ghost begins to haunt her and the law arrives to investigate her husband's disappearance.
An hour long documentary looking at the life of the Kato family, Japanese farmers living in Miyazaki city, Miyagi prefecture
A blind traveling musician is abused and oppressed wherever she goes, even as the modern world imposes change around her.
A mountain man beheads his many wives to prove his love to an alluring woman he meets in an enchanted forest.
Follows a young med student's relationships with two women: a dangerous affair with a childhood friend and his mother's struggle to rebuild their estranged relationship.
Minoru visits his home on Okinoerabu island for the first time in thirty years. Seeing the old man who used to be in love with his mother, Minoru recalls the old days spent on the island with his young, beautiful mother.
Sunaoko come to Okinawa to find his brother Tsuruo. Her searching is not very painless because it tears up old wounds in complicated relationships, some of which date back to the horrors of war.
The plight of U.S. Army deserters from Vietnam on the run in Japan, centering on the culture clash between the troubled Americans and the Japanese who try to help him.
Oshima’s magisterial epic, centering on the ambivalent surviving heir of the Sakurada clan, uses ritual and the microcosm of the traditional family to trace the rise and fall of militaristic Japan across several decades.
By turns tragic and transcendent, Akira Kurosawa’s film follows the daily lives of a group of people barely scraping by in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yet as desperate as their circumstances are, each of them—the homeless father and son envisioning their dream house; the young woman abused by her uncle; the boy who imagines himself a trolley conductor—finds reasons to carry on. The unforgettable Dodes’ka-den was made at a tumultuous moment in Kurosawa’s life. And all of his hopes, fears, and artistic passion are on fervent display in this, his gloriously shot first color film.
A metaphysical mystery involving a university student's camera getting stolen, and the thief then committing suicide. Looking back upon the event, the situation comes to be questioned if it happened at all.
Successful and married with children, paper-mill owner Jihei knows better than to contradict the strict social and moral codes of 18th-century Japan. But when he meets the lovely courtesan Koharu, he becomes a man obsessed. Koharu returns his love, even foregoing other customers while Jihei schemes to somehow buy her freedom. His efforts yield ruinous consequences for his business and his family life, and Koharu is meanwhile purchased by another client.
A private detective is hired to find a missing man by his wife. While his search is unsuccessful, the detective's own life begins to resemble the man for whom he is searching.
Zensaku, middle-aged and deaf in one ear, learns that his son's fallen for the daughter of a war officer responsible for the maiming.
A teenage goldsmith with a dark past tragically falls in love with a young nude model.
Toshiro Mifune stars as Isaburo Sasahara, an aging swordsman living a quiet life until his clan lord orders that his son marry the lord's mistress, who has recently displeased the ruler. Reluctantly, father and son take in the woman, and, to the family’s surprise, the young couple fall in love. But the lord soon reverses his decision and demands the mistress’s return. Against all expectations, Isaburo and his son refuse, risking the destruction of their entire family. Director Masaki Kobayashi's Samurai Rebellion is the gripping story of a peaceful man who finally decides to take a stand against injustice.
A man is involved in a fatal car accident, and though he is blameless, his company transfers him to a remote branch in a small town. Before he leaves, he gives the man's widow a large sum of money that she uses to move back to her hometown.
A businessman with a disfigured face obtains a lifelike mask from his doctor, but the mask starts altering his personality.
Former playmates (Naito and Tamura), both long ago abandoned by their parents, recall their youth and fall in love.
Seeking revenge against the guard who tormented him, a young man returns to the island where he was imprisoned in reform school. But his plans for vengeance are disturbed when he encounters a strange and beautiful young woman
Epic saga of an idealistic land-owning family dealing with militarism, war, social change and economic reform.
Years of warfare end in a Japan unified under the Tokugawa shogunate, and samurai spy Sasuke Sarutobi, tired of conflict, longs for peace. When a high-ranking spy named Tatewaki Koriyama defects from the shogun to a rival clan, however, the world of swordsmen is thrown into turmoil. After Sasuke is unwittingly drawn into the conflict, he tracks Tatewaki, while a mysterious, white-hooded figure seems to hunt them both. By tale’s end, no one is who they seemed to be, and the truth is far more personal than anyone suspected. Director Masahiro Shinoda’s Samurai Spy, filled with clan intrigue, ninja spies, and multiple double crosses, marks a bold stylistic departure from swordplay film convention.
When the man who seduced the famous painter Otoko as a teenager--and then wrote a bestselling novel about it--reappears in her life, her pupil--and lesbian lover--hatches a plot to destroy the man and his family.
This is the sequel to Jose Torres (1959), the portrayal of Puerto Rican boxer Jose Torres, who won a silver medal in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. We follow Torres from his training in preparation to challenge world lightweight champion Willie Pastrano, to the match and Torres’ victory in 1965. The contrast between the nervous Torres before the match, filmed in painstaking detail, and the first round, filmed in one shot, is striking.
A look inside the world of a young Japanese woman during the time of the Tokyo Olympiad (1964), from French New Wave Left Bank director Chris Marker.
Taking its title from an archaic Japanese word meaning "ghost story," this anthology adapts four folk tales. A penniless samurai marries for money with tragic results. A man stranded in a blizzard is saved by Yuki the Snow Maiden, but his rescue comes at a cost. Blind musician Hoichi is forced to perform for an audience of ghosts. An author relates the story of a samurai who sees another warrior's reflection in his teacup.
As Japan is preparing to host the Olympics, a gang member wanting to go to America is sought after by the police after helping his friend conduct a robbery.
An entomologist suffers extreme psychological and sexual torture after being taken captive by the residents of a poor seaside village.
Muraki, a hardboiled Yakuza gangster, has just been released from prison after serving a sentence for murder. Revisiting his old gambling haunts, he meets Saeko, a striking young upper-class woman who is out seeking thrills, and whose presence adds spice to the staid masculine underworld rituals. Muraki becomes her mentor while simultaneously coping with the shifts of power that have affected the gangs while he was interred. When he notices a rogue, drug-addicted young punk hanging around the gambling dens, he realizes that Saeko's insatiable lust for intense pleasures may be leading her to self-destruction.
A young woman (Dan) who worked as a prostitute in the days following World War II finds herself sexually dissatisfied with her husband and contemplates returning to an old lover who comes back into her life.
Assassination begins with the events of 1853 when "four black ships" anchored at Edo Bay, sparking civil unrest and the major political manoeuvring that saw the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. At a time when assassination had become a disturbing political tool, Shinoda's film follows Hachiro Kiyokawa, an ambitious, masterless samurai whose allegiances drift dangerously between the Shogunate and the Emperor.
A day in the life of Ako, a 16 year old Japanese girl, and her friends and co-workers. An alarm clock wakes her in a dorm; she gets ready for work and travels to a large bakery. We see her with friends, chatting and laughing, as well as working. They go out, seven of them jammed in an old Pontiac: bowling, then to an amusement park, then driving around. Car trouble may put her at risk. Is she going to be okay?
Mototsugu is the younger son of Akira Sakawa, a director of an advertising agency whose mother, Nobuko, is ill with cancer of the liver. His elder brother, Ichiro, works at the Bank of Japan whose wife, Masuko, is from a very high-class family. Mototsugu becomes disgusted with such strait-laced living and leaves home to marry Yoshiko, a blind masseuse, and they live in a small apartment near a pinball parlor where he works.
Kenichi Horie is determined to challenge his family, the law and the nature crossing the Pacific to America in a small sailboat. Despite his careful planning many unforeseen events will test his determination.
In this Japanese drama, a dry goods merchant's daughter is surprised to discover that she has a twin sister. In rural Japan it was thought that twins bring bad luck, so the sister was abandoned at birth. Later her parents tell her that her sister was kidnapped. The woman doesn't believe this and when she eventually meets her twin, both women are involved in love affairs. The merchant's daughter is seeing an educated fellow. Trouble ensues when she begins suspecting that he may be more interested in her sister.
As her husband Eiichi becomes more entangled in his life as businessman, Naoko looks for ways to expand her own life even as her husband's life shrinks in scope and intimacy. She finds new interests, new love, and a greater sense of her place in the world.
Takashi Fujiki stars as a rebel in this drama about life on the Yokohama waterfront by New Wave director Masahiro Shinoda. The rebel works as an errand boy for a shipping company and vents his frustrations by plucking on the guitar. His interpretations of popular trends in music are sometimes right-on, and sometimes not exactly. Bereft of his guitar, the rebel's modes of expression are not as effective in generating interest as the Yokohama docks themselves, a fascinating world in their own right.
A young woman arrives at a resort and is soon pursued by a young man. Initially, he appears to be infatuated with her, but it becomes clear he simply wants to seduce her.
On his deathbed, a wealthy businessman announces that his fortune is to be split equally among his three illegitimate children, whose whereabouts are unknown to his family and colleagues. A bevy of lawyers and associates scheme to procure the money for themselves, enlisting the aid of impostors and blackmail.
Love at Twenty unites five directors from five different countries to present their different perspectives on what love really is at the age of 20. The episodes are united with the score of Georges Delerue and still photos of Henri Cartier-Bresson.
A reckless student contemplates terrorism in a prescient film that confirmed Shinoda as a fearless member of Shochiku’s iconoclastic New Wave. At the height of student protests, Shimojo (Shinichiro Mikami) takes his aggressions to another level, beset by seemingly insoluble feelings of alienation.
Tane, the lady proprietor of an inn for amorous couples, lives there with her three children. When her eldest daughter loses her fiancé due to the fact her mother is a mistress, her despair drives her to become a cabaret hostess.
Two brothers compete for the amorous favors of a young woman during a seaside summer of gambling, boating, and drinking.
