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Japanese Cinema
in issue 62
Japanese Cinema's Uncommon Man: Tatsuya Nakadai's Dissidents, Outcasts, and Shadow Warriors — "Like Hollywood's new postwar men, he offered a multifaceted, ambivalent masculinity far from monolithic wartime ideals."
in issue 57
Sansho the Bailiff on DVD — "Opens like a darkling fairy tale . . ."
in issue 52
Notes on Naruse: An Auteur Ascends — Pitch-black pessimism, unsparing emotional truths, and women on the verge
Epic Sweep: On Kurosawa’s Sprawling Red Beard — This one’s got it all, including the kitchen sink
in issue 49
The Cross and the Ukelele: Seijun Suzuki’s Princess Raccoon — Suzuki blows morning glories
in issue 48
Train to Somewhere: Hou Hsiao-hsien Pays Sweet Homage to Ozu in Café Lumière — Hou honors the master while remaining true to his own vision
in issue 47
Talking to Hirokazu Kore-eda: On Maborosi, Nobody Knows, and Other Pleasures — “I simply want to look at people as they are.”
in issue 45
Straying Man: Kurosawa's Stray Dog on DVD — Tokyo steams, Mifune screams, Shimura beams
in issue 36
The Japanese Pink Film: Tandem, The Bedroom, and The Dream of Garuda on DVD — All jargon and no authenticity?
in issue 35
Beautiful Mystery and I Like You … I Like You Very Much on DVD — The DVDs of these two rare gay pink films could use some extras and better source prints, but at least they’re here!
in issue 34
Gore Galore: Audition — Takashi Miike's notorious film has earned both awards and mass walkouts
in issue 33
Blood Spear, Mt. Fuji: Uchida Tomu’s Conflicted Comeback from Manchuria — Resurrection and renewal in postwar Japanese cinema, as seen through Tomu’s 1955 masterpiece
Gohatto — or the End of Oshima Nagisa? — Truly subversive or mere cinematic "seasoning," in the director’s own phrase?
in issue 31
Yasujiro Ozu's Good Morning — Schoolboys on strike, farting contests, and a mysteriously acquired washer make up the world of this 1959 Japanese classic
Masterpieces of Japanese Silent Cinema — Japanese silent films are no longer silent in this fabulous — and expensive — DVD-ROM
in issue 30
Three rare Kurosawas on VHS — Tubercular yakuza, scandalous artists, and postwar paranoids duke it out with the world
in issue 28
Teshigahara's Woman in the Dunes — The cruelty and clarity of life in a sand pit in Japan, circa 1964
in issue 26
Tragic Poignancy: Kenji Mizoguchi's The Loyal 47 Ronin — Mizoguchi's legendary version of Chushingura is finally available in a sparkling DVD transfer
in issue 22
The Spirit Moves: The World of Kenji Mizoguchi — Mizoguchi, with Ozu and Kurosawa one of the three undisputed masters from the golden age of Japanese cinema, was born in 1898 in the middle class district of Hongo, in Tokyo. Two events occurred when the future director was seven that may have played a pivotal role in the kinds of films he would make. In the first, his family's fortunes were reversed when his overly ambitious father lost their money in a failed business scheme. In the second, which resulted from the first, his 14-year-old sister Suzu was put up for adoption and eventually sold to a geisha house.
Brought Low by Life: Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu —
The Life of Oharu (1952) is a tragedy with few peers in or out of the cinema; it's 137 minutes of almost unrelieved grimness, made unsettlingly real by the director's ravishing pictorialism and above all by the performance of Kinuyo Tanaka as a woman who falls from a respected member of the Imperial Japanese Court to a broken-down whore and beggar ravaged by disease.
in issue 21
Akira Kurosawa — Akira Kurosawa has been seen as one of the three components of a kind of Holy Trinity of golden-age Japanese auteurs, with Ozu reckoned as the contemplative Father; Mizoguchi as transcendent Holy Spirit; and Kurosawa; nicknamed "the Emperor," in the role of Son. Such comparisons, of course, are more convenient than sensible, since the similarities between these men, particularly in their scathing critiques of the rigid norms of postwar Japanese society and their existentialist bent, are as great as their differences.
in issue 17
The Seven Samurai — This epic set in the 16th century deals with war, honor, courage, and yes, that homo subtext ever present in male bonding movies — punctuated by Toshiro Mifune's enthralling butt-baring performance!
OF RELATED INTEREST
Japan's first film actress: Tokuko Nagai Takagi (1891 – 1919) — This forgotten star was caught up — and perhaps crushed — by larger historical forces
A Brief History of Hollywood Yellowface — The history of blackface has been well documented in American film criticism; the history of yellowface has received much less critical attention, and considerably less public censure
Dis-Orientation: Japan from a Western Viewpoint in Topsy-Turvy and The Mikado — If "Asian face" isn't bad enough, how about names like Nanki-Poo and Yum Yum?
