Our friends at Film at Lincoln Center is generously extending free tickets to Scarlet by Mamoru Hosoda (Summer Wars, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and Digimon: The Movie) to followers of JapanCulture•NYC. The screening, part of this year’s New York Film Festival, will take place Wednesday, October 8, 2025 at 9:00 p.m., so act quickly! The screening will feature a Q&A with Hosoda. To redeem your free tickets, please visit this special promo link from Film at Lincoln Center. PLEASE NOTE: If the ticket reservation page indicates a price, click the PROMO button on the top-right portion of the screen (to the left of the shopping cart icon) and enter Promo Code 2840.

Refunds cannot be issued on previously purchased tickets. All tickets are subject to availability. Please arrive 15 minutes before the screening.

Still from *Scarlet*, a Sony Pictures Classic Release

About Scarlet

Mamoru Hosoda | 2025 | 111 minutes | Japanese with English subtitles

In his towering new achievement, animator-director Mamoru Hosoda transports viewers to jaw-dropping fantasy worlds, combining weighty Shakespearean themes with wondrous anime imagery as he conjures a phantasmal riff on Hamlet.

After attempting to avenge the brutal death of her father at the hands of her power-hungry uncle Claudius in 16th-century Elsinore, the princess Scarlet awakes in the Land of the Dead. In this forbidding purgatory of mountains and desert, governed by a powerful godlike dragon, Scarlet must fight for her own soul and body while still vowing to defeat Claudius. Yet her plans are complicated by the presence of the handsome Hijiri, a saintly hospital nurse from our contemporary world who refuses to accept that he’s dead—or that revenge can end history’s cycles of violence.

Hosoda has made an epic fantasy that weighs the human impulse for revenge against the need for care, forgiveness, and survival.

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Susan McCormac 7/4/25 Susan McCormac 7/4/25

Japan Society’s Film Festival Begins July 10

JAPAN CUTS 2025 Powered by GU

Thursday, July 10 through Sunday, July 20

Japan Society – 333 E. 47th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

North America’s largest festival of contemporary Japanese film returns for its 18th year this summer at Japan Society! In the span of eleven days from July 10 through 20, audiences will be treated to 30 curated films from across Japan featuring major award winners, indie darlings, up-and-coming filmmakers, restorations, documentaries, experimental and short films, and anime. JAPAN CUTS Powered by GU is a showcase of the latest in Japanese cinema, featuring both today’s most popular actors and directors as well as tomorrow’s pioneering talent.

Festival Highlights

JAPAN CUTS Powered by GU will present legendary director Kiyoshi Kurosawa with the CUT ABOVE Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film, host the premieres of his new film Cloud and recent remake of Serpent’s Path, as well as showcase revivals of License to Live and a new 4K restoration of the original Serpent’s Path.
A special screening of Yasuhiro Aoki’s ChaO in collaboration with GKIDS on Opening Night. JAPAN CUTS is presenting ChaO before it goes to theaters in Japan in August.
Yuumi Kawai, Japan Academy Film Prize Best Actress winner, appearing in-person for the North American Premiere of A Girl Named Ann and the U.S. Premiere of She Taught Me Serendipity.
A Closing Night screening and shochu reception following the U.S. Premiere of The Spirit of Japan, featuring Yamatozakura Distillery and the film’s director, Joseph Overbey, in attendance.

Admission Information & Pricing

Screenings with Receptions: $26 Nonmembers | $18 Members | $23 seniors and students
Screenings with Q&As: $24 Nonmembers | $17 Member | $22 seniors and students
All Other Screenings: $20 Nonmembers | $14 Members | $18 seniors and students
Short Films: $10 Nonmembers | Free for Members | $5 seniors and students
All-Access Pass: SOLD OUT

Become a member to save 20% on all tickets and reserve free tickets for the SHORT CUTS short films presentation.

Waitlists for Sold-Out Screenings

Those wishing to attend sold-out screenings can visit the Japan Society Box Office in person. There is no online or email waitlist for sold-out screenings. A physical waitlist will begin one hour before each sold-out event. Ten minutes prior to the screening, any available tickets will be released and can be purchased by those present in the order in which they arrived. Please note, there is no guarantee that tickets will be available for sold-out events.

Schedule

Thursday, July 10 at 6:00 p.m.

ChaO – SOLD OUT

Dir. Yasuhiro Aoki | 2025 | 90 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Ouji Suzuka, Anna Yamada

Special Screening—Followed by Opening Night Reception

Yasuhiro Aoki’s debut feature joins the lineage of Studio 4ºC’s (Mind Game, Tekkonkinkreet) innovative oeuvre, formulating an idiosyncratic Andersen fairy tale set in the cyberpunk mélange of near-future Shanghai where humans coexist with mermen. Ordinary salaryman Stephan is catapulted to instant fame when he is suddenly proposed to by Chao, the mermaid princess. Entrusted with the future of human-mermen relations, Stephan is rushed into the pairing, amid a flurry of politicking and diplomacy, and reluctantly agrees to marry the fish princess. But despite the makings of a political marriage, the effervescent Chao’s ardent affection sparks genuine connection. With its off-kilter brand of humor, unique kineticism, and superb hand-drawn art style—purportedly using more than 100,000 hand-drawn frames—Aoki’s ChaO is a fantastical spectacle with a deluge of heartfelt passion, produced over the course of seven years.

Friday, July 11 at 6:00 p.m.

The Real You

Dir. Yuya Ishii | 2024 | 122 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Sosuke Ikematsu, Ayaka Miyoshi, Koshi Mizukami, Taiga Nakano

North American Premiere

Introduced by author Keiichiro Hirano and followed by a book signing

Based on a novel by the Akutagawa-Prize winning Keiichiro Hirano, The Real You is a sci-fi mystery set in a disturbing future that feels far too real. Following the death of his mother, Sakuya Ishikawa (Sosuke Ikematsu) creates a “Virtual Figure” based on her memories to come to terms with his loss and unravel the mysteries of her passing. While he finds solace in this AI simulacrum, will he find answers—and will they be the answers he seeks? A bleak parable for our own world injected with the same sharp satire as Black Mirror, The Real You casts a cutting eye on artificial intelligence, automation, gig work, influencer culture, and tech billionaires run amok.

Attendees will be able to purchase copies of Keiichiro Hirano’s books at this screening or bring books from home for a signing session following the screening.

Friday, July 11 at 9:00 p.m.

The Gesuidouz

Dir. Kenichi Ugana | 2024 | 94 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Natsuko, Leo Imamura, Yutaka Kyan, Rocko Zevenbergen, Yuya Endo

U.S. Premiere

Musician Hanako (Natsuko) believes she has one year left to live and embarks with her horror-themed punk band on a quest to write the world’s best punk song before she dies at the same age as her heroes Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison. An offbeat, delightful, and deadpan musical comedy from cult filmmaker Kenichi Ugana, The Gesuidouz follows Hanako and her band of misfits’ creative process all while balancing banal life and daily chores in a rural farming village. Overflowing with visual and aural charm, it’s impossible not to cheer for Hanako to live her punk dream.

Saturday, July 12 at 12:30 p.m.

SHORT CUTS – Four short films: FLOW, The Tree of Sinners, End of Dinosaurs, and I Am Not Invisible

FLOW
Dir. Shoko Tamai | 2025 | 5 min. | English | With Dandara Amorim Veiga, Niara Hardister, Minami Ando, Xiaoxiao Cao, Isaiah Newby, Maxfield Haynes
New York Premiere
Introduction by director Shoko Tamai
The word “taboo” comes from the French Polynesian word “tapua.” It means “sacred blood.” FLOW is an experimental short film that honors the taboo inside every woman, the cycle of the moon, and the power of creation.
The Tree of Sinners
Dir. Rii Ishihara and Hiroyuki Onogawa | 2024 | 25 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Sumire, Masatoshi Kihara, Ann Nishihara, Rii Ishihara
North American Premiere
Husband-and-wife team Rii Ishihara and Hiroyuki Onogawa (composer of August in the Water) craft a surreal Taisho fantasy set in a remote mansion, where a maid is forbidden to enter the room of her master’s sick wife. Visually arresting, the pair’s second medium-length work is a beautifully dark fable.
End of Dinosaurs
Dir. Kako Annika Esashi | 2024 | 28 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Kako Annika Esashi, Shota Imai, Leica Sasafu
U.S. Premiere
A young community organizer, a free-spirited girl, and a drag queen set out to challenge a dinosaur-ridden town’s attempt at redevelopment. A delightfully quirky and poignant film from Japanese American filmmaker Kako Annika Esashi. Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the PIA Film Festival.
I Am Not Invisible
Dir. Yuki York | 2024 | 24 min. | in Tagalog, English, and Japanese with English subtitles
U.S. Premiere
Winner of the 2024 PIA Grand Prize, Yuki York’s self-reflexive documentary is a personal essay, shot in an impoverished district of the Philippines, deemed “invisible” by York’s on-screen text. Tracing York’s roots, I Am Not Invisible asks residents innocuous questions about their lives to understand them better, in turn offering to understand York’s own Filipina grandmother better.

Saturday, July 12 at 3:00 p.m.

Yasuko, Songs of Days Past

North American Premiere

Helmed by ’80s auteur Kichitaro Negishi (Distant Thunder, Detective Story), Yasuko is a resplendent Taisho-set period drama penned by Seijun Suzuki scribe Yozo Tanaka, whose past works made up some of the most decadent evocations of Taisho through the visual triumphs of Suzuki’s independent triumvirate of Zigeunerweisen, Kagero-za, and Yumeji. Set in the younger days of ill-fated modernist poet Chuya Nakahara (“Japan’s Rimbaud”), Yasuko captures the prodigy’s early love affair with aspiring actress Yasuko Hasegawa (Suzu Hirose) and the ensuing entanglements when she falls for literary critic Hideo Kobayashi. Negishi’s lush melodrama, his first film in 15 years, burrows deep into the tumultuous entwinement of their bohemian lives, while endowing Hirose’s Yasuko with a depth that exceeds the tired narrative of literary muses.

Saturday, July 12 at 6:30 p.m.

She Taught Me Serendipity

Dir. Akiko Ohku | 2025 | 127 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Riku Hagiwara, Yuumi Kawai, Aoi Ito, Kodai Kurosaki

U.S. Premiere

Q&A with Yuumi Kawai and Reception

Director Akiko Ohku (Tremble All You Want) shifts away from her novel engagements with the neurotic interiorities of young working women to explore the life of college student Konishi (Riku Hagiwara), an anxiety-ridden loner who brandishes an umbrella on sunlit days. Through a progression of coincidences, Konishi forms a bond with classmate Hana (Yuumi Kawai), whose equally vulnerable and eclectic state of mind suggests a perfect match, but in his utter infatuation, Konishi’s self-involved disposition places enormous neglect on friends and co-workers. Sensory and sonically attuned, even balletic at times, She Taught Me Serendipity inventively constructs an approximation of Konishi’s psyche and shines in its open-hearted confessions, soul-baring and poignant in their nature.

Sunday, July 13 at 12:30 p.m.

Kowloon Generic Romance

Dir. Chihiro Ikeda | 2025 | 120 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Riho Yoshioka, Koshi Mizukami

World Premiere

Perhaps nostalgia is nothing more than another form of love. Reiko Kujirai (Riho Yoshioka), who works at a real estate agency in the nostalgic town of Kowloon Walled City, is in love with her senior, Hajime Kudo (Koshi Mizukami). Hajime knows every corner of Kowloon and often takes Reiko to his favorite places, yet the distance between them remains the same. Despite this, Reiko finds comfort in her everyday life, surrounded by dear friends like Yaomay (Minami Umezawa), the shoemaker owner, and Xiaohei (Kotone Hanase), who works part-time at various stores across the town. One day, Reiko is startled when Tao Gwen (Shuntaro Yanagi), a café worker at Goldfish Teahouse, mistakes her for Hajime’s lover. She also stumbles upon a photograph—one that shows Hajime with a woman who looks exactly like her. The forgotten memories of her past, the mystery behind her duplicate self, and the hidden truths buried within Kowloon . . . As the past and present collide, romance becomes the key to unraveling the unknown. Jun Mayuzuki’s acclaimed science fiction mystery manga comes to life!

Sunday, July 13 at 3:00 p.m.

Michiyuki – Voices of Time

Dir. Hiromichi Nakao | 2024 | 79 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Daichi Watanabe, Kanjuro Kiritake, Hiromichi Hosoma

World Premiere of Final Version

Shot in Nara, Hiromichi Nakao’s sophomore feature is an elegant meditation on time and memory with sublime black-and-white cinematography, while also mixing hand-drawn animation with 8mm and digital camerawork. Moving into an old house in the rural countryside, videographer Komai converses with its former owner Umemoto and the town’s inhabitants as he renovates the premises; their discussions draw from personal memories to discuss histories, morphology, cartographies, and the passage of time, reflecting upon the changing tides of tradition and progress within generational spans of the town’s history.

Sunday, July 13 at 5:30 p.m.

A Girl Named Ann

Dir. Yu Irie | 2024 | 113 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Yuumi Kawai, Jiro Sato, Goro Inagaki

North American Premiere

Q&A with Yuumi Kawai

Starring Yuumi Kawai, who won Best Actress at the Japan Academy Film Prize for this stunning performance, A Girl Named Ann tells the story of a teenage dropout attempting to rebuild her life. Ann (Kawai) tries to find hope amid abuse and addiction, and it takes the hand of a Tokyo detective (Sato) to help lift her from the depths. Yet what are the motives of this outstretched hand, and can a single girl climb back to society when the world itself has turned its back? Inspired by a painfully true story, A Girl Named Ann is a testament to individual perseverance and condemnation of larger societal failures, written and directed by the lauded Yu Irie.

Monday, July 14 at 6:00 p.m.

Teki Cometh

Dir. Daihachi Yoshida | 2024 | 108 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Kyozo Nagatsuka, Kumi Takiuchi, Yuumi Kawai, Asuka Kurosawa

New York Premiere

Gisuke (Kyozo Nagatsuka) is a retired college professor who lives a quiet life alone, until one day he finds a post on the internet about an approaching “enemy,” and the world around him begins to melt into paranoia, dream, delusion, and fantasy. Director Daihachi Yoshida (Kiba: The Fangs of Fiction) presents a beautiful, thought-provoking, and arresting film pulled from what many considered an unfilmable novel by Tsutsui Yasutaka. Stunningly lensed and deeply affecting, Teki Cometh poses challenging questions about aging, mortality, and the faulty relationship between memory and reality without offering any easy answers. Widely acclaimed in Japan, Teki Cometh won Best Film, Best Director, and Best Actor at last year’s Tokyo International Film Festival.

Monday, July 14 at 8:30 p.m.

A Samurai in Time

Dir. Junichi Yasuda | 2024 | 131 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Makiya Yamaguchi, Norimasa Fuke, Yuno Sakura

New York Premiere

The biggest Japanese indie phenomenon since One Cut of the Dead! This low-budget film financed entirely by director Junichi Yasuda was initially shown in only one theater, but through word of mouth it grew into a sensation across Japan and ultimately took home Best Film at this year’s Japan Academy Film Prize. At the end of the Edo period, a flash of lightning sends a samurai into the present day, and to survive, he takes a job as an actor in jidaigeki movies. This fish-out-of-water comedy is a love letter to moviemaking and an especially heart-felt tribute to Japan’s jidaigeki industry.

Tuesday, July 15 at 6:00 p.m.

What Should We Have Done?

Dir. Tomoaki Fujino | 2024 | 101 min. | Japanese with English subtitles

In 1983, director Tomoaki Fujino’s 20-something sister Masako began exhibiting signs of schizophrenia. Yet his parents—both in research and medical positions—responded by actively denying anything was wrong and refusing to treat her. Recording his sister from 2001 until her death in 2021, Fujino chronicles his family saga in a deeply personal trove of conversations, family scenes, episodes, and meetings, all documented on a handheld consumer-grade camera. What Should We Have Done? actively explores and confronts the cultural disparities associated with mental illness in Japan. Debuting at the 2024 Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival, Tomoaki Fujino’s independent sleeper hit poses a biting titular question, one that has yet to be resolved.

Tuesday, July 15 at 8:30 p.m.

See You Tomorrow

Dir. Saki Michimoto | 2024 | 99 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Makoto Tanaka, Ryota Matsuda, Risa Shigematsu

North American Premiere

The debut feature from director Saki Michimoto is an Osaka-set slice-of-life work, revolving around talented art school student Nao, who roams the streets, framing everything in her line of vision in the viewfinder of her camera. With graduation looming, Nao’s natural abilities, which vastly outshine her friends and classmates, bring promise of new opportunities but at the cost of leaving everything behind. A gentle coming-of-age drama, Michimoto’s See You Tomorrow is subtle and unassuming, quietly affirming the need to branch out and discover fulfillment for oneself.

Wednesday, July 16 at 6:00 p.m.

Cloud – SOLD OUT

Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa | 2024 | 124 min | Japanese with English subtitles | With Masaki Suda, Kotone Furukawa, Amane Okayama

New York Premiere

CUT ABOVE Award Ceremony—Q&A with Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Reception

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s third film in a prolific year, following the creative spurt of Chime and Serpent’s Path, shapes up to be a slow-burn techno-thriller, one which takes its name from today’s ubiquitous virtual cloud. Moonlighting as a black-market internet reseller for fake merchandise and products, factory worker Yoshii’s (Masaki Suda) get-rich-quick schemes and morally dubious actions seem to pay off when afforded the opportunity to move out to a remote, wooded lake house seemingly perfect for his business dealings. Rattled by strange incidents, however, Yoshii finds his errant ways catching up to him when unknown assailants target him. Kurosawa’s suspense-driven exercise in the action genre envisions the amplified ire of internet culture as a radicalized hydra of sprouting heads, amassing an anonymous network to quash its petty grievances. Kurosawa, as he so often does, masterfully finds terror in the mundane.

Thursday, July 17 at 6:00 p.m.

Serpent’s Path

Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa | 2024 |113 min. | French with English subtitles | With Ko Shibasaki, Damien Bonnard, Mathieu Amalric, Hidetoshi Nishijima

East Coast Premiere

Q&A with Kiyoshi Kurosawa

A higher budget remake of Kurosawa’s 1998 straight-to-video effort, Serpent’s Path presents a variation on the original, supplanting Tokyo for the overcast banlieues of Paris while swapping genders with its clinical protagonist and adding new narrative depths despite overtly, if not eerily, echoing its predecessor. Kidnapping an associate of a purported child-trafficking organization ominously named The Circle, Albert (Damien Bonnard) seeks retribution for the death of his child and enacts his cruel vengeance with the aid of physician Sayoko (Ko Shibasaki). The snaking narrative of Kurosawa’s psychological experiment has been told once before, yet its pathway differs ever so slightly. With haunting precision, Serpent’s Path suggests that the destination remains incontrovertibly the same.

Thursday, July 17 at 9:30 p.m.

License to Live

Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa | 1998 | 109 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Hidetoshi Nishijima, Koji Yakusho, Shun Sugata

Archival 35mm Presentation

Introduction by Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s fascinating reconstruction of a 1970 Jason Robards picture—Sam Peckinpah’s frontier western The Ballad of Cable Hogue, to be exact—lifts the framework of Bloody Sam’s uncharacteristically subdued hangout film while substituting the twilight days of the Old West for 1990s Tokyo. Awakening from a ten-year coma, 24-year-old Yutaka (Drive My Car’s Hidetoshi Nishijima in his first lead role) finds that his family has separated in the decade-long interim. Expressing disinterest in the time lost, the lackadaisical Yutaka, with the help of his father’s old college friend Fujimori (Koji Yakusho), resolves to establish a pony ranch on a plot once owned by his family, forming an outpost which welcomes a community of outsiders. Irreverent, wryly comic, and heartfelt, License to Live is a marked departure from Kurosawa’s V-Cinema and horror fare, constituting an early show of the filmmaker’s remarkable adaptability and versatile range.

Friday, July 18 at 6:00 p.m.

Japanese Avant-Garde Pioneers

Dir. Amélie Ravalec | 2024 | 100 min. | English and Japanese with English subtitles | With Nobuyoshi Araki, Tadanori Yokoo, Keiichi Tanaami

New York Premiere

Q&A with director Amélie Ravalec

Exploring the explosion of postwar radical art in the 1960s and the rise of Japanese avant-garde, Japanese Avant-Garde Pioneers covers the multitude of then-burgeoning experimentations in the art form, spanning across the disciplines of photography, film, graphic design, theater, and performance. With the participation of major figures in these revolutionary movements—Hosoe, Araki, Moriyama, Yokoo, to name a few—Amélie Ravalec’s documentary is an enthralling glimpse into the outsider art of Japan’s underground movements.

Friday, July 18 at 8:30 p.m.

Blazing Fists

Dir. Takashi Miike | 2025 | 119 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Danhi Kinoshita, Kaname Yoshizawa, Gackt, Anna Tsuchiya

U.S. Premiere

From iconoclastic director Takashi Miike and with a cast including pop stars Gackt and Anna Tsuchiya, Blazing Fists is the story of two men in a juvenile reformatory determined to redeem themselves through a fighting tournament. Can they change their destinies through their physical mettle, or will the weight of their pasts weigh down their futures? Blazing Fists is a powerfully human film about loyalty and friendship, filled with exuberant outbursts of Miike’s hallmark action, humor, and violence.

Saturday, July 19 at 12:30 p.m.

Promised Land

Dir. Masashi Iijima | 2023 | 89 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Rairu Sugita, Kantaro

New York Theatrical Premiere

Masashi Iijima’s feature film directorial debut is based on an award-winning 1983 novel by Kazuichi Iijima. Set in a rural mountain town, it follows two matagi (traditional Japanese hunters) as they embark on a bear hunt in secret, preserving their custom despite a governmental ban. This tense and austere film told through long shots and minimal dialogue presents a very personal story about the conflict between tradition and progress and allows the audience ample time to reflect in wide stretches of silence amid snowy mountain vistas.

Saturday, July 19 at 2:30 p.m.

My Sunshine

Dir. Hiroshi Okuyama | 2024 | 90 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Sosuke Ikematsu, Keitatsu Koshiyama, Kiara Nakanishi

New York Premiere

On the snowy island of Hokkaido, a young hockey player named Takuya (Keitatsu Koshiyama) becomes transfixed by the figure skaters who share the rink, particularly Sakura (Kiara Nakanishi), a rising star from Tokyo. Her coach, Arakawa (Sosuke Ikematsu), takes an interest in Takuya, seeing himself in the young boy. He pairs the two up and trains them as an ice-dancing duo. Tentatively at first, they grow closer and form a deep bond, but as unspoken feelings begin to surface, the harmony of the trio begins to shake. Intimately lensed and told through a striking kaleidoscope of winter hues, My Sunshine is an aching film that captivates the audience with a nostalgia for both the wonders and pain of young love while at the same time confronting the deeper subjects of Japan’s attitudes toward masculinity and homosexuality.

Saturday, July 19 at 4:30 p.m.

So Beautiful, Wonderful and Lovely

Dir. Megumi Okawara | 2025 | 67 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Megumi Okawara, Shin Namura, Naoko Miya

North American Premiere

Q&A with director Megumi Okawara

A frenetic display of heartbreak filled with whimsical leanings, So Beautiful, Wonderful and Lovely finds school janitor Nozomi Haruta (Megumi Okawara) at her wits’ end when her boyfriend unceremoniously dumps her to marry another woman. Struggling to rationalize the situation, she behaves erratically, photobombing his wedding pictures and fantasizing a Castella version of her boyfriend. Imbued with a sense of real youthful energy at its core due to its rapid-fire demonstration of versatile editing and playfully absurd humor, writer/director/editor and lead actress Megumi Okawara’s So Beautiful overflows with creative ambition.

Love Letter © Fuji Television Network. Inc.

Saturday, July 19 at 6:30 p.m.

Dir. Shunji Iwai | 1995 | 117 min. | With Miho Nakayama, Etsushi Toyokawa, Miki Sakai, Takashi Kashiwabara

30th Anniversary—North American Premiere of 4K Restoration

The feature film debut of ’90s auteur Shunji Iwai is a swell of desiderium and emerging memory, an epistolary melodrama which lightly evokes Proust’s madeleine in the blanche wintertide of Otaru. Framed within the back-and-forth correspondence of heartbroken Hiroko and librarian Itsuki—a widowed fiancée and the former classmate of her deceased lover (Miho Nakayama in dual roles)—Love Letter focuses on buried recollections as their letters uncover Itsuki’s school-age memories of Hiroko’s dead fiancé. Unapologetic in its soft-focus lyricism, Love Letter brims with unbridled emotion, buoyed by its dreamy cinematography, mnemonic constructions, and amber shades. Beloved throughout Asia, Iwai’s breakthrough would capture the hearts of an entire generation, swept over by its sincere convictions and the late Miho Nakayama’s eternal mountainside cry “O genki desu ka?”

Saturday, July 19 at 9:00 p.m.

Serpent’s Path – 4K Restoration

Dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa | 1998 | 85 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Sho Aikawa, Teruyuki Kagawa, Yurei Yanagi

North American Premiere of 4K Restoration

Given the chance to shoot two films back-to-back within the same two-week span, Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 1998 V-Cinema production, along with its sister film Eyes of the Spider, hinges on the same premise: a man seeking revenge for the murder of his child. With a detached, observational style, Kurosawa relays the grim chain of events with muted horror as Miyashita (Teruyuki Kagawa) and his calculating friend Nijima methodically kidnap and torture a yakuza thought to be involved in the brutal killing of his young daughter. The blind search for vengeance leads them down a convoluted path, ravaging through a string of connected associates. Operating on a low budget, Kurosawa’s taut psychological thriller plumbs the depths of this fanatical obsession, resigning to a goal which becomes ever more obscure.

Sunday, July 20 at 12:30 p.m.

Gridman Universe

Dir. Akira Amemiya | 2023 | 118 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Hikaru Midorikawa, Yuya Hirose, Yume Miyamoto, Soma Saito, Junya Enoki

North American Theatrical Premiere

Studio Trigger, one of the most explosive anime studios in Japan, reimagined Tsuburaya Productions’ classic tokusatsu series Gridman: The Hyper Agent in honor of its 25th anniversary with the anime series SSSS.Gridman. Following the success of SSSS.Gridman and its sequel SSSS.Dynazenon, Trigger now presents an all-new big screen spectacle celebrating the tokusatsu and kaiju genres and injecting them with their trademark over-the-top, stylish action. Perfect for fans of these genres and deeply rewarding for followers of Trigger’s previous Gridman series, Gridman Universe is a dimension-spanning adventure where the fate of more than one world hangs in the balance.

Sunday, July 20 at 3:00 p.m.

Kaiju Guy!

Dir. Junichiro Yagi | 2024 | 80 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Gumpy

North American Premiere

Ichiro Yamada (Japanese comedian Gumpy) works in the Seki City tourism department, and one day he’s ordered to produce a “local movie,” a common Japanese promotional gimmick designed to highlight local hotspots and increase visitors. However, Yamada has doubts about the mayor’s plan and proposes something else: a local kaiju movie. Heads butt, emotions clash, and a monster is unleashed. An absolutely delightful, heartfelt, and rewarding comedy, Kaiju Guy! will make you roar.

Sunday, July 20 at 5:00 p.m.

The Spirit of Japan

Dir. Joseph Overbey | 2024 | 48 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Tekkan Wakamatsu, Kazunari Wakamatsu, Ranko Wakamatsu

World Premiere

Q&A with director Joseph Overbey and producer Stephen Lyman and followed by a reception featuring shochu from Yamatozakura Distillery

The Spirit of Japan is the story of the Wakamatsu family, who have been distilling sweet potato shochu by hand at their Yamatozakura Distillery in Kagoshima Prefecture since the 1850s. This documentary follows fifth generation master brewer Tekkan Wakamatsu as he takes 175-year-old traditions passed down by his father, Kazunari Wakamatsu, and strives to adapt them to a rapidly changing market driven by commodification and mass consumerism. Director Joseph Overbey lived with the Wakamatsu family as he shot The Spirit of Japan, offering a rarified look inside the shochu-making production, an intimate portrait of family succession, and an unflinching glimpse into the harsh realities of preserving tradition in the modern world.

Susan McCormac 12/12/23 Susan McCormac 12/12/23

JapanCulture•NYC x Japan Society Ticket Giveaway!

🚨🎟️GIVEAWAY ALERT ‼️

We're teaming up with our friends at Japan Society Film for a ticket giveaway to the screening of Dogra Magra on Friday, December 15 at 9:00 p.m.!

Japan Society Film is generously giving five pairs of tickets to this Japanese mystery fiction fantasy extravaganza by Toshio Matsumoto! That means five winners will each take a +1 to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Matsumoto's final feature!

DETAILS

🎥 Dogra Magra

📅 Friday, December 15

⏰ 9:00pm

📍 Japan Society – 333 E. 47th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

HOW TO ENTER

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☠️ Deadline: Thursday, December 14 at 12:00pm

🏆 Winners announced Thursday, December 14 by 6:00pm

ABOUT DOGRA MAGRA

Based on one of the Sandaikisho (Three Great Occult Books) of Japanese mystery fiction, Toshio Matsumoto’s fourth and final feature adapts the unadaptable: a filmed version of surrealist 1935 avant-garde classic Dogra Magra written by Kyusaku Yumeno—the famous detective novelist whose pen name fittingly translates to “person who always dreams.”

In Taisho 15, the period’s final year, an amnesiac awakens in a sanatorium without recollection of his name or face. Forced to reconstruct his memory, the patient is accosted by two doctors (including one purported to be deceased) who relate his condition in differing fashions, complicating whether physicians are telling the truth or playing a Fowlesian godgame.

Working with frequent cinematographer Tatsuo Suzuki (Himiko, Pastoral: To Die in the Country), Matsumoto constructs a disorienting Jungian work, overwrought with conspiracies and intermingling tales. Delivering intra-womb fetuses, red herrings, and false revelations, Dogra Magra unfurls a complex tapestry of alternating histories—resulting in a whirlwind tragedy brought on by fantasies of eternal recurrence.

Dir. Toshio Matsumoto, 1988, 109 min., 35mm, color, in Japanese with live English subtitles. With Yoji Matsuda, Shijaku Katsura, Hideo Murota, Eri Misawa.

This screening is part of Japan Society’s current series Taisho Roman: Fever Dreams of the Great Rectitude, running through December 16. To see the remaining films and to purchase tickets, please visit Japan Society’s website.

Huge thanks to Japan Society, Japan Society Film, and Peter Tatara for making this giveaway possible.

Susan McCormac 11/14/23 Susan McCormac 11/14/23

Film at Lincoln Center to Spotlight Japan’s Cinematic Rebel

The Radical Cinema of Kijū Yoshida

Friday, December 1 through Friday, December 8

Walter Reade Theater – 165 W. 65th Street (unless otherwise noted)

Admission: $17 General Public | $14 Students, Seniors, individuals with disabilities | $12 Members

Film at Lincoln Center presents “The Radical Cinema of Kijū Yoshida,” a retrospective spotlighting the films of one of Japan’s greatest cinematic rebels. Running from December 1 through 8, all 16 films will be presented on 35mm or 16mm at Film at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, and Japan Society.

The retrospective presents the most comprehensive collection of Yoshida’s work ever screened in the United States. Most notably, the series will feature Yoshida’s famed political trilogy, which captures significant moments in 20th century Japanese history: Eros + Massacre (1968), regarded as his masterpiece; Heroic Purgatory (1970), a kaleidoscopic, mazelike memory piece about an atomic engineer whose past as a college-age revolutionary militant erupts into the present; and Coup d’état (1973), a spellbinding portrait of notorious militarist Ikki Kita.

To purchase tickets, please visit Film at Lincoln Center’s website. Use promo code OKADA to enjoy $5 off all ticket purchases.

Lineup

Good-for-Nothing
Friday, December 1 at 2:00 p.m.
Tuesday, December 5 at 8:45 p.m.

Yoshida’s debut feature vividly depicts the ennui and intellectual and spiritual restlessness of a generation of bourgeois youth in Tokyo at the dawn of the 1960s.

Blood Is Dry
Friday, December 1 at 4:15 p.m.
Saturday, December 2 at 8:30 p.m.

Yoshida’s satirical second feature again ferociously critiques Japanese society following its postwar reinvention as a capitalist giant.

Eros + Massacre
Friday, December 1 at 7:00 p.m.
Tuesday, December 5 at 2:00 p.m.

Among the greatest of all political films and perhaps the work that best embodies the spirit of Yoshida’s artistic project, Eros + Massacre is an epic, historiographic examination of the points of intersection between the domains of desire and politics.

Affair in the Snow
Saturday, December 2 at 1:00 p.m.

A love triangle plays out in the snow in Yoshida’s eleventh feature, a striking deconstruction of the melodrama.

Heroic Purgatory
Saturday, December 2 at 3:15 p.m.

The second film in a trilogy (inaugurated by Eros + Massacre) concerning 20th century Japanese history, Heroic Purgatory is a kaleidoscopic, mazelike memory piece that is perhaps Yoshida’s most recognizably avant-garde work.

The Affair
Saturday, December 2 at 6:00 p.m.
Wednesday, December 6 at 1:00 p.m.

Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – 144 W. 65th Street

Again using the melodrama genre as an instrument of oblique social critique, Yoshida’s ninth feature stars Mariko Okada as a woman trapped in a loveless marriage to a philandering businessman who finds herself mysteriously drawn toward an old lover of her deceased mother’s.

Akitsu Springs
Sunday, December 3 at 1:00 p.m.
Thursday, December 7 at 1:00 p.m.

The first great commercial success of his young career, Akitsu Springs is a tear-jerking romance that finds Yoshida working in color and in collaboration with his frequent star and lifelong filmmaking partner Mariko Okada (in her 100th on-screen appearance).

Wuthering Heights
Sunday, December 3 at 3:30 p.m.
Thursday, December 7 at 3:30 p.m.

Emily Brontë’s Gothic romance is transposed to feudal Japan for Yoshida’s powerfully stark, elemental take on the story.

18 Who Cause a Storm
Sunday, December 3 at 6:30 p.m.
Wednesday, December 6 at 3:15 p.m.

Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – 144 W. 65th Street

A group of migrant workers fed up with their being ruthlessly exploited by the society around them lash out in Yoshida’s rugged widescreen chronicle of proletarian unrest.

Women in the Mirror
Sunday, December 3 at 9:00 p.m.

In his final fiction feature, Yoshida returned to an old subject in his work: the unfathomable trauma known by Japan due to the United States’s dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Flame and Women
Tuesday, December 5 at 6:30 p.m.

Yoshida returned to the melodrama—this time synthesizing elements of the horror film in the process—with this chronicle of a woman’s suddenly swelling desire for her child’s biological father.

Coup d’état
Wednesday, December 6 at 6:30 p.m.

Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center – 144 W. 65th Street

The culminating film in the trilogy formed by Eros + Massacre and Heroic Purgatory, Yoshida’s 16th feature is a spellbinding portrait of notorious militarist Ikki Kita, whose 1936 attempt at staging a coup against the Japanese government would later serve as inspiration to the similarly controversial nationalist writer Yukio Mishima some years later.

A Promise
Wednesday, December 6 at 8:45 p.m. – Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Friday, December 8 at 9:00 p.m. – Japan Society

Yoshida came out of his feature filmmaking retirement with this typically idiosyncratic meditation on what was, at the time, a taboo topic: euthanasia.

Farewell to the Summer Light
Thursday, December 7 at 6:30 p.m.

A fascinating transitional film for Yoshida, Farewell to the Summer Light finds the restless iconoclast heading to Europe to tell the tale of an on-again-off-again romance between Naoko, a married expat who specializes in import-export (Mariko Okada), and Makoto (Tadashi Yokouchi), a Japanese scholar who is searching for a cathedral that served as the architectural inspiration for a church built in Nagasaki by Portuguese missionaries.

Confessions Among Actresses
Thursday, December 7 at 8:45 p.m.

Something like Yoshida’s response to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Confessions Among Actresses finds Yoshida teaming up with three prominent Japanese actresses—Mariko Okada, Ruriko Asaoka, and Ineko Arima, each renowned for playing eminently modern women who have been wronged by the men around them—to craft a fragmentary, perpetually shapeshifting work on the relationship between performance and trauma.

A Story Written with Water
Friday, December 8 at 6:00 p.m.

Japan Society – 333 E. 47th Street

Bearing a title inspired by John Keats’s epitaph and taken from the Yōjirō Ishizaka novel it adapts, Yoshida’s first independent film is a startling affair, depicting the unbreakable love of mother and child.

For full descriptions of the films and to learn more about Kijū Yoshida, please visit Film at Lincoln Center’s website.

Susan McCormac 11/2/23 Susan McCormac 11/2/23

Asia Society to Co-Host NYJCF

New York Japan CineFest 2023

Friday, November 3 from 6:30 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. (Opening reception)

Saturday, November 4 from 1:00 p.m. until 5:00 p.m. (Shodo performance)

Asia Society – 725 Park Avenue at 70th Street

Admission: $15 Adults | $8 Members

New York Japan CineFest, a film festival that introduces Japanese-themed short films, is celebrating its twelfth anniversary this weekend. The two-day event will present a total of16 short films and is co-hosted by Asia Society and Mar Creation in partnership with JICC-Japan Information and Culture Center (Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C.), Short Shorts Film Festival, Boston Japan Film Festival, Aichi International Women’s Film Festival, and Tokyo Independent Movie Festival.

Day One features seven short films selected by JICC and NYJCF; Day Two includes two programs: “Japanese Film Festivals” at 1:00 p.m. and “Long Story Short” at 3:30 p.m. “Japanese Film Festivals” consist of six short films in association with five Japanese film festivals such as Short Shorts Film Festival, which celebrated its 25th anniversary this year. “Long Story to Short” features four shorts that are relatively long, more than 20 minutes.

The 2023 program includes director Daichi Amano’s Don’t Go, in which fragments of the memories of a deceased father can be accessed using a special device; TOKYO ANIMAL by Toshiki Yashiro, a collection of five vignettes about life in Tokyo; Seen, a love story directed by Shinji Hamasaki and based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story "The Nose”; and Oshirasama, Takako Saga’s look at a mysterious folk belief in Japan's Tohoku region. This year’s highlight is Shuhari, a documentary that was produced by NYJCF co-founders Kosuke Furukawa and Hiroshi Kono.

For full details and to purchase tickets, please visit Asia Society’s website. Students and Seniors should contact Asia Society’s box office at 212-517-ASIA (2742) for a discounted price. NYJCF is offering a special discount for JapanCulture•NYC members! Not a member? Join today at https://www.japanculture-nyc.com/membership!

*Third Wheel*, Directed by Kevin Haefelin

Day One – Friday, November 3 at 6:30 p.m.

Films selected by NYJCF and the Japan Information & Culture Center organized by Embassy of Japan in Washington, D.C.

Third Wheel

Dir. Kevin Haefelin | 2023 | 4:50 | comedy, drama, period, fantastic | Switzerland
Edo Period. Following his abrupt death, Gohei, a master carpenter, returns as a ghost to make peace with his wife, Sachi, but finds out he is invisible. He must rely on Sakichi, his once-neglected apprentice, who is gifted with psychic abilities.

What To Do To Be Like You

Dir. Chris Rudz | 2022 | 5:01 | comedy | Japan
Young Natsumi returns to the island of her ancestor to become an Ama-san, a traditional female diver of Japan. She follows her mentor, Reiko, who's the best Ama-san in the area, to discover her secrets.
In association with Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia [SSFF & ASIA]

Aufguss

Dir. Daigo Matsui | 2022 | 24:52 | drama | Japan
A sauna spa that has been in business for 50 years is about to reach the very last day but without letting any of its regular customers know. Toji, an aufgussmeister, is preparing for the last aufguss session, and the regular customers are puzzled about why he is so fired up. This is a story about the special night of a small sauna business.
In association with Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia [SSFF & ASIA]

The Floating World

Dir. Hiroshi Yokota | 2023 | 15:17 | documentary | Japan
When a university student struggling with an environmental studies assignment searches for inspiration at an art gallery, she is magically transported into a painting and lands in 19th-century Japan. In Edo, today’s Tokyo, she witnesses a range of everyday sustainable practices––using ashes in the dyeing process, fertilizing fields with night soil, repurposing used kimonos into towels and rags––that helped the country overcome environmental collapse.

Shuhari (World Premiere)

Dir. Tatsuya Ino | 2023 | 12:36 | documentary | Japan, USA
Born and raised in Kyoto, Japanese calligrapher Chifumi Niimi teaches students not only how to write characters beautifully but also break through tradition to develop self-esteem and find a new you through shodo (Japanese calligraphy).

The Swamp

Dir. Sorao Sakimura | 2023 | 4:55 | animation | Japan
He, in the painful days of living deep in a shell, picks up a stone. It gains an identity in a moment and becomes a different individual from him. It pulls him up and takes him somewhere he would never imagine. This is written as a record of the writer himself, who has kept creating while feeling the hardness of life.
In association with Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia [SSFF & ASIA]

Seen

Dir. Shinji Hamasaki | 2022 | 23:37 | drama | Japan
A love story based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa's short story "The Nose." Tatsuya, a man afflicted with a nose complex, meets Fumi, a reclusive woman with an eye patch. Both burdened with their emotional scars, the two find themselves drawn to each other.
In association with Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia [SSFF & ASIA]

*Tokyo Animals*, Directed by Toshiki Yashiro

Day Two – Saturday, November 4 at 1:00 p.m.

“Japanese Film Festivals”

Tokyo Animals

Dir. Toshiki Yashiro | 2022 | 7:58 | drama | Japan
Directed by Toshiki Yashiro, Tokyo Animals is a collection of five scenarios, five vignettes about life in Tokyo. A life where things in the fore fall toward the back, until they circle back again into focus. A circular movement that is often palpable in our crammed little town. Whether it be the rigid rituals of a salaryman, empty gestures by empty people, or the sexualization of all things living or not. Bizarre little things populate the city.
In association with Boston Japan Film Festival (BJFF)

COUNT 100

Dir. Hiroshi Tamaki | 2023 | 20:00 | SciFi | Japan
Professional boxer Mitsuki was once the champion. One day, he was handed a mysterious leaflet on the street.
In association with Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia [SSFF & ASIA]

Oshirasama

Dir. Takako Saga | 2023 | 11:47 | animation | Japan
In this folktale of Japan's Tohoku region related to a mysterious folk belief called "Oshirasama,” a girl gets a horse from her father and takes care of it affectionately, then eventually, they fall in (carnal) love with each other. Maddened by the fact, the father kills the horse, but the horse's corpse takes the girl away with it to the other world up in the sky. To her weeping parents in despair, the girl appears in their dream and tells them about silkworms. With threads and cloth from the silkworms they keep, the girl's parents become able to earn their living, and they later make a pair of wooden figures after their daughter and the horse to worship as their gods.
In association With Aichi International Women’s Film Festival (AIWFF)

Minwoo and Rie

Dir. Jinrung Chun | 2022 | 26:19 | drama | Japan
Rie, from Japan, visits Gunsan, Korea, to deliver her grandfather’s unsent letter. With a help of a local boy, Minwoo, she gets closer to the addressee yet acknowledges what her grandpa did during the period of Japanese colonialism.
In association with Tokyo Independent Movie Festival (TIMF)

The Old Young Crow

Dir. Liam LoPinto | 2022 | 12:00 | mystery, thriller, animation | Japan
An Iranian boy befriends an old Japanese woman at a graveyard in Tokyo.
In association with New York Japan CineFest: FilmFreeway

Shuhari

Dir. Tatsuya Ino | 2023 | 12:36 | documentary | Japan, USA
Second screening

Day Two – Saturday, November 4 at 3:30 p.m.

“Long Story to Short”

Blue and White

Dir. Hiroyuki Nishiyama | 2022 | 27:22 | documentary | Japan, USA
Ryusuke, mourning his wife, ceaselessly crafts salt, even during her funeral. Witnessing this, granddaughter Midori probes his motives. Safeguarding the region's unique salt-making legacy is Ryusuke's mission. In conversing with salt, he strives to pass down its ancient flavor. Could Ryusuke's bond with salt link him to his departed wife?

Scabiosa

Dir. Tsuyoshi Takamura | 2022 | 19:47 | drama | Japan
Haruka is unexpectedly asked to attend the memorial service for Instagrammer Hina. At the service, Hina's relatives share their memories of her. Unable to bear the situation any longer, Haruka runs from the scene.
In association with Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia [SSFF & ASIA]

Nisei

Dir. Darren Haruo Rae | 2023 | 21:18 | drama, action | USA
Based on stories from Rae’s grandfather, Nisei follows the journey of two Japanese American brothers during World War II, Minoru and John Miyasaki. Stripped of their citizenship and placed in internment camps, they volunteer for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, an all-Japanese American unit that sacrificed everything to prove their loyalty to a country that didn’t want them. Torn between country and family, they must face the enemy overseas along with adversity back home.

Don’t Go

Dir. Daichi Amano | 2023 | 24:46 | drama | Japan
Enter a world where fragments of memory of the dead can be accessed using a special device. A father, who lied about his whereabouts, dies in a car accident in a seaside town. His bereaved family dives into his memory to uncover his secret.

About New York Japan CineFest

NYJCF was founded in 2012 by three Japanese producers based in New York: Yasu Suzuki, an actor, dancer, and filmmaker; film director Kosuke Furukawa; and Hiroshi Kono, CEO of Mar Creation, Inc. The festival highlights independent filmmakers who are committed to expressing their voice and vision to the world. Their mission is to explore and find unique talent, supporting filmmakers' work, vision, and causes while providing a playground for creativity in New York City. Since 2015, the film festival has been invited to screen its programs in multiple cities, including Boston; Washington, D.C.; Houston; Los Angeles; and San Francisco. Follow them on Instagram.

Susan McCormac 7/24/23 Susan McCormac 7/24/23

JAPAN CUTS Film Festival Returns to Japan Society

JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film

Wednesday, July 26 through Sunday, August 6

Japan Society – 333 E. 47th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

Admission: $18 Nonmembers | $14 Japan Society Members | $16 Seniors and Students

Japan Society presents 16th annual JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film, its first fully in-person JAPAN CUTS since 2019. The largest festival showcasing contemporary Japanese cinema in North America, this year’s JAPAN CUTS takes place from July 26 through August 6 and features more than 25 films. From major blockbusters to indie darlings, narratives, documentaries, experimental and short films, and anime, the festival truly celebrates the breadth of Japanese cinema.

There will be five International Premieres, ten North American Premieres, seven U.S. Premieres, three East Coast Premieres, and three New York Premieres. Six special guests and two parties are also on the schedule. One of the special guests is acclaimed actor Yuya Yagira, who will receive the JAPAN CUTS 2023 CUT ABOVE Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film for his role in the festival’s Centerpiece film, Under the Turquoise Sky by director KENTARO. Yagira has starred in more than 50 films and television series, and with his performance as the lead role in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Nobody Knows, he became the youngest actor ever to win the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival.

To purchase tickets, please visit Japan Society’s website. Great news for JapanCulture•NYC members! Japan Society is generously offering a 15% discount for all screenings. If you are a JapanCulture•NYC member, you’ll receive a special discount code via email. Not a member yet? It’s easy! Simply go to JapanCulture-NYC.com to register!

JAPAN CUTS Full Schedule

Wednesday, July 26

The First Slam Dunk – 7:00 p.m. SOLD OUT
Dir. Takehiko Inoue | 2022 | 124 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Shugo Nakamura, Jun Kasama, Shinichio Kamio, Subaru Kimura, Kenta Miyake
East Coast Premiere. Winner of the Japan Academy Film Prize for Best Animation of the Year. SLAM DUNK is a beloved manga which was serialized from 1990-1996 and has sold m 170 million copies globally. THE FIRST SLAM DUNK marks original manga creator Takehiko Inoue’s directorial debut and is the first new feature-length film from the iconic franchise in 33 years. The film follows Shohoku High School basketball team point guard Ryota Miyagi (Shugo Nakamura) as he takes the stage at the Inter-High School National Championship, and the pressure to challenge the reigning champions is on! Can Ryota and his teammates defeat the imposing Sannoh Kogyo High School?
Followed by Opening Night Party

Thursday, July 27

SHORT CUTS Program 1 – 3:30 p.m.
Flashback Before Death
Dir. Rii Ishihara and Hiroyuki Onogawa | 2022 | 30 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Rii Ishihara, Masatoshi Kihara, Hanae Seike
North American Premiere. The directorial debut of composer Hiroyuki Onogawa—best known for his collaborations with Sogo (Gakuryu) Ishii starting with August in the Water (1995)—and his wife, Rii Ishihara, Flashback Before Death is a cryptic and eerie short composed of disassociated flashbacks that follow a young man’s return home in 1930s Japan.

Silent Movie
Dir. Masamichi Kawata, Satoru Hirohara, and Hiroshi Gokan | 2022 | 56 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Ichiro Kataoka, Hiroaki Kawaguchi, Ikuhiko Aoyama
International Premiere. Nine students and three alumni from Tokyo University of the Arts’ Film Department create eleven silent films spanning samurai tales, mysteries, thrillers, animation, and even giant monsters. See the next generation of filmmakers play with cinema’s past. All films narrated by renowned benshi storyteller Ichiro Kataoka.

JOO5311 – 6:00 p.m.
Dir. Hiroki Kono | 2022 | 93 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Kazuaki Nomura, Hiroki Kono
International Premiere. Winner of the Grand Prize at the 2022 Pia Film Festival, this impressive bare-bones debut feature by actor-turned-director Hiroki Kono (Special Actors) follows 26-year-old salaryman Kanzaki (Kazuaki Nomura) as he attempts to leave Tokyo for an unidentified location hours away. Unable to go by taxi, he solicits the help of a petty thief (Kono) to drive him in exchange for ¥1 million in cash—a mysterious offer with grim implications. A deeply affecting minimalist road movie that makes daring use of long takes, handheld camera work and silence—written, directed, edited and co-starring Kono—J005311 is low-budget independent filmmaking par excellence.

Best Wishes to All – 9:00 p.m
Dir. Yuta Shimotsu | 2023 | 89 min.| Japanese with English subtitles |. With Kotone Furukawa
North American Premiere. What would you do for happiness? Director Yuta Shimotsu answers in his feature film debut. Executive produced by Takashi Shimizu (creator of Ju On: The Grudge) and starring Kotone Furukawa (Berlinale Silver Bear winner for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Wheel Of Fortune And Fantasy), Best Wishes to All follows a young woman’s visit to her grandparents’ home and her discovery of what’s brought them happiness—a revelation that will lead her to question her choices, sanity, and reality itself. Best Wishes to All starts slow and builds to a frantic, manic, and disturbingly satisfying end.

Friday, July 28

SHORT CUTS Program 2 – 3:30 p.m.
Detouring Blue
Dir. Ryo Kimura | 2023 | 24 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Saori Mori, Mai Hikagedate, Ami Kamimura
New York Premiere. In the dark of the Tokyo night, two women talk about their past, their youth, and their dreams. Beautifully shot and told with vivid colors, Detouring Blue looks at the wistfulness of the past, the weight of the present—and if who we were can ever be who we are today.

Okamoto Kitchen
Dir. Gerald Abraham | 2023 | 12 min. | English | With Cristina Vee.
East Coast Premiere. A crowd-funded anime from LA’s very real Japanese fusion comfort food truck Okamoto Kitchen, JAPAN CUTS presents the start of this global project blending Japanese and Western talent to create a unique cross-cultural flavor. Featuring character designs by Takuya and Asusa Saito, key art by anime studio Magic Bus, music by Layla Lane, and starring voice actress Cristina Vee.

Setagaya Game
Dir. Go Ohara and Ken Ohara | 2022 | 40 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Reiji Takahashi, Akari Natsume, Sho Iizaka.
International Premiere. Big action on a little budget, brothers Go and Ken Ohara bring together years of stunt and action directing experience to tell the tale of Takeru (Reiji Takahashi) and the deadly game he’s forced to play. The clock is ticking for him to save a life, but is the game really what it seems?

I Am What I Am – 6:00 p.m.
Dir. Shinya Tamada | 2022 | 105 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Toko Miura, Atsuko Maeda
North American Premiere. Thirty-year-old Kasumi (Toko Miura in her first starring role since Drive My Car) works at a call center and lives at home with her family, often pestered by her worrisome mother who desperately wants her to get married, even going so far as to set up an omiai, or arranged marriage interview, to marry her off. The reality is that Kasumi cannot harbor romantic feelings for others. Aided by her cheerful and equally outsider friend Maho, played by the ever-charming Atsuko Maeda, Kasumi simply desires to live without the rigid gender roles and expectations that dictate how young women should submit themselves to constructed ideals of love and marriage. An anti-rom com by any measure, I Am What I Am is a liberating departure from the conceit that romantic love equates happiness and a life fulfilled.

Plastic © 2023 Nagoya University of Arts and Sciences

Plastic – 9:00 p.m.
Dir. Daisuke Miyazaki | 2023 | 104 min | Japanese with English subtitles | With An Ogawa, Takuma Fujie, Kyoko Koizumi
Q&A with director Daisuke Miyazaki.
International Premiere. Decades after the breakup of their favorite band Exne Kedy and the Poltergeists (a fictional project by artist Kensuke Ide and producer You Ishihara of Yura Yura Teikoku fame), music obsessives Jun and Ibuki (An Ogawa, Heaven Is Still Far Away) bond over their mutual love for the ‘70s glam rock band, falling deeply in love in the process. But as difficulties arise in their dreams and priorities, the couple break apart. The surprise announcement of an Exne Kedy reunion, however, brings promise of a new tomorrow. The latest from director Daisuke Miyazaki (Tourism), Plastic is a life-affirming jolt to the system, celebrating the cosmic power of music and the joys of growing up and falling in love in a charming and heartfelt coming of age tale.

Saturday, July 29

Father of the Milky Way Railroad – Noon
Dir. Izuru Narushima | 2023 | 128 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Koji Yakusho, Masaki Suda, Nana Mori
U.S. Premiere. Virtually unknown as a writer in his lifetime, the poet and novelist Kenji Miyazawa (1896-1933) is among Japan’s most read and beloved authors of children’s stories. This moving biopic—based on the best-selling, Naoki Prize-winning novel named after Miyazawa’s most famous story—traces the genius writer’s brief but amazing life through his relationship with his loving father Masajiro (Koji Yakusho), a successful pawnbroker and modern man of the Meiji era who struggles to keep up with his eccentric son’s ambitions. A wonderfully heartfelt tribute to the “Hans Christian Andersen of Japan,” played with gusto by Masaki Suda (Teiichi: Battle of Supreme High).

I Am a Comedian – 3:30 p.m.
Dir. Fumiari Hyuga | 2022 | 108 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Daisuke Muramoto
North American Premiere. After winning a 2013 manzai competition with his partner (performing together as Woman Rush Hour), standup comedian Daisuke Muramoto begins using his act to address politically verboten social issues such as nuclear disasters and Zainichi Korean discrimination. Before long, the pair’s television opportunities disappear—a consequence of the widely understood but unwritten rule that comedians making political comments in Japanese media are simply “not tolerated.” In this intimate documentary, director Fumiari Hyuga (Tokyo Kurds) follows Muramoto for three years as he continues to challenge the status quo as a comedian while facing the added challenges of his father’s disapproval and a worldwide epidemic.

Tokyo Melody: A Film about Ryuichi Sakamoto – 7:00 p.m. SOLD OUT
Dir. Elizabeth Lennard |1985 | 62 min. | 16mm | Japanese, English, and French with English subtitles | With Ryuichi Sakamoto, Akiko Yano
Opening comments by Akiko Yano; Screening followed by a Q&A with Director Elizabeth Lennard.
Imported 16mm Print. Filmmaker and photographer Elizabeth Lennard secures unprecedented access to Ryuichi Sakamoto during the recording of his 1984 album Ongaku Zukan in this brief-yet-insightful Franco-Japanese television co-production. A sampling of studio sessions and performances (including a piano duet with then-wife Akiko Yano), archival footage and talking head interviews, Tokyo Melody finds the eccentric artist at his creative peak, pushing the envelope to new sonic frontiers as he reflects on modern life, shifting technologies and his own creative processes. Lennard captures an awe-inspiring portrait of the extraordinary musician—one that taps into the very nature of the artist’s raison d’être and remains a testament to Sakamoto’s profound brilliance.

Hand – 9:00 p.m.
Dir. Daigo Matsui | 2022 | 99 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Akari Fukunaga, Daichi Kaneko
North American Premiere. Since her youth—and not-so-subtly informed by her own father—25-year-old Sawako (Akari Fukunaga) has had a deep curiosity about older men. Sawako’s observations and liaisons are humorous and amusing even as her fascination manifests into a scrapbook of candid photos of unassuming older “happy” men. Adroitly adapting Nao-Cola Yamazaki’s novel of the same name, Hand engages headfirst with female desire, male fragility, and self-discovery through the eyes of its witty and mild-mannered protagonist. Belonging to a string of new pinku productions celebrating 50 years of Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno, Daigo Matsui’s charming erotic tale stays true to the softcore label’s legacy (most notably, a requisite sex scene every ten or so minutes) while refreshingly modernizing its roots.
This film is unrated but not recommended for audiences under 18 years of age due to strong sexual content.

Sunday, July 30

Sanka: Nomads of the Mountain – Noon
Dir. Ryohei Sasatani |2022 | 77 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Rairu Sugata, Naru Komukai
North American Premiere. A stirring 1960s-set coming-of-age drama that confronts societal progress and development in Japan’s mountainous regions, Sanka: Nomads of the Mountain focuses on the life of young Norio, a Tokyo transplant who has come to live in his grandmother’s village. Living under the shadow of his strict and demanding father, Norio befriends a group of Sanka, a wandering people, who reside in the foothills beyond his home. Beautifully shot and bolstered by compelling performances, Sanka‘s human drama delivers a melancholic and moving reflection on the societal conflicts and turmoil prevalent in postwar Japan, while also depicting the struggles of a nomadic tribe when its way of life is threatened by the onset of modernity.
Winner of the JAPAN CUTS Award at the 2022 Osaka Asian Film Festival

Single8 – 2:30 p.m.
Dir. Kazuya Konaka | 2022 | 113 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Yu Uemura, Akari Takaishi
New York Premiere. After seeing Star Wars for the first time in the summer of 1978, high schooler Hiroshi (Yu Uemura) can’t stop thinking about the film’s famous opening shot of a Star Destroyer entering the frame. This obsession eventually leads him to propose making a film with his classmates for their summer festival group project, a sci-fi love story called “Time Reverse.” But will his crush Natsumi (Akari Takaishi) accept the lead role? A nostalgic, feel-good comedy that hearkens back to director Kazuya Konaka’s salad days as a student filmmaker, Single8 celebrates youth, creativity, and the life-changing possibilities of cinema.

The Legend and Butterfly © 2023 THE LEGEND & BUTTERFLY Production Committee

The Legend & Butterfly – 5:30 p.m. SOLD OUT
Dir. Keishi Otomo | 2023 | 168 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Takuya Kimura, Haruka Ayase
Introduced by and followed by a Q&A with director Keishi Otomo.
North American Theatrical Premiere. A sweeping historical romance created to celebrate Toei’s 70th anniversary, The Legend & Butterfly casts megastars Takuya Kimura as Oda Nobunaga and Haruka Ayase as his wife, Nohime. While Oda Nobunaga is one of Japan’s most well-documented historical figures, virtually no information about Nohime remains, and The Legend & Butterfly fills this mystery with a turbulent, thoroughly modern romance. A Sengoku era take on the expression “behind every great man lies a great woman,” The Legend & Butterfly sees more than 30 years of defining moments in Japanese history driven by powerful, private moments between Nobunaga and Nohime.

Tuesday, August 1

Amiko – 6:00 p.m.
Dir. Yusuke Morii | 2022 | 104 min. Japanese with English subtitles | With Kana Osawa, Arata Iura, Machiko Ono
North American Premiere. This remarkable debut from director Yusuke Morii is set in the mountainous vistas of a provincial coastal town brimming with day-to-day excitements for oddball grade-schooler Amiko, whose endless imagination fixates on insects, schoolyard crushes and even the mole on her mother’s chin. Despite her good intentions, Amiko is often misunderstood, remaining at odds with family and classmates who find her strange and whimsical ways off-putting. Featuring a truly captivating breakthrough performance by newcomer Kana Osawa—one that recalls the tour-de-force resilience of Tomoko Tabata in Moving—and a score by popular folk musician Ichiko Aoba, Amiko is charged with a palpable sense of childhood wonderment that consistently finds new and surprising ways of seeing the world, even in the face of tragedy and misfortune.

Wandering – 9:00 p.m.
Dir. Sang-il Lee | 2022 | 150 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Suzu Hirose, Tori Matsuzaka
U.S. Premiere. A sprawling account of the alleged kidnapping of a nine-year-old young girl by a university student and the years-long repercussions of the event, Wandering delves into the gray area of the circumstances in question. Fifteen years after their initial encounter, Sarasa runs into her accused captor Fumi, bringing forth a deluge of memories and recollections. Based on the novel by Yu Nagira, Wandering dwells on challenging ethical and moral complexities with director Sang-il Lee (Villain, Rage) offering no easy answers in this compelling, thought-provoking drama.
Recommended for mature audiences.

Wednesday, August 2

Saga Saga – 6:00 p.m.
Dir. Aimi Natsuto | 2023 | 114 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Rena Matsui, Sae Okazaki, Sara Kurashima
U.S. Premiere. After a brief stint as an actress in Tokyo, 28-year-old Kyoko (Rena Matsui) returns to her hometown in Saga Prefecture, Kyushu. Before long she meets Nahoko (Sae Okazaki), an eccentric young woman who introduces herself as a fan but is secretly stalking Kyoko. She also meets Anna (Sara Kurashima), a high school student under the care of her deceased mother’s best friend, whom Kyoko unwittingly learns is her half-sister. What connects these three lonely women, they soon discover, is more than just coincidence but a shared history of family trauma. An elegant, ambitious, and complex sophomore feature by writer/director Aimi Natsuto (Jeux de plage).

Winny – 9:00 p.m.
Dir. Yusaku Matsumoto | 2023 | 127 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Masahiro Higashide, Takahiro Miura, Hidetaka Yoshioka
North American Premiere. In this thrilling procedural based on true events, Masahiro Higashide (Asako I & II) plays real-life computer programmer Isamu Kaneko, inventor of the peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing program Winny, released in 2002. After Winny users are arrested for illegally uploading games and movies, Kaneko is apprehended by the Kyoto Prefectural Police department under dubious circumstances with the charged crime of intentionally “proliferating piracy” and abetting the violation of copyright laws. Recognizing the implication of Kaneko’s unjust arrest on Japan’s future computer engineers, Toshimitsu Dan (Takahiro Miura), a lawyer specializing in cybercrime, takes on the unprecedented case.

Thursday, August 3

When Morning Comes, I Feel Empty – 6:00 p.m.
Dir. Yuho Ishibashi | 2022 | 76 min. | Japanese with English subtitles |With Erika Karata, Haruka Imou, Kazuma Ishibashi
Followed by a Q&A with Director Yuho Ishibashi.
International Premiere. A delicate and gentle drama, Yuho Ishibashi’s sophomore effort softly envelops the viewer into the day-to-day life of part-time konbini worker Nozomi, charmingly played by Asako I & II’s Erika Karata. Living a simple, carefree life, Nozomi’s preoccupations include tending to home repair, awkwardly chatting with younger coworkers under the humdrum of convenience store Muzak, and stocking shelves—as well as the occasional late shift. A chance encounter with a former junior high classmate reconnects her to the world and through subtle intimations, Nozomi’s past unfolds, detailing her professional career as an overworked corporate assistant. A sensitive exploration of vying for one’s own happiness, When Morning Comes, I Feel Empty is a deeply humanizing affirmation that a fulfilling life can exist outside of societal pressure and expectation.
Winner of the JAPAN CUTS Award at the 2023 Osaka Asian Film Festival

Convenience Story – 9:00 p.m.
Dir. Satoshi Miki | 2022 | 97 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Ryo Narita, Atsuko Maeda
New York Premiere. Stuck in a rut as a deadbeat screenwriter with a reputation for unoriginal “male fantasy films,” Kato (Ryo Narita) struggles to find inspiration for his next script. That is, however, until a supernatural occurrence at a konbini transports him to an alternate dimension where he meets young, pretty Keiko (Atsuko Maeda) and her eccentric, classical music-obsessed husband. Will they provide the creative spark he needs? This latest offbeat fantasy from Satoshi Miki (It’s Me, It’s Me) takes a playful jab at the filmmaking industry and its surreal absurdities, co-scripted by longtime Japan Times film critic and writer Mark Schilling.

Friday, August 4

Under the Turquoise Sky Centerpiece Film & Party – 7:00 p.m. SOLD OUT
Dir. KENTARO | 2021 | 95 min. | Japanese and Mongolian with English subtitles | With Yuya Yagira, Amra Baljinnyam, Akaji Maro
Introduction and Q&A with Director KENTARO and Actor Yuya Yagira; Followed by Centerpiece Party.
U.S. Premiere. An international co-production bringing together a Japanese, Mongolian, French, Australian, and Chilean team, Under the Turquoise Sky from director KENTARO follows the spoiled Takeshi (played by Japanese star Yuya Yagira) who is sent out to the Mongolian countryside by his wealthy grandfather (legendary actor and Butoh master Akaji Maro). Together with his Mongolian guide (Mongolian leading man Amra Baljinnyam), Takeshi’s travels lead to stunning vistas, profound mysteries, and personal growth. A lush road movie with touches of the surreal, Under the Turquoise Sky casts a spell with humblingly beautiful directing, acting and cinematography.
The screening is followed by the Centerpiece Party.

“I believe that life is also like a road movie. Like life itself, the magic of a road movie is that you do not know where it takes you. The saturated primary colors of the Mongolian landscape serve as an example, like a reticent mentor of deep simplicity, in contrast to the protagonist Takeshi’s habitual materially rich and modern, yet monochromatic lifestyle. The landscape thus serves as a supporting “actor,” confirming the necessary presence of Amra in guiding Takeshi through an almost-shamanic rite of passage to finally understand his destiny.” —KENTARO
Under the Turquoise Sky is the recipient of the FIPRESCI International Film Critics Award

Saturday, August 5

The Fish Tale – Noon
Dir. Shuichi Okita | 2022 | 139 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Non, Yuya Yagira, Kaho
East Coast Theatrical Premiere. Director Shuichi Okita (Mori, The Artist’s Habitat) paints a whimsical portrait of very real celebrity fish expert Masayuki Miyazawa (called Meebo in the film). The Fish Tale follows Meebo’s ichthyological obsession from the rough waters of their initial years as an outcast to a rising tide of friends, family, and celebrity. Inspirationally, actress Non is cast in the lead male role, and her outsider energy enchants every frame of the film. Quickly, heartfelt, and oddball, Non delivers a joyous performance that makes it impossible not to get caught in the net of Meebo’s fish fixation.

Under the Turquoise Sky Encore Screening – 3:30 p.m. SOLD OUT
Introduction and Q&A with Director KENTARO and Actor Yuya Yagira

© People Who Talk to Plushies Are Kind Film

People Who Talk to Plushies Are Kind – 6:30 p.m.
Dir. Yurina Kaneko | 2023 | 109 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Kanata Hosoda, Ren Komai, Yuzumi Shintani
U.S. Premiere. An adaptation of the Ao Omae novella of the same name, People Who Talk to Plushies are Kind is a warm and comforting alternative to the typical youth film. Concentrating on a trio of college students, Plushies tracks their extracurricular immersion into the student-run Plushies Club. A safe haven for withdrawn and sensitive youths who prefer the company of stuffed animals, the students find differing qualities in the reflective space as director Yurina Kaneko confronts issues of masculinity, gender, and acceptance in contemporary society.

From the End of the World – 9:30 p.m.
Dir. Kaz I Kiriya | 2023 | 135 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Aoi Ito, Katsuya Maiguma, Aya Asahina | Special cameo by Shunji Iwai
U.S. Premiere. Kazuaki Kiriya’s first feature film in eight years is the story of the final two weeks of the planet Earth and the young girl (Aoi Ito) who has the power to save it. The imaginative director of Casshern and Goemon returns to the big screen with a film ripe with his trademark daring visuals and a mind- and time-bending narrative. From the ancient past to the far future, From the End of the World is a science fiction feast both deeply intimate and epic in scale that traces the ley lines of dreams, destiny, and a young girl’s heart.

Sunday, August 6

MONDAYS: See you “this” week! – Noon
Dir. Ryo Takebayash | 2022 | 83 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Wan Marui, Makita Sports
North American Premiere. Live. Work. Repeat. Akemi Yoshikawa (Wan Marui) pulls an all-nighter to finish an important project for a client, only to find herself working on this same project again and again. Akemi soon understands she’s stuck in a time loop, and the only way out is to convince all her co-workers and boss (played by the prolific Makita Sports) of the time-bending situation they’re in. A zany, fast-faced comedy filled with twists, turns and PowerPoints.

The Three Sisters of Tenmasou Inn – 2:30 p.m.
Dir. Ryuhei Kitamura | 2022 | 150 min. Japanese with English subtitles | With Non, Mugi Kadowaki, Riku Hagiwara
U.S. Premiere. In this supernatural tearjerker adapted from the manga by Tsutomu Takahashi, the waystation between life and rebirth is a traditional Japanese ryokan by the sea called Tenmasou Inn. When Tamae (Non) arrives there after a car accident leaves her body in a coma, she is greeted by Nozomi (Yuko Oshima), the inn’s polite proprietress, and laid-back Kanae (Mugi Kadowaki)—half-sisters that Tamae never knew she had. Despite protestations from the irascible matriarch Kyoko (Shinobu Terajima), the effervescent Tamae starts working at Tenmasou, taking time to process her liminal state while discovering the history she shares with her sisters, including their absent father.

Susan McCormac 4/28/23 Susan McCormac 4/28/23

The Films of Shinji Somai at japan society

Globus Film Series—Rites of Passage: The Films of Shinji Somai

Friday, April 28 through Saturday, May 13

Japan Society – 333 E. 47th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues)

Tickets: $15 | $12 seniors and students | $10 Japan Society members
Screening of Typhoon Club + Opening Night Party: $18/$15/$14

Japan Society is presenting the first North American retrospective on Japan’s foremost cineaste of the 1980s with the 2023 Globus Film Series Rites of Passage: The Films of Shinji Somai. Beginning Friday, April 28 with the sold-out world premiere of the 4K restoration of Typhoon Club this series spotlights director Shinji Somai, who is widely lauded in his native Japan but remains largely unrecognized in the West.

Series highlights include pop idol Hiroko Yakushimaru’s breakthrough Sailor Suit and Machine Gun—with screenings of both the theatrical and 1982 (kanpeki-ban) complete version; the North American Premiere of the 4K Luminous Woman restoration; and imported, archival prints of both Somai’s epic maritime tragedy The Catch and the pop-inflected Tokyo Heaven.

“A major figure in Japanese cinema, Shinji Somai’s recognition and influence are rarely discussed outside of Japan,” said Alexander Fee, Japan Society’s Film Programmer, “this series offers a special chance to rediscover one of Japan’s greatest filmmakers, whose formative works established a unique approach to filmmaking that continues to inspire the current generation today.”

Read Criterion Collection’s look at this series here.

*Sailor Suit and Machine Gun* ©1981 Kadokawa Corp.

About Shinji Somai

A pioneering filmmaker during what is oftentimes referred to as the “lost decade” of Japanese cinema, Somai came to prominence during the 1980s—a time when the nation’s film industry found itself in flux, perturbed by the collapse of the Japanese studio system in the previous decade. This transitional period would lead to the rise and development of independent productions, leaving Somai to serve as a crucial bridge into the post-studio era. Characterized by his demanding work ethic and innovative use of long takes, Somai forged a unique identity, working predominantly within the genre trappings of seishun eiga (youth films) and directing some of the era's most original and enduring works, five of which comprise Kinema Junpo's critics list for the best Japanese films of all time.

Somai’s acclaimed oeuvre encompasses an eclectic mix of generic and stylistic conventions, ranging from Kadokawa pop idol vehicles to Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno to independent art dramas—all underpinned by the filmmaker’s potent evocation of adolescence. Documenting the tempestuous rigors of youth, Somai’s output would remain a persistent influence on filmmakers to come—from Shunji Iwai and Shinji Aoyama to Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Somai’s frequent depictions of bodies of water—including torrential downpours and typhoons—parallel the emotional turbulence and volatility of youth, externalizing the alienating depths of growing up in an increasingly chaotic world.

Screening Schedule

Friday, April 28

Typhoon Club with Opening Night Party at 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1985 | 115 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
With Youki Kudoh, Yuichi Mikami, Yuka Onishi

World Premiere of 4K Restoration. Shinji Somai’s beloved cult film Typhoon Club is widely heralded as the director’s seminal feature, considered to be one of the greatest Japanese films ever made. Offering a caustic immersion into the lives of disaffected junior high students on the cusp of adulthood, Typhoon Club features a lively cast of young talent—including idol Youki Kudoh (The Crazy Family, Mystery Train)—facing existential intrigues, budding sexuality, and rising social tensions in the days leading up to a typhoon’s arrival. Stranded in their schoolhouse as the storm settles in, the group undergoes an awakening as they dispel all—insecurities, fear, and desire—under the swell of the tempest. A Cinema Guild release.

Please note: This screening and Opening Night Party are SOLD OUT. Recently acquired by Cinema Guild, future release plans for Typhoon Club along with Somai’s 1983 postmodern road movie P.P. Rider are in the works, so if you can’t attend the April 28 show, you’ll have a chance to see it soon! Plus, there are nine screenings of six other Somai films in this Globus Film Series that you won’t want to miss!

Saturday, April 29

P.P. Rider at 2:00 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1983 | 118 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
With Tatsuya Fuji, Michiko Kawai, Masatoshi Nagase

Based on a story by Leonard Schrader (The Man Who Stole the Sun), P.P. Rider follows three friends—Jojo, Jishu, and Bruce—who, after witnessing the kidnapping of their class bully, try to rescue their tormentor from the grip of his yakuza captors. Aside from the occasional detour, the trio trail their kidnapped classmate across the country, running into a cast of seedy characters along the way—including a pair of layabout cops and a wiry, washed-up gangster played by Tatsuya Fuji (In the Realm of the Senses). Playful and referential, Somai’s farcical seishun eiga employs a variety of stylistic techniques and gags to offer an escapist summer fantasy of carefree misadventures in turn broaching a darker undercurrent despite its tongue-in-cheek demeanor. A Cinema Guild release.

Love Hotel at 5:00 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1985 | 88 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
With Minori Terada, Noriko Hayami

Echoes of the past reverberate when an ex-call girl and a debtor meet two years after the desperate and fateful night that first brought them together. An existential study of two lonely and tortured souls, Somai’s torrid pinku eiga follows the pair as they kindle a newfound friendship amid the chaos of their broken and dispirited lives. Somai, who started his career as an assistant director at Nikkatsu in the '70s, would not direct a feature for the studio until Love Hotel. Love Hotel is a melancholic entry into the studio’s legendary Roman Porno catalogue, set against the backdrop of a shimmering neon cityscape and soundtracked by Momoe Yamaguchi’s heartrending crooning.

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (1982 Complete Version) at 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1981/1982 | 130 min. (Complete), 112 min. (Theatrical) | Japanese with English subtitles
With Hiroko Yakushimaru, Tsunehiko Watase, Akira Emoto

Based on the popular youth novel by Jiro Akagawa, Sailor Suit and Machine Gun focuses on the life of schoolgirl Izumi Hoshi (Kadokawa idol Hiroko Yakushimaru) who inherits the reins of a dying yakuza clan and is thrown headfirst into a gangster feud. Vying for respect in an adult world, Izumi takes charge and challenges the violent drug cartel that threatens her clan. Between Somai’s skillful direction, a hit theme song and Yakushimaru herself—dressed in her iconic sailor fuku—Sailor Suit and Machine Gun had all the makings of a smash hit, emerging as a cultural phenomenon that catapulted Yakushimaru to widespread popularity and perfectly captured the zeitgeist of '80s Japan.

Friday, May 5

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (Theatrical Version) at 6:00 p.m.

Luminous Woman at 8:30 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1987 | 118 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
With Keiji Muto, Monday Michiru, Narumi Yasuda

Monday Michiru will introduce the film!

North American Premiere of 4K Restoration. A burly hulk of a man (pro-wrestler Keiji Muto) makes his way from Hokkaido to the decrepit trash heaps of outer Tokyo, searching for his beloved in what is perhaps Somai’s strangest feature. When he finds himself pulled into the gladiator pits of a Tokyo nightclub, the mountain man agrees to fight in exchange for information on his lost love. Operating within a bizarre carnivalesque realm of tightrope acts, acrobatic jesters and opera, Somai’s magenta-tinged Luminous Woman inhabits a dreamlike Tokyo underworld populated by tragic figures bearing forgotten hopes and dreams.

Friday, May 12

The Catch at 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1983 | 140 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
With Ken Ogata, Masako Natsume, Koichi Sato

Imported 35mm Print. In Somai’s relentless and near-mythical tale of the high seas, a young man takes on the intergenerational calling of his girlfriend’s family—that of a tuna fisherman. Abandoning his father’s vocation, Shinichi (Koichi Sato) turns to his girlfriend’s father, Fusajiro, a leather-faced fisherman played by Ken Ogata, to teach him the ways of the sea but struggles to assimilate to the rugged and callous lifestyle. His doting girlfriend, Tokiko, finds herself caught in a current of emotional devastation as she tends to both men, witnessing the arduous occupation harden and shape Shinichi as he obsesses over mastering his new trade. Playing out as a family tragedy of repeated cycles of trauma and pain, Somai’s maritime odyssey is a modern-day Melvillian epic.

Saturday, May 13

Luminous Woman at 2:00 p.m.

P.P. Rider at 5:00 p.m.

Tokyo Heaven at 7:30 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1990 | 109 min. | Japanese with live English subtitles
With Riho Makise, Kiichi Nakai, Tsurube Shofukutei

Imported 35mm Print. Up-and-coming model Yu (Riho Makise) finds her career aspirations abruptly cut off after being run over in a car accident, waking up shortly afterwards in the sweet hereafter. Tricking a heavenly emissary to send her back to earth, Yu returns to a world where she cannot come into contact with those who know of her demise, which includes her lecherous producer, who is attempting to cover up news of her death. Befriending lowly salaryman Fumio (Kiichi Nakai), Yu is given a new lease on life as she finds happiness living—not as a campaign idol but as an ordinary teenage girl. Capturing Tokyo at the tail-end of Japan's Bubble era, Somai’s charming pop fantasy is a lighthearted reflection on the transience of life and the simple pleasures of human connection and existence.

To purchase tickets, please visit Japan Society’s website.

For JapanCulture•NYC Members

Japan Society is offering a discount code exclusively for JapanCulture•NYC members who want to attend the Rites of Passage screenings! That’s right, JapanCulture•NYC has a new membership program, and receiving discounts such as this is one of the benefits. To receive the code for $2 off any General Audience ticket, become a member of JapanCulture•NYC today! (This code for Rites of Passage cannot be used for additional discounts on Student/Senior/Japan Society member tickets.) JapanCulture•NYC membership is only $5 a month! For details and to register, please click here.

Susan McCormac 4/18/23 Susan McCormac 4/18/23

IFC TO SCREEN A LOOK AT JAPAN’S DYSTOPIAN FUTURE

PLAN 75

Friday, April 21 through Thursday, April 27

IFC Center – 323 6th Avenue at W. 3rd Street

Admission: $17 general | $14 seniors and children

IFC Center presents the U.S. theatrical premiere of PLAN 75, director Chie Hayakawa’s feature film debut in which the lives of three ordinary citizens intersect in a new reality as they confront the crushing callousness of a world ready to dispose of those no longer deemed valuable.

Synopsis

In a near dystopian future, Japan's government launches PLAN 75, a program encouraging the elderly to terminate their own lives to relieve its rapidly aging population's social and economic burdens.

Legendary Japanese actress Chieko Baishō stars as Michi, a 78-year-old who considers signing up for the program after losing her meager but fulfilling hotel job and the means to live independently. A young Plan 75 salesman Himoru (Hayato Isomura) initially believes in the program's benefits and serves as the human face of the program. Maria (Stephanie Arianne), a Filipina care worker living overseas, reluctantly accepts a position with PLAN 75 to send money home to her ailing daughter.

On the surface, the plan and its hawkers exude a kindness that serves as the film's chilling vision of bureaucratic indifference and our increasing loss of interconnectedness. However, Hayakawa’s view is far from grim, as these characters soon learn to reckon with their own lives and what it truly means to live.

"With stinging precision, Hayakawa reveals a culture that seems almost mobilized to destroy its own soul.”
— Slant Magazine
"Chieko Baisho gives a truly magnificent and moving performance.”
— DEADLINE
“Completely surprising and beautiful...marks the arrival of an exciting new writer-director.”
— Vulture

Showtimes

There are four showtimes each day PLAN 75 is screening at IFC Center: 1:45 p.m., 4:25 p.m., 7:10 p.m., and 9:45 p.m.

Q&A with director Chie Hayakawa will take place after the 7:10 p.m. screenings on Friday, April 21 and Saturday, April 22 and after the 4:25 p.m. screening on Sunday, April 23.

To purchase tickets, please visit IFC Center’s website.

About the Filmmaker

Born in Tokyo, Chie Hayakawa studied photography at School of Visual Arts in New York. Her short film Niagara was selected at Cinéfondation/Cannes Film Festival 2014, won the FIPRESCI Award at Vladivostok International Film Festival, and received two Grand Prizes at International Women’s Film Festival in Seoul and PIA Film Festival.

Hayakawa’s short film version of PLAN 75 served as the opening segment of Ten Years Japan, an anthology of five shorts in which five different directors present how they envision Japan will be in ten years. Executive produced by Hirokazu Kore-eda, Ten Years Japan had its world premiere at the Busan Film Festival in 2018, followed by an international festival tour and successful theatrical releases.

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