Japan Society screens more than 30 contemporary Japanese films in 12 days starting July 8, celebrating the 19th year of JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film

JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film 2026 Powered by Canon

Wednesday, July 8 through Sunday, July 19, 2026

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

Admission Information & Pricing

Centerpiece: $35 Nonmembers | $32 Students & Seniors | $28 Members
Screenings with Receptions: $26 Nonmembers | $23 Students & Seniors | $20 Members
Screenings with Intros: $24 Nonmembers | $22 Students & Seniors | $19 Members
All Other Feature Screenings: $20 Nonmembers | $18 Students & Seniors | $16 Members
Screenings Under 60 Minutes: $16 Nonmembers | $14 Students & Seniors | $12 Members
New Directions in Japanese Cinema: Free with RSVP
Festival Pass: $350 Member Exclusive
All-Access Pass: $1,000 Nonmembers | $800 Members

North America’s largest festival of contemporary Japanese film returns to Japan Society on July 8 for its 19th year. JAPAN CUTS Powered by Canon is a summer extravaganza of more than 30 curated films from across Japan featuring major award winners, indie darlings, up-and-coming filmmakers, restorations, documentaries, short films, anime, and more. A showcase of the latest in Japanese cinema, Japan Society is the place to see both today’s most popular actors and directors as well as tomorrow’s pioneering talent.

JAPAN CUTS will present lauded actress Suzu Hirose with theCUT ABOVE Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film and host the New York Premiere of A Pale View of Hills starring Hirose as the Centerpiece Film, and the festival will conclude with legendary director Hirokazu Koreeda, who will appear in person for the North American Premiere of Sheep in the Box, the Closing Film.

The main category of JAPAN CUTS showcases a broad selection of contemporary Japanese cinema across vibrant genres and styles. From deep dramas and tender, coming-of-age tales to action, avant-garde, and anime, the Feature Slate is a window to the past year of Japan’s cinematic storytelling.

For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit Japan Society’s website.

Sold-Out Screenings

There is no online or email waitlist for sold-out screenings. Those wishing to attend sold-out screenings can visit the Japan Society Box Office in person at 333 East 47th Street. A physical waitlist will begin 30 minutes before each sold-out event. Ten minutes prior to the screening, any unused tickets will be made available 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

Wednesday, July 8

Tokyo Taxi

Followed by Opening Night Reception

Wednesday, July 8 at 6:00 p.m. SOLD OUT

A remake of the French drama Driving Madeleine, Tokyo Taxi marks veteran Tora-san director and Shochiku stalwart Yoji Yamada’s 91st feature, reuniting him with long-standingcollaborator Chieko Baisho, who has worked with him since her film debut in 1963.

After a nightshift, cab driver Koji (Takuya Kimura) is called in to cover for a long-distance booking. Arriving at Shibamata (a familiar site for Tora-san fans), Koji picks up Baisho’s feisty and elegant Sumire, an elderly woman bound for Yokohama on one last trip. Sumire asks for a detour through parts of Tokyo, a farewell tour that illustrates Sumire’s life story, inseparable from the changing city itself.

With all the hallmarks of Yamada’s life-affirming, sentimental cinema, Tokyo Taxi is remarkably faithful to the successful formula of the filmmaker’s half-century-plus career—a potent swansong for the (yet unretired) filmmaker and his longtime muse.

Reception music by NYC-based Japanese band Twisty BonBon and presented by The Globus Family. Reception food and drink provided by Lady M, Sapporo, and ITO EN.

Thursday, July 9

Leave the Cat Alone

Thursday, July 9 at 6:00 p.m.

The debut feature of Daisuke Shigaya, Leave the Cat Alone took seven years for the filmmaker to complete, weaving scenes shot seven or so years prior as vague memories set before the film’s present-day setting.

Maiko, an emerging photographer, and her husband, Mori, an unsuccessful musician, struggle to maintain their languishing relationship. An unassuming domestic drama with deep emotional range, Leave the Cat Alone unfolds across three days and two nights in the couple’s lives as Mori encounters an old flame, transporting him back into residual memories, lingering regrets and nostalgia for a time before the growing chasms of a long-term love.

Leave the Cat Alone is part of JAPAN CUTS’s Next Generation category. One film in this category will win the Next Generation Prize presented by VIPO. The winning filmmaker will receive $3,000, generously donated by VIPO to help fund their next work.

White Flowers and Fruits

Thursday, July 9 at 8:30 p.m.

Casting a pallid, muted gloom over its delicate cast of adolescent schoolgirls, White Flowers and Fruits marks an auspicious debut for newcomer Yukari Sakamoto.

On the grounds of a secluded all-girls boarding school, a popular student inexplicably leaps to her death. Questioning the circumstances of her sudden suicide, two classmates cope with the unfathomable loss of a peer and the inexpressible emotions left within them.

In the tradition of Shusuke Kaneko’s Summer Vacation 1999 and Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, Sakamoto’s Gothic study is both spectral and sapphic, playing on classical bildungsroman motifs in its atmospheric meditation on the death of innocence.

White Flowers and Fruits is part of JAPAN CUTS’s Next Generation category. One film in this category will win the Next Generation Prize presented by VIPO. The winning filmmaker will receive $3,000, generously donated by VIPO to help fund their next work.

Friday, July 10

Cocoon

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

Dir. Yukimitsu Ina, | 2025 | 60 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Hikari Mitsushima, Marika Ito, Yoko Hikasa, Rena Motomura, Chinatsu Akasaki, Aoi Koga, Yume Miyamoto, Izumi Aoyagi, Miyuki Sawashiro, Umeka Shoji North American Premiere

Animated by Sasayuri, a studio founded by Ghibli alum Hitomi Tateno, Cocoon features the profound talents of both veteran and new animators tobring Machiko Kyo’s wartime manga to life. Commissioned by NHK to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, Cocoon shines a light on an often overlooked tragedy: the Himeyuri students, a group of young girls compelled to support the Japanese army on Okinawa.

Classes have long been replaced by labor, and the girls are soon assigned to a hospital that is no more than a cave. When the girls are abandoned by the adults, what path will they choose?

The Last Blossom

Friday, July 10 at 7:30 p.m.

From director Baku Kinoshita, best known for the anime series Odd Taxi, comes a tear-jerking tale of love, perseverance, redemption, and a talking plant.

An elderly prisoner named Akutsu (Kaoru Kobayashi) is serving a life sentence and awaits a lonely death—until a voice calls out. This voice belongs to a flower (Pierre Taki) who asks the inmate about his life. Together, the two reflect on Akutsu’s innocent days, the good intentions that led him to a life of crime, the people he cared about, and that maybe—just maybe—these people can still blossom.

Rex: A Dinosaur’s Story

Friday, July 10 at 9:30 p.m.

Dir. Haruki Kadokawa | 1993 | 106 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Yumi Adachi, Shinobu Otake, Tsunehiko Watase

Industry disruptor and mogul Haruki Kadokawa, who revolutionized the field of film production with his media mix strategy, delivered this E.T.-adjacent curio of family entertainment to the chagrin of critics and the delight of the public—until his sudden and very public fall from grace. With creature effects by FX maestro Carlo Rambaldi (Alien, E.T., Possession), Kadokawa’s dinosaur pictureremainsone of the most expensive Japanese films of all time—and Shochiku’s highest-grossing release at the time—opening in theaters only a month after Jurassic Park.

The plot, strategically measured in a three-act structure, followsChie (Yumi Adachi), the young daughter of a paleontologist, who befriends a Tyrannosaurus hatchling after discovering a dinosaur egg with her father. Rarely seen outside Japan and a cult item abroad, Rex remains a fascinating relic of Kadokawa’s once-dominant brand of commercial filmmaking.

Saturday, July 11

BRAND NEW LOVE

Saturday, July 11 at 12:00 p.m.

Couple Yuiko and Kenichi undertake a short trip as their relationship starts to break down, watching over a relative’s antique shop in a last-ditch effort to save their deteriorating partnership. Bickering and resentful, the two take time away from each other by manning the shop—offering director Ryuichi Iwakura the chance to observe them quietly, depicting the dissolution of their partnership and their growing divide through subtle modes of expression. A remarkably understated film, BRAND NEW LOVE was awarded PIA’s Runner Up Award.

BRAND NEW LOVE is part of JAPAN CUTS’s Next Generation category. One film in this category will win the Next Generation Prize presented by VIPO. The winning filmmaker will receive $3,000, generously donated by VIPO to help fund their next work.

SAI: disaster

Saturday, July 11 at 2:30 p.m.

Directing duo Gogatsu’s SAI: disaster offers a theatrical edit of their chilling SAI serial, restructuring its initial six-part form into a single, disquieting affair.

Four individuals, unrelated and living in entirely different regions of the country, face a nameless man existing on their peripheries; his doppelgängers, or disguises, take on various roles in their lives—a barber, a cram-school teacher, a trucker—and herald death in their wake.

With the pitch-perfect casting of Teruyuki Kagawa (Creepy, Tokyo Sonata) as a nebulous omen of catastrophe, Gogatsu’s picture operates at a terrifying register, mixing slow-burn procedural with J-Horror dread. Atmospheric and unnerving, SAI: disaster presupposes life’s many tragedies as part of the natural order—mere “acts of God” enacted by a harbinger of chaos.

Shuffle

Saturday, July 11 at 5:30 p.m.

Initially filmed as an unsanctioned adaptation of Katsuhiro Otomo’s manga Run, Shuffle is an attempt by Ishii to “sketch a man’s entire life through only one motif: running.”

Chased through the streets of Tokyo by a police detective, a punk sprints and hurtles to some unknown terminus as the past rushes in. Panting, wheezing and gasping for one more breath of air, he musters all he can for a final course.

A stream of consciousness invoked by physical exertion, this film is considered by Ishii to be “a portrait of my generation.”

The Master of Shiatsu

Saturday, July 11 after the screening of Shuffle

The inaugural work of Ishii’s spiritual phase, TheMaster of Shiatsu emerged after a period of setbacks and disappointments, with Ishii finding the film to be a “kind of therapy” after the collapse of several unrealized projects.

The cackling laugh of a mysterious shiatsumaster (Tokujiro Namikoshi, the “father of shiatsu”) initiates this transformative uncoupling from reality as a shiatsu session imparts strange, astral properties to a young woman.

A key transitional work conjuring Ishii’s own hallucinatory vision of enlightenment, this metaphysical anodyne unlocks a vast, latent network of energy flow—visualizing streams of light through the urban fog of late-eighties Japan.

JUNK WORLD

Saturday, July 11 at 7:00 p.m.

A prequel to Takahide Hori’s outrageous, word-of-mouth marvel JUNK HEAD (2017), JUNK WORLD expands upon its predecessor’s absurdist stop-motion biosphere of Giger-esque, cenobite-inspired lifeforms, grotesque humor, and worldbuilding mythos.

Sent to explore an unexplained anomaly detected deep within the underground trenches, an expedition of humans and Mulligans—artificial beings once used as a labor force by humanity—are attacked by a radical sect of shibari-tied, leather chaps-adorning cultists.

Alongside a snaking and ambitious narrative, Hori populates his subterranea with a New World’s flora and fauna, bearing evolutionary processes beyond comprehension; violent, unpredictable aberrations and cannibalistic permutations; and entire civilizations sprung up simultaneously across minutes and millennia.

Gosh!!

Saturday, July 11 at 9:30 p.m.

Police officer Ippei Aoba (Sosuke Ikematsu) leads a normal life; except his dog, Oliver, is a womanizing, middle-aged drunk in a dog suit (Joe Odagiri). Together, with an all-star ensemble including Masatoshi Nagase and Koichi Sato, they lead a wondrously bizarre escapade featuring doors across time and space, a town obsessed with takoyaki, a tiny fairy, a Bollywood-style dance number, and more. Maybe Aoba doesn’t lead a normal life after all.

Based on a TV series by Joe Odagiri, Gosh!! is written, directed, and edited by Odagiri. And, again, stars Joe Odagiri in a dog suit.

Sunday, July 12

Rewrite

Sunday, July 12 at 2:30 p.m.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a classic of Japanese literature, one that has been famously retold across Japanese media and influenced a whole genre of “time leap” stories. Rewrite is an homage to this classic, but all is not exactly as it appears.

Transfer student Yasuhiko (Kei Adachi) is a boy from 300 years in the future who has come to visit the past after falling in love with a novel he’s read. When Yasuhiko shares his secret with Miyuki (Elaiza Ikeda), she comes to learn from her own future self that she must pen this very book and spends the next ten years writing the novel to complete the time loop. However, Yasuhiko didn’t tell Miyuki the full story.

Charming, funny, and unexpected, Rewrite is a delightful reinvention that turns tropes on their head and will keep you guessing until the very last chapter.

Sato and Sato

Sunday, July 12 at 5:30 p.m.

Chihiro Amano’s follow-up to Mrs. Noisy (winner of the 2020 JAPAN CUTS Audience Award) details the unraveling of a marriage, cutting across 15 years of a couple’s lives.

Sachi Sato (Yukino Kishii) and Tamotsu Sato meet in college and begin a life together until their early career plans are upended: Sachi, who took on studying for the bar exam in solidarity with Tamotsu, ends up passing while he fails. Inverting gender roles, Sato and Sato addresses the fracturing divides of marriage to devastating effect, as career ambitions are halted and frustrations pile on.

Impartial and sensitive, Amano’s empathetic treatise is a frank and intimate study of life’s great disappointments: the unkept promise of a life together.

Our Little Sister

Introduction by Suzu Hirose

Sunday, July 12 at 8:00 p.m. SOLD OUT

Dir. Hirokazu Koreeda | 2015 | 126 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Haruka Ayase, Masami Nagasawa, Kaho, Suzu Hirose

Hirokazu Koreeda’s resonant Our Little Sister forgoes a traditional plot in favor of an abundance of slice-of-life vignettes and everyday incidents.

Three twenty-something sisters—Sachi, Yoshino, and Chika—live together in their grandmother’s old family home in Kamakura’s seaside idyll. At their estranged father’s funeral in Yamagata, the sisters meet their teenage half-sister Suzu (Suzu Hirose), whom they capriciously invite to move in with them.

Koreeda’s blissful domestic drama tracks the sisters’ lives as seasons inevitably pass, enriched by the growing bonds of sisterhood and familial understanding.

JAPAN CUTS respectfully requests attendees not ask Ms. Hirose for photos or autographs. Ms. Hirose will not be posing for personal photographs or signing autographs at this event.

Monday, July 13

A Pale View of Hills

Centerpiece Film with Suzu Hirose

CUT ABOVE Award Ceremony, Q&A with Suzu Hirose, and Reception

Monday, July 13 at 6:00 p.m. – SOLD OUT

Based on Nobel Prize-winning author Kazuo Ishiguro’s debut novel and written, directed, and edited by Kei Ishikawa, A Pale View of Hills follows Etsuko, portrayed stunningly by both Suzu Hirose and Yoh Yoshida across the passage of years, as she shares her postwar memories with her daughter. A story spanning 30 years, it recounts sacrifice, tragedy, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

A delicately shot and acted Japanese-British-Polish co-production, A Pale View of Hills had its World Premiere at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It realizes the words of one of the world’s most gifted writers and spotlights the talents of one of Japan’s finest actresses. JAPAN CUTS will present this story of courage of loss for the first time in New York with actress Suzu Hirose live on-stage. Hirose will receive the festival’s highest honor, the CUT ABOVE Award, at this screening.

JAPAN CUTS respectfully requests attendees not ask Ms. Hirose for photos or autographs. Ms. Hirose will not be posing for personal photographs or signing autographs at this event.

Tuesday, July 14

New Directions in Japanese Cinema

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

A Wavy Girl
Dir. Natsuka Yashiro | 2025 | 30 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Nao Yamato, Sosuke Ogata | International Premiere
Maru (Nao Yamato) is a high school girl living in the countryside. Her lunch is always pancakes, a routine as messy as her naturally curly hair. When Sunao (Sosuke Ogata), a handsome boy from Tokyo, transfers to her class and joins her part-time job, they start riding their bikes home together. Despite his striking appearance, Maru senses something unspoken.

An Overflow
Dir. Shun Tsujii | 2025 | 29 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Riku Tsuji, Mana Asaki, Fuku Kondo, Rei Matsunaga | International Premiere
Fukuro (Riku Tsuji) quits his office job to pursue illustration and takes up a part-time role as a pool lifeguard to make ends meet. Though a poor swimmer, Fukuro’s days are calm until a former aspiring pro arrives and forces him to ask: Is his life moving forward or standing still?

The End of What Goes Around
Dir. Tomonari Kamobayashi | 2025 | 30 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Kinari Hirano, Raiku, Yoshi Sakou | International Premiere
A traditional camera shop in the Kanto region. The owner, Fumio Sugihara (Yoshi Sakou), and his employee, Minoru Fukaya (Kinari Hirano), have built a supportive relationship like that of a real father and son. Yet, one day, Fumio’s actual son returns. He had left to pursue a career in photography and now threatens Minoru’s place in the shop.

The Woman Who Repeats
Dir. Ere Nakada | 2025 | 30 min. | Japanese with English subtitles | With Ayumi Ito, Rena Tanaka, Yoko Imamoto, Riho Sato, Shohei Abe | International Premiere
Isolated office worker Takako (Ayumi Ito) secretly steals from others. Her world is upended, though, when a colleague (Rena Tanaka) catches her in the act, but rather than reprimand Takako, she simply turns and walks away. Haunted by this, Takako becomes fixated on her witness, an obsession that grows into an uneasy intimacy between two drifting souls: a woman who steals out of loneliness, and another yearning to discard all she owns.

A Wavy Girl, An Overflow, The End of What Goes Around, and The Woman Who Repeats are part of JAPAN CUTS’s New Directions in Japanese Cinema screening. NDJC is a program commissioned by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs and administered by VIPO (Visual Industry Promotion Organization), which funds emerging directors in Japan and provides them with a platform to showcase their talents with new short works.

Ginger Boy

Tuesday, July 14 at 9:00 p.m.

Transferring back to the Tokyo headquarters for his job at a regional bank, Kishida temporarily crashes with high school pal Kura, who works now as a filmmaker, but senses a growing disconnect between them. Claustrophobic and unnerving, Kura’s erratic lifestyle and peculiar behavior start to affect Kishida, who tries his best to support his friend.

A slow-burn, propulsive work laced with atmosphere and inventive direction, the Cannes-selected Ginger Boy is a distinct showcase of director Miki Tanaka’s craft, visually arresting and confident in its vision.

Naomi Out of Sync

Tuesday, July 14 after the screening of Ginger Boy

18-year-old Naomi lives with her older brother, Shingo, who has a developmental disability and Tourette’s, and her father, struggling to keep up with daily life, but maintains an upbeat demeanor despite her struggles at her part-time job and taking care of her brother. One day, out of frustration, Naomi accidentally hurts her brother’s feelings.

Utilizing this setup, director Fuku Nakazato delivers a lighthearted study of the two siblings with candor and empathy. Winner of the Grand Prize at the PIA Film Festival.

Ginger Boy and Naomi Out of Sync are part of JAPAN CUTS’s Next Generation category. One film in this category will win the Next Generation Prize presented by VIPO. The winning filmmaker will receive $3,000, generously donated by VIPO to help fund their next work.

Wednesday, July 15

Diamond Diplomacy

Q&A with Director Yuriko Gamo Romer, author Robert Fitts, and MLB Legend Masanori “Mashi” Murakami

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

Diamond Diplomacy explores the long and complex relationship between the U.S. and Japan through the shared love of baseball and the powerful cultural and diplomatic bridge the game has provided across generations—from the first introduction of baseball in Japan to the global sensation of Shohei Ohtani. Featuring rare archival footage and interviews with baseball greats Masanori “Mashi” Murakami, Warren “Cro” Cromartie, Ichiro Suzuki, Bobby Valentine, and more.

W’s Tragedy

Wednesday, July 15 at 9:00 p.m.

W’s Tragedy racked up all the major film prizes of 1984 in Japan, a rare occurrence for Kadokawa’s pop experimentalism (often met with open revulsion by the powerful older generation of film critics).

Hiroko Yakushimaru stars as a young, aspiring stage actress who develops frightening ambitions to become a star in this self-reflexive, fascinatingly complex film.

Shinichiro Sawai, one of the great, underappreciated directors of the 1980s, masterfully follows the sometimes-mind-bending Kadokawa pattern of making films that are, in some way, always also about Kadokawa. Scored by Joe Hisaishi.

Thursday, July 16

In Their Traces

Q&A with Shigeru Kobayashi, Norio Nagakura and Saori Ninomiya

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

The latest documentary from Shigeru Kobayashi, who first gained recognition as Makoto Sato’s cinematographer on the legendary Minamata documentary Living on the River Agano (1992) and its sequel Memories of Agano (2005), In Their Traces tackles the difficult subject matter of sexual and physical abuse with shocking frankness in its matter-of-fact candidness. Opening with a harrowing phone call that relays a survivor’s failed suicide to the director, Kobayashi’s film is a work of utmost empathy and understanding, built on the collective testimonies of abuse survivors navigating a life after their trauma. Lensed by celebrated experimental documentarian Kaori Oda (Cenote) and stemming from Japan’s rich lineage of documentary practices, In Their Traces is a remarkable achievement.

Night Flower

Thursday, July 16 at 9:00 p.m.

From acclaimed director Eiji Uchida comes the story of Natsuki (Keiko Kitagawa) and Tamae (Misato Morita), two women on the fringes of society who find family in each other. Natsuki fled to Tokyo with her children to escape debt. She soon encounters Tamae, a struggling kickboxer, and together they sell drugs to Tokyo’s outcasts to survive. Can Natsuki and Tamae be criminals by night and lead normal lives by day? Or will all they have be dragged into the underworld and their precious found family unravel?

Misato Morita won Best Supporting Actress at this year’s Japanese Academy Awards.

Friday, July 17

Burn

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

Makoto Nagahisa’s dark, pop-art nihilist feature stars Nana Mori as Ju-Ju, the stuttering daughter of abusive religious zealots, who escapes and joins a band of young runaway misfits in the littered commercial district of Kabukicho. Far from a haven for the broken, Ju-Ju’s “Lost Boys” fantasy turns into an inescapable underground of prostitution, drug-laced dreams, and hopelessness, fueled by the very companions she’s come to befriend.

Nagahisa’s on-brand, hyper-stylized direction—a saccharine overstimulation of formal elements, from step printing and lo-fi video footage to double dollies and fisheye lenses—breathes a perpetual exuberance into the profound bleakness of Burn’s smoldering powder-keg plot.

Tiger

Friday, July 17 at 8:30 p.m.

Inspired by real-life experiences, directorAnshul Chauhan’s socially conscious fourth feature Tiger excavates Japan’s unrepentant pressures on queer existence.

Taiga, a closeted, middle-aged gay masseur living in Tokyo, returns home to see his dying father, where he faces growing adversity: His inheritance is contingent upon marriage and children, and his sister threatens to out him, which would result in severe social consequences.

Chauhan’s focus on an aging queer generation, emphasized by Taiga’s deep desires for a sense of stability, belonging, and even fatherhood, sketches a frustrating reality: A life of acceptance is one Japan may not be able to offer.

Saturday, July 18

Numb

Saturday, July 18 at 12:00 p.m.

Daichi (Takumi Kitamura) is a boy who lost his voice because of his father’s violence. Growing up in isolation and poverty, he witnesses a transitory Japan seldom seen by the outside world. Facing hardship after hardship across his adolescence only leaves Daichi perpetually more numb, and he can do nothing but watch as the few he cares about are hurt by those who are supposed to support them and the failings of the system around them. Can Daichi break free from this painful life, or will he now scar others?

Yoyogi Johnny

Saturday, July 18 at 2:30 p.m.

An inventive and delightfully deadpan take on seishun eiga (“youth film”), Yoyogi Johnny follows the titular Johnny (singer KANON) and a band of misfits in the school’s squash club who don’t actually play squash. Yet Johnny’s days of loafing are numbered as a new girl at school captures his heart. This combined with the sudden need to compete in a squash tournament ends Johnny’s ambling ways and fills his days with misadventures.

A coming-of-age comedy ripe with eccentric characters, inventive dialogue, and preposterous situations, it’s a stirringly unique film that despite its outlandishness has a warm and uplifting heart.

SUZUKI=BAKUDAN

Saturday, July 18 at 5:00 p.m.

Based on the bestselling novel by Go Katsuhiro, SUZUKI=BAKUDAN is a big-budget blockbuster centered on Tagosaku Suzuki (Jiro Sato), a mysterious drunk who claims he can see the future. After successfully predicting a bomb will go off in Tokyo, Suzuki leads the police in a game of wits: They must solve his riddles to stop further explosions. While police fan out over the city to defuse these bombs, a young detective (Yuki Yamada) challenges Suzuki to uncover the truth behind his predictions. Is he psychic, is he lucky, is he a criminal mastermind, is he a con man? Or is he something worse?

Jiro Sato delivers a tour-de-force performance and was honored with Best Supporting Actor at this year’s Japanese Academy Awards.

Sunday, July 19

Sheep in the Box

Closing Night Film
Q&A with Hirokazu Koreeda and Reception

Sunday, July 19* at 8:00 p.m. – SOLD OUT

Taking its name from a famous passage in Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince, Hirokazu Koreeda’s latest effort is a parable of speculative imagination, exploring the notion of resurrection through technological means. Set in a not-too-distant future, Sheep in the Box finds young, bereaved couple Otone and Kensuke (Haruka Ayase and comedian Daigo) welcoming home an AI-powered robot built in the image of their dead son, Kakeru. A generative reconstruction assembled from an algorithmic synthesis of photos and videos, Kakeru’s facsimile draws both skepticism and alleviation, yet it offers an opportunity to be with their “son” once more—a momentary respite from grief, or perhaps a chance to say goodbye.

An outlier in Koreeda’s typically rooted domestic naturalism, Sheep in the Box remains grounded in Koreeda’s enduring concerns, proffering, as the director himself has noted, “a universal story about children eventually surpassing their parents.”

Reception food and drink provided by Afuri, Sapporo, and ITO EN.

*The screening of Sheep in the Box was originally Saturday, July 18 to close out JAPAN CUTS; however, it was rescheduled to Sunday, July 19 after the lineup was announced.

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Japan Society to Showcase 30 Japanese Films in 12 Days