japan

Feb 22, 1999 — Flipping around the channels of late-night TV in my Tokyo apartment in 1984 I came across what seemed like a B movie from the ’60s. The studio: Nikkatsu. The star: Joe Shishido. The director: Seijun Suzuki. I was not at...

Oct 12, 1998 — Are there cultural purists still remaining who would argue that the “Westernized” title of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 masterpiece—High and Low—throws polluted water on the cosmological fire of its given name: Tengoku to jigoku—literally, Heaven and Hell?Kurosawa’s once insisted-upon reputation as...

Jul 21, 1998 — Samurai III, Duel at Ganryu Island, is the last and best part of Hiroshi Inagaki’s Trilogy. In contrast to the earlier, more action-oriented Samurai I and II, this final section shows its hero Musashi (Toshiro Mifune) struggling with questions as...

Jul 21, 1998 — Hiroshi Inagaki’s Samurai Trilogy, of which this release is the first part, was adapted from Eiji Yoshikawa’s epic novel Musashi Miyamoto, which has been called Japan’s Gone with the Wind. The comparison is valid, for the tale of the medieval...

Jan 15, 1996 — If Akira Kurosawa is the John Ford of Japanese samurai dramas, then director Kihachi Okamoto—a specialist in action films, with a particulat accent on violence and raw characterizations—is the samurai film’s Sam Fuller.

Jan 8, 1996 — Dodes’ka-den was made at a low point in Akira Kurosawa’s long career-perhaps the lowest that the director has ever known. In the preface of the filmmaker’s autobiography, critic and translator Audie Bock reports that Kurosawa’s commercial prospects became bleak in...

Dec 28, 1993 — In his touchstone of postwar Japanese cinema, Kenji Mizoguchi uses woman’s fate to reveal the human cost of oppression.

Sep 26, 1993 — Kon Ichikawa’s magisterial achievement is a barbed, poignant, and seductive elegy that draws on the skills he acquired over his four-decade career.

Jan 27, 1993 — In beautifully composed black-and-white and tempered by a gentle and nostalgic choral score, Kon Ichikawa's drama probes deeply into the moral chaos of war.

Nov 19, 1989 — After finishing High and Low (1963), director Akira Kurosawa recalls, “I started looking around for something else to do and quite by accident picked up [the novel] Red Beard by Shugoro Yamamoto. At first I thought it would make a...