Tag Archives: Japan

The Dai-bosatsu toge trilogy is based on Kaizan Nakazatos unfinished long series of novels (41 books, written from 1913 to 1941). Set in the last period of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Daibosatsu Toge tells the story of Tsuke Ryunosuke, a nihilistic swordmaster who doesnt hesitate to kill anyone, bad or good.
Read More »

An affluent medical professor, Komiya, and his bossy wife, Tokio, are to look after Setsuko, their high-spirited niece from Osaka. Setsuko is a liberated woman who does what she wants, including smoking, even though she is a minor. On Saturday, the professor does not feel like going to his weekend golf game, but his wife packs him off anyway. So he leaves his bag at the apartment of his student Okada, and goes to a bar with a friend. Setsuko traces him there, and insists that he take her to a geisha house. When she gets rather tipsy, the professor calls Okada to take her home, while he sleeps at Okada’s. The wife becomes suspicious of Setsuko when she sees Okada bringing her home, and also of her husband when she discovers that he did not go golfing.
Read More »

Sawa Yamagishi (Sakura Ando) worked as a nursing-care helper. The family of an old man asked Sawa to sleep with him, which led her to eventually lose her job and house. Now, she has nowhere to go. Sawa finds elderly people in trouble and gets involved in their lives. Meeting them, their lives change and Sawa’s own wounds start to heal.
Read More »

A mailman becomes obsessed with a pretty, young wife. He captures the woman, tortures her and keeps her in his basement dungeon where she becomes his private sex toy.
Read More »

Weary of their lot, ten women – all mistresses of the same philandering businessman – join forces to wreak revenge upon him. A comedy of reversed expectations, gleefully upending traditional onscreen representations of gender (the women here act and talk like men, while the men are weak, confused or ineffectual), it’s shot in an exaggerated noir-ish manner – complete with multiple flashbacks and highly stylised visuals – that serves highlight the artificiality of its conceit.
Read More »

With Ran, legendary director Akira Kurosawa reimagines Shakespeare’s King Lear as a singular historical epic set in sixteenth-century Japan. Majestic in scope, the film is Kurosawa’s late-life masterpiece, a profound examination of the folly of war and the crumbling of one family under the weight of betrayal, greed, and the insatiable thirst for power.
Read More »

An unlikely kind of friendship develops between Fergus, an Irish Republican Army volunteer, and Jody, a kidnapped British soldier lured into an IRA trap by Jude, another IRA member. When the hostage-taking ends up going horribly wrong, Fergus escapes and heads to London, where he seeks out Jody’s lover, a hairdresser named Dil. Fergus adopts the name “Jimmy” and gets a job as a day laborer. He also starts seeing Dil, who knows nothing about Fergus’ IRA background. But there are some things about Dil that Fergus doesn’t know, either…
Read More »

In 1939, Sakura Nishi is a young army nurse who is sent to the field hospitals in China during the Sino-Japanese war. She has to assist the surgeon Dr. Okabe with an incredible number of amputations. In the crowded wards, she gives sympathy to some of the soldiers, including sexually servicing one who has lost both arms and has no hope of returning home. She falls in love with Dr. Okabe, and follows him to the front, even though he is impotent from his morphine addiction.
Read More »

Rinku is a suicide-prevention counselor, living with her husband Shigehiko. He’s older than she, scrubbing things constantly, sexually indifferent. They sleep apart. During Tokyo’s rainy season, Iguchi, a photographer Rinku has counseled by phone, sends her pictures he has taken through her skylight: she’s wearing a short skirt, masturbating. He offers her the negatives if she’ll follow his instructions. She’s humiliated and agrees. He tells her he’s only giving her license to express her inner desires. He sends her into the night to walk on the wild side. Then, she asks a favor of him, and soon her husband receives phone calls and photographs. Where will this triangle lead?
Read More »

Saya (Yui Aragaki) is a young widow mother. Her husband Yutaro (Yo Oizumi) died in an accident. Yutaro abandoned his wealthy family to marry Saya. To protect her baby, she goes to the town of Sasara where her aunt lived. Her aunt passed her house down to Saya. Saya and her baby settles down there, but she has difficulties dealing with her situation. At this time, her dead husband Yutaro borrows other people’s bodies to help Saya, but Yutaro’s family tries to take her baby away.
Read More »

Kentaro is a lonely loser and geek. When he’s fired from his job, he also loses his dignity. At his lowest moment he goes out on the town to drink away his misery when he wanders into an abandoned building in the heart of the pleasure district. There he finds a pretty girl doll with skin so soft and warm to touch. Her skin is so lifelike that he can see the veins under the skin… but it is a doll without a heartbeat. In his muddled consciousness, the man sees the doll turn into a cyborg girl and save him from thugs. The doll becomes his guardian angel with a demonic twist as she fulfills his fantasies by becoming a cyborg girl, a swan-lake ballerina, and his girlfriend. This hallucinatory and erotic romance fulfills the man’s final erotic desires. Who is she really? And where will their romance lead them…?
Read More »

A raucous teen boy with a feminine face is teased everywhere, so his odd biker father dresses him as a girl and sends him to an all-girl school. The lad introduces himself as Sukeban, and a classmate, Michiko, takes him to after-school activities. Lessons on humility turn violent when a masked hatchet-wielding woman turns up. Jealousy, syringes of hormones, bare breasts, a blood bath, and more figure in the resolution.
Read More »

Continuing his penchant for directing films in the characteristically Japanese genre he virtually created, director Takashi Ishii here presents yet another stylish rape/thriller. Nami is an attractive woman, and she loves her husband, who runs the real estate agency she works at. One day, during a rainstorm, a mysterious drifter stumbles into her and, following her on her way back to the office, asks for (and gets) a job from her husband, over her protests. Not long after that, Nami and the newcomer are trading amorous glances. When the drifter gets her alone in a model house, he rapes her on the floor. For some reason, this doesn’t offend Nami, and she encourages the socially backward man to take her to bed often. Eventually, the two of them decide to do away with her husband, despite the fact that Nami still loves him.
Read More »

In International Gangs of Kobe the opposite occurs; it’s Sugawara’s presence that brings out Takakura’s ruthless side. Although the two start off as allied gang members, Kobe proves too small a town for the giants of yakuza cinema. The gang splits into rival factions and Takakura and Sugawara settle their differences with violence. Tons of action and a notable cast make the unexceptional International Gangs of Kobe a load of silly yakuza fun.
Read More »

Akiko is the heiress of a lumber business family that spans many generations. She married Hiroshi, a company man, and was leading a plain and happy life. But dark clouds overcast Akiko’s happy life when Hiroshi starts an affair with Michiyo, an underclassman from the school Akiko attended. Then Shinji, who used to work in the family lumber business, enters her life the turmoil of men-women relationships becomes tempestuous.
Read More »