Masaki Kobayashi’s six-part magnum opus, The Human Condition, based on Junpei Gomikawa’s postwar novel, bears the imprint of Kobayashi’s tutelage under legendary filmmaker Keisuke Kinoshita at Shochiku’s Ofuna studio, a critical, introspective, and deeply personal account of wartime Japan framed from the perspective of an idealistic everyman (and Kobayashi’s alterego), Kaji (Tatsuya Nakadai). Opening to […]
Narayama Bushiko opens to the obscured face of a joruri narrator against an oddly colorful curtain backdrop announcing the commencement of the play, Narayama Bushiko, based on the ancient legend of Obasute, to the distinctive sound of a shamisen from the traditional nagauta accompaniment. The curtains are pulled to the side to reveal a strangely […]
In the idyllic, rural Inland Sea island of Shodoshima in 1928, a group of children run towards a laden caravan in order to bid farewell to their kind and affable sensei (teacher) who is leaving the village to be married. A young, motivated teacher named Hisako Oishi (Hideko Takamine) has been recruited from the industrialized […]
A Japanese Tragedy opens to an urgent, chaotic montage of intercut documentary footage and newspaper articles that illustrate the austerity of life in post-occupation Japan. At a shabby, rundown inn in the tourist town of Atami, an itinerant musician (Keiji Sada) plays a melancholic serenade (aptly titled Resort Town Elegy) under an open window, and […]
Perhaps it is postwar filmmaker’s Keisuke Kinoshita’s reputation as a director of old-fashioned, “women’s pictures” coupled with his penchant for depicting simple, uncorrupted innocence that have rendered his work (particularly with the advent of the Japanese New Wave) vulnerable to criticisms of outmoded sentimentality. However, while these generalizations are rooted in the intrinsic elements of […]
Keisuke Kinoshita’s wartime film, Army is anything but the rousing call to arms and reinforcement of patriotism that the authorities had envisioned the film would be. Known for his Ofuna-flavored shomin-geki “women’s pictures”, Kinoshita subverts the official themes of duty, allegiance to the emperor, and national glory. Contrasting the emotional (and philosophical) rigidity of the […]