While shadows and empty spaces pervade Naomi Kawase’s search for her absent father in Embracing, the images in Katatsumori are tactile and suffused in light – a stark contrast that conveys Kawase’s deep affection towards her 80 year old maternal great aunt and adoptive mother, Uno. In hindsight, the implied coldness of the film’s preface […]
Tag: Japanese Cinema
Embracing, 1992
Naomi Kawase’s Embracing is both an evocation of, and disjunction from, Jonas Mekas’s diaristic memory films, a journey in search of a lost past through the empty spaces and resigned silence of an unreconciled – and incomplete – present. This sense of absence and longing is revealed in the film’s opening sequence: the sight of […]
Street of Shame, 1956
The red light district of Yoshiwara in 1956 bears little resemblance to its evocative tradition as the place “where flowery courtesans, romantic and proud gloried in years gone by”. The government has waged an annual campaign to ban prostitution, but in the uncertainty and devastation of postwar Japan, it is a tragic and ignoble reality […]
Crucified Lovers, 1954
In 1683 Kyoto, at the house of Ishun (Eitarô Shindô) the grand scroll maker, the printers are busy assembling the calendars for the imperial court in the absence of their senior artist, a diligent and conscientious worker named Mohei (Kazuo Hasegawa). Suffering from a lingering cold, Mohei has been working from the privacy of his […]
Sansho the Bailiff, 1954
In the austere society of ancient Japan, a beloved, altruistic provincial governor defies an order from the general of the reigning feudal lord to provide additional men for the army, and is forced into exile. In his parting words to his young son, he provides a fundamental principle with which to govern his life: “Without […]
A Geisha, 1953
A naive, idealistic young woman named Eiko (Ayako Wakao) ventures into the Gion district in search of her late mother’s geisha “sister” – an independent-minded, and old-fashioned geisha named Miyoharu (Michiyo Kogure). Shamed by her uncle for her disreputable social status and disowned by her burdensome, ailing father, Sawamoto (Eitaro Shindo), Eiko has turned to […]