Tag Archives: japan society

RICHIE’S ELECTRIC EIGHT — THE BOLD AND THE DARING: SUMMER VACATION 1999

Three boys mourn the loss of a friend in different ways in Shusuke Kaneko’s SUMMER VACATION

GLOBUS FILM SERIES: SUMMER VACATION 1999 (SEN-KYUHYAKU-KYUJU-KYU-NEN NO NATSUYASUMI) (Shusuke Kaneko, 1988)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, March 13, $12, 7:00
Series runs March 13-29
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

The first part of Japan Society’s tribute to Ohio-born writer, critic, scholar, curator, and filmmaker Donald Richie, who died in February 2013 at the age of eighty-eight, consisted of five classic dramas from Japan’s cinematic elite (Akira Kurosawa, Kenji Mizoguchi, Yasujiro Ozu, Mitsuo Yanagimachi, and Hirokazu Kore-eda). “Richie’s Fantastic Five” is now being followed by “Richie’s Electric Eight: The Bold & the Daring,” comprising eight cutting-edge works by emerging filmmakers. The seventeen-day festival begins March 13 with a rare screening of Shusuke Kaneko’s gender-bending Summer Vacation 1999. Based on Moto Hagio’s shōjo manga The Heart of Thomas, the 1988 film takes place in a boarding school in the near future, as three friends, Kazuhiko (Tomoko Otakara), Naoto (Miyuki Nakano), and Norio (Eri Fukatsu), who are spending the summer alone in their all-boys boarding school, try to recover from the suicide of Yu (Eri Miyajima), who jumped off a cliff after being rejected by Kazuhiko. When a new student, Kaoru (Miyajima), shows up, looking and acting just like Yu, the other boys are forced to face their innermost fears and desires.

Gender identity, homoeroticism, and young love are at the heart of manga-based yaoi film

Beautifully shot in a lush, dreamy 1970s-style palette by Kenji Takama, Summer Vacation 1999 is a prime example of the Japanese yaoi, or boys love, subgenre, focusing on homoeroticism among adolescent boys. Kaneko, who had previously made a pair of Nikkatsu Roman Porno films and would go on to direct monster movies featuring Godzilla, Gamera, and Mothra as well as Death Note and its sequel, explores the students’ growing love and attraction for one another in desexualized yet fetishistic ways, especially in a tender scene in which one boy gives mouth-to-mouth CPR to another, while incorporating elements of the Japanese ghost story as Kaoru continues to evoke Yu. Kaneko also twists the Noh and Kabuki tradition of men performing all the roles, as the four characters are played by females. “One watches these young people, so young that a degree of androgyny is expected, and it is as though one is watching adolescence for the first time,” Richie wrote in his 1988 New Japanese Cinema report for Japan Society. “Given the entire nature of the endeavor, it cannot but help to occasionally teeter on the edge of kitsch (the production looks too French, the music is too Faure, the whole idea also has a flavor of outré) but it never falls in, is never sentimental, and manages to increase its beauty (and our wonder) to the very end.” Plus, the hairstyles are worth the price of admission all by themselves. Summer Vacation will be introduced by MoMA film curator emeritus Laurence Kardish and will be followed by a yaoi party with Ideal Orkestra in which guests are encouraged to dress androgynously. (The Globus Film Series tribute to Richie continues with such other eclectic works as Yoshitaro Nomura’s Chase, Kazuhiro Soda’s Campaign, and Shohei Imamura’s Profound Desire of the Gods.)

RICHIE’S FANTASTIC FIVE — KUROSAWA, MIZOGUCHI, OZU, YANAGIMACHI & KORE-EDA: AFTER LIFE

Guides interview the deceased in Hirokazu Kore-eda’s AFTER LIFE

AFTER LIFE (WANDÂFURU RAIFU) (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 1998)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Wednesday, February 19, $12, 7:00
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society’s five-film, five-month, five-director tribute to writer, critic, scholar, curator, and filmmaker Donald Richie, who died on February 19, 2013, at the age of eighty-eight, comes to a close on the one-year anniversary of his passing in appropriate fashion, with a screening of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s second narrative feature, After Life, Kore-eda’s eminently thoughtful film about two of his recurring themes: death and memory. Every Monday, the deceased arrive at a way station where they have three days to decide on a single memory they can bring with them into heaven. Once chosen, the memory is re-created on film, and the person goes on to the next step of his or her journey, to be replaced by a new batch of souls. The way station is staffed by guides, including Takashi Mochizuki (Arata), Shiori Satonaka (Erika Oda), and Satoru Kawashima (Susumu Terajima), whose job it is to interview the new arrivals and help them select a memory and then bring it to life on-screen. Some want to take with them an idyllic moment from childhood, others a remembrance of a lost love, but a few are either unable to or refuse to come up with one, which challenges the staff. Twenty-one-year-old Yūsuke Iseya declares, “I have no intention of choosing. None,” while seventy-year-old Ichiro Watanabe (Taketoshi Naito) is having difficulty deciding on the exact moment, reevaluating and reflecting on the life he led. (Ichiro’s wife is played by Kyōko Kagawa, who has also appeared in films by Yasujiro Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, and Kenji Mizoguchi, three seminal directors whose work was previously shown in the Japan Society series.) As the week continues, the guides look back on their lives as well, sharing intimate details, one of which leads to an emotional finale.

AFTER LIFE explores life, death, memory, heaven, and the art of filmmaking

Kore-eda, who previously examined memory loss in the documentary Without Memory and explored a family’s reaction to death in the brilliant Still Walking, interviewed some five hundred people about what memory they would take with them to heaven, and some of those nonprofessional actors are in the final cut of After Life, blurring the lines between fiction and reality. After Life is also very much about the art of filmmaking itself, as each memory is turned into a short movie created on a set and watched in a screening room. In fact, the film was inspired by Kore-eda’s memories of his grandfather’s battle with what would later be identified as Alzheimer’s disease; the director has also cited Ernst Lubitsch’s 1943 comedy, Heaven Can Wait, as an influence, and the Japanese title, Wandâfuru raifu, means “Wonderful Life,” evoking Frank Capra’s holiday classic. But Kore-eda never gets maudlin about life or death in the film, instead painting a memorable portrait of human existence and those simple moments that make it all worthwhile — and will have viewers contemplating which memory they would take with them. After Life is screening at Japan Society on February 19 at 7:00, concluding “Richie’s Fantastic Five: Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Yanagimachi & Kore-eda,” and will be introduced by Yale professor Aaron Gerow. (In addition, Kore-eda’s latest film, the masterful Like Father, Like Son, has been extended at the IFC Center.)

RICHIE’S FANTASTIC FIVE — KUROSAWA, MIZOGUCHI, OZU, YANAGIMACHI & KORE-EDA: HIMATSURI

Tatsuo (Kinya Kitaoji) battles more than nature in Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s controversial HIMATSURI

HIMATSURI (FIRE FESTIVAL) (Mitsuo Yanagimachi, 1985)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, January 24, $12, 7:00
Series runs monthly through February
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

There’s something always lurking just beneath the surface of Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s 1985 drama, Himatsuri, and when it finally arrives, it’s shocking and explosive. In the small coastal village of Nigishima, the fishermen are at odds with the lumberjacks. Someone is dumping oil in the water, killing the fish, and the chief suspect is Tatsuo (Kinya Kitaoji), a strong woodsman who chops down trees, raises dogs to hunt down wild boars, shoots monkeys, cheats on his wife with a former girlfriend turned hussy (Kiwako Taichi), and is the only villager who refuses to sell his property to a company intent on building a marine park there. He both cavorts with and defies nature and the local spiritual beliefs, at one point swimming naked in the waters leading to a sanctuary. “Only I can make the goddess feel like a woman,” he proclaims. Carefully watching and worshiping Tatsuo is young Ryota (Ryota Nakamoto), who also oversteps boundaries, using sacred branches in animal traps, and is forced to expose himself to the goddess in retribution. Soon a storm comes, transforming Tatsuo and leading to a horrific conclusion. Set in the area where the Japanese creation myth takes place, Himatsuri is a strange creature indeed, with confusing plot twists, bizarre transitions, and some very weird scenes, with a creepy score by Tōru Takemitsu and lush photography by Tamura Masaki. Yanagimachi’s tale, written by Kenji Nakagami, is no mere clarion call to save the environment; instead, it’s an examination of man’s inhumanity to nature, the disregard for the trees, the oceans, the animals (while also commenting on religion, homosexuality, and contemporary society). Yanagimachi (God Speed You! Black Emperor; Ai ni tsuite, Tokyo) mixes genres, from horror to thriller to romance to musical, as he tells the story of one man who just can’t stop himself.

Fire Festival doesn’t sit well for Tatsuo (Kinya Kitaoji) in Yanagimachi’s HIMATSURI

Himatsuri is screening on January 24 at 7:00 at Japan Society, introduced by Bard College professor Ian Buruma, as part of the monthly tribute series “Richie’s Fantastic Five: Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Yanagimachi & Kore-eda,” which honors Ohio-born writer, critic, scholar, curator, and filmmaker Donald Richie, who died in February 2013 at the age of eighty-eight. Richie was a tireless champion of Japanese culture and, particularly, cinema, and the series features six works by five of his favorite directors. Here’s what Richie said about Himatsuri: “The power of Fire Festival has allowed the film to live on in the minds of those who have experienced it. It is occasionally revived in art cinemas abroad though it remains unseen in Japan. Its power is such that it is impossible to forget once seen. Not only does it reach beyond appearances to suggest a further reality, it also displays a seriousness of intent rare in any national cinema.” The series concludes on February 19 with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, appropriately on the one-year anniversary of Richie’s passing.

UNDER THE RADAR: THE ROOM NOBODY KNOWS

Kuro Tanino digs deep into the unconscious mind in THE ROOM NOBODY KNOWS (photo by Julie Lemberger)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Through January 12, $28
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.undertheradarfestival.com

Kenji (Ikuma Yamada) has quite a surprise in store for his older brother’s (Ichigo Iida) birthday in Kuro Tanino’s hyper-strange and fabulously entertaining The Room Nobody Knows. Running at Japan Society through January 12 as part of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar festival, the sixty-minute production is a surreal journey deep inside the subconscious and unconscious minds, a psychedelic Freudian trip through a phallic world built out of fear and desire, dreams and anxiety. A sculptor, painter, writer, and director from a family of psychiatrists who until recently was a practicing psychiatrist himself, Tanino (Frustrating Picture Book for Adults, Fortification of Smiles) sets his highly stylized, bizarre tale in a spectacular two-level horizontal apartment designed by Tanino and Michiko Inada. On the top, colorful Gaudí-style tiles line a room that a pair of worker elves with really bad teeth (Momoi Shimada and Taeko Seguchi) begin to furnish with penis-shaped chairs and flutes, while below, in a lablike white space too small for the characters to stand up in, Kenji, surrounded by scissors, experiment bottles, and four heads mounted on penises, studies for his university entrance examinations and awaits his brother’s arrival. When Kenji’s older sibling shows up, the two men give new meaning to the concept of brotherly love. Performed in Japanese (with English surtitles) by Tanino’s Niwa Gekidan Penino company — part of the name comes from his childhood nickname, Penino, which combines “Tanino” with “penis” — The Room Nobody Knows is a deeply personal and intimate piece, based on Tanino’s own life and memories. And what memories they are.

UNDER THE RADAR 2014

The Public Theater and other venues
425 Lafayette St. by Astor Pl.
January 8-19, $20-$28 (UTR Packs $75 for five shows)
212-967-7555
www.undertheradarfestival.com

The tenth edition of the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival is another diverse collection of unique and unusual international theatrical productions, roundtable discussions, and free live music, from the strange to the familiar, the offbeat to the downright impossible to describe. Among the sixteen shows, most of which take place at the Public, are 600 Highwaymen’s The Record, a dance-theater work that brings together a roomful of strangers to comment on the relationship between performer and audience; John Hodgman’s one-man piece, I Stole Your Dad, in which the Daily Show “resident expert” shares intimate, personal stories about his family and technology while baring himself onstage; psychiatrist Kuro Tanino and his Niwa Gekidan Penino company’s The Room Nobody Knows (at Japan Society), about two brothers getting ready for the older one’s birthday party; Andrew Ondrejcak’s Feast, in which a king and his court (starring Reg E. Cathey) have a farewell dinner as Babylon collapses; and the American premiere of hip-hopper Kate Tempest and Battersea Arts Centre’s Brand New Ancients (at St. Ann’s Warehouse), a multidisciplinary show about everyday life in a changing world. Also on the roster is Sacred Stories, Toshi Reagon’s thirtieth annual birthday celebration with special guests; Roger Guenveur Smith’s one-man improvisation, Rodney King; a reimagining of Sekou Sundiata’s blessing the boats with Mike Ladd, Will Power, and Carl Hancock Rux; Cie. Philippe Saire’s Black Out (at La MaMa), Edgar Oliver’s Helen and Edgar, Lola Arias’s El Año en que nací / The year I was born (at La MaMa), SKaGeN’s BigMouth, tg STAN’s JDX — a public enemy, Sean Edward Lewis’s work-in-progress Frankenstein (at the Freeman Space), excerpts from ANIMALS’ The Baroness Is the Future, and Daniel Fish’s Eternal, the last three also part of the Incoming! Festival within a Festival.

Kate Tempest will rap about the state of the world in BRAND NEW ANCIENTS (photo by Christine Hardinge)

In addition, there will be numerous postshow talkbacks, a pair of workshops with Sara De Roo and Jolente De Keersmaker of tg STAN on January 10-11, four noon Culturebot conversations January 11-12 and 18-19, and Coil, Under the Radar, Prototype, and American Realness have joined forces to present free live concerts every night from January 9 to 19 in the Lounge at the Public, including Invincible, Christeene, Ethan Lipton, Heather Christian & the Arbonauts, Sky-Pony, Timur and the Dime Museum, the Middle Church Jerriesse Johnson Gospel Choir, M.A.K.U. Sound System, DJ Acidophilus, and Nick Hallett, Space Palace, and Woahmone DJs.

REBIRTH: RECENT WORK BY MARIKO MORI

Mariko Mori, “Transcircle 1.1,” stone, Corian, LED, real-time control system, 2004 (courtesy of the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo / photo by Richard Goodbody)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 12, $12 (free Friday from 6:00 to 9:00)
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

For her first museum show in more than a decade, Tokyo-born artist Mariko Mori explores the interconnectedness between humanity and the cosmos, the body and the universe, and the endless cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Continuing through January 12 at Japan Society, “Rebirth” comprises sculpture, video, photography, and installation that celebrates peace and love while delving into a past, present, and future that comes together through primal consciousness. “Why are souls born in this world, and why do we depart to another world? Why have we chosen to leave that world to be born in this world and exist in the here and now?” Mori asked in a 2007 interview with Lida Takayo that the author incorporates into the exhibition catalog essay “Mariko Mori’s ‘Rebirth’: Ancient, Futuristic Visions.” “There can be only one answer. We are here so that we can experience love. I was born here so that my love can bring peace to the world,” Mori concludes. The artist, who lives and works in Tokyo, London, and New York, takes visitors on a journey from the Middle Jōmon period of several thousand centuries BCE to the birth of a star, beginning with the glowing Lucite “Ring,” which hangs over the lobby pond, and “Birds I,” nearly hidden in the bamboo garden above. The pairing of “Primal Memory” with “Mask,” followed by “Flatstone” and “Transcircle 1.1,” meld such ancient traditions as the stone circle with modern technology; for example, the Stonehenge-like “Transcircle 1.1” consists of nine tall monoliths arranged in a circle, glowing in changing LED color schemes based on the orbit of the eight planets and Pluto around the sun. Meanwhile, the ceramic rocks in “Flatstone” are centered by an acrylic version of the Middle Jōmon vase on view nearby.

White Hole, 2008–10. Acrylic and LED lights; 136 1/8 × 103 1/2 inches. Courtesy of SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Tokyo and Sean Kelly, New York. Installation photograph by Richard Goodbody.

Mariko Mori, “White Hole,” acrylic and LED lights, 2008-10 (courtesy SCAI THE BATHHOUSE, Tokyo, and Sean Kelly, New York / photo by Richard Goodbody)

In the almost blindingly white Bamboo Room, consciousness is further raised in “Miracle,” comprising eight brightly colored Cibachrome prints on the back wall and a round platform over which a small crystal ball dangles on a chain above the smooth epoxy orb “Tama I” and salt. Walking slowly around the platform offers visitors a changing reality. The exhibition, which also includes the “Journey to Seven Light Bay, Primal Rhythm” video of the first of Mori’s six planned outdoor site-specific environmental sculptural projects, the drawing series “Higher Being” and “White Hole,” and the “Ālaya” digital video (as well as bonus black-and-white archaeological photographs on the lower level), concludes with the consciousness-expanding immersive multimedia installation “White Hole.” In a dark room at the end of a short, winding corridor, a convex circle awaits, looking like a large futuristic eye centered on a low, angled ceiling. Soon a light projection emerges, growing and spiraling as it echoes a star being absorbed into a black hole and being freed from gravity through a white hole. “If the dramas of death and rebirth, as well as new birth, unfold across many parallel dimensions, there exists an eternal time and space that has no beginning and no end,” Mori has said about the piece. “I hope this work serves as a simulacrum of death and rebirth, prompting us to rethink the multidimensional universe that defies our imagination.” To get the full experience, visitors should first lie down on the provided mat, staring into the middle of the hole, but then get up and approach the light, following its dizzying journey. In fact, much of “Rebirth” is rewarded by spending time with the objects, meditating on them while considering the interdependence of humanity and the universe.

RICHIE’S FANTASTIC FIVE — KUROSAWA, MIZOGUCHI, OZU, YANAGIMACHI & KORE-EDA: LATE AUTUMN

Nobuo Nakamura, Ryuji Kita, and Shin Saburi play a trio of matchmaking yentas in Ozu’s LATE AUTUMN

LATE AUTUMN (AKIBIYORI) (Yasujirō Ozu, 1960)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Thursday, December 12, $12, 7:00
Series runs monthly through February
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Yasujirō Ozu revisits one of his greatest triumphs, 1949’s Late Spring, in the 1960 drama Late Autumn, the Japanese auteur’s fourth color film and his third-to-last work. Whereas the black-and-white Late Spring is about a widowed father (Chishu Ryu) and his unmarried adult daughter (Setsuko Hara) contemplating their futures, Late Autumn deals with young widow Akiko Miwa (Hara again) and her daughter, Ayako (Yoku Tsukasa). At a ceremony honoring the seventh anniversary of Mr. Miwa’s death, several of his old friends gather together and are soon plotting to marry off both the younger Akiko, whom they all had crushes on, and twenty-four-year-old Ayako. The three businessmen — Soichi Mamiya (Shin Saburi), Shuzo Taguchi (Nobuo Nakamura), and Seiichiro Hirayama (Ryuji Kita) — serve as a kind of comedic Greek chorus, matchmaking and arguing like a trio of yentas, while Akiko and Ayako maintain creepy smiles as the men lay out their misguided, unwelcome plans. Mamiya makes numerous attempts to fix Ayako up with one of his employees, Shotaru Goto (Keiji Sada), but Ayako wants none of it, preferring the freedom and independence displayed by her best friend, Yoko (Yuriko Tashiro), who represents the new generation in Japan. At the same time, their matchmaking for Akiko borders on the slapstick. Based on a story by Ton Satomi, Late Autumn, written by Ozu with longtime collaborator Kôgo Noda, is a relatively lighthearted film from the master, with sly jokes and playful references while examining a Japan that is in the midst of significant societal change in the postwar era. Kojun Saitô’s Hollywood-esque score is often bombastically melodramatic, but Yuuharu Atsuta’s cinematography keeps things well grounded with Ozu’s trademark low-angle, unmoving shots amid carefully designed interior sets.

Japan Society series honors Donald Richie (l.) with screening of film by Yasujiro Ozu (c.)

Late Autumn is downright fun to watch, and you can see it on December 12 — Ozu’s 110th birthday, as well as the 50th anniversary of his death — at 7:00 at Japan Society, introduced by director, writer, and producer Atsushi Funahashi, as part of the monthly tribute series “Richie’s Fantastic Five: Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Ozu, Yanagimachi & Kore-eda,” which honors Ohio-born writer, critic, scholar, curator, and filmmaker Donald Richie, who died in February at the age of eighty-eight. Richie was a tireless champion of Japanese culture and, particularly, cinema, and the series features six works by five of his favorite directors. Here’s what Richie said about Late Autumn: “A daughter is reluctant to leave her widowed mother, even though it is time for her to marry. The story could be seen as a ‘remake’ of Late Spring — and though more autumnal, it is just as moving.” The Late Autumn screening will also be followed by a special Ozu birthday reception. The series continues in January with Mitsuo Yanagimachi’s Himatsuri and concludes in February with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, appropriately on the one-year anniversary of Richie’s passing.