Tag Archives: japan society

JAPAN CUTS: THE KIRISHIMA THING

Life is turned upside down and inside out when a high school hero suddenly and unexpectedly disappears in THE KIRISHIMA THING

THE KIRISHIMA THING (Daihachi Yoshida, 2012)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Sunday, July 14, 7:30
Japan Cuts series continues through July 28
212-715-1258
www.subwaycinema.com
www.japansociety.org

Life goes completely out of whack when a massively popular student suddenly and mysteriously disappears in Daihachi Yoshida’s splendid examination of the trials and travails of high school, The Kirishima Thing. With no advance warning, superstar athlete and dreamy stud Kirishima can’t be found, missing class and volleyball practice, thoroughly confusing his friends and teammates. His girlfriend, the beautiful Risa (Mizuki Yamamoto), doesn’t know where he is. Risa’s clique of cool girls, including Sana (Mayu Matsuoka), Mika (Kurumi Shimizu), and Kasumi (Ai Hashimoto), start growing apart. The not extremely talented Koizumi (Taiga) is forced to replace Kirishima on the volleyball team. Aya (Suzuka Ohgo) plays sax on a rooftop while actually spying on her secret crush, the handsome Hiroki (Masahiro Higashide), who is Sana’s girlfriend and Kirishima’s best friend. Another of Kirishima’s friends, Ryuta (Motoki Ochiai), shows up to school with ridiculously curly hair. And Kasumi begins spending more time with nerd-geek Ryoya (Ryunosuke Kamiki), who decides to defy his film teacher by going ahead and making the zombie flick Student Council of the Living Dead. Tensions heat up, fears rise to the surface, and standard hierarchical relationships go significantly off kilter as Kirishima’s unexplained absence affects everyone’s position in high school society and makes them reexamine the purpose of their young lives. Based on the omnibus novel Kirishima, Bukatsu Yamerutteyo (“Did You Hear Kirishima Quit?”) by Ryo Asai, The Kirishima Thing cleverly deals with genre clichés as Yoshida (Permanent Nobara, The Wonderful World of Captain Kuhio) and cowriter Kohei Kiyasu tackle the myriad issues that face teenagers on a daily basis, evoking both Beckett and Kurosawa through a John Hughes-like lens with scenes that are retold from multiple viewpoints but don’t provide any firm answers. Winner of Best Picture, Best Director, Most Popular Film, and Outstanding Achievement in Editing at the 2013 Japan Academy Prize awards show, The Kirishima Thing is screening July 14 at 7:30 at Japan Society as part of the Japan Cuts series, a copresentation with the New York Asian Film Festival.

JAPAN CUTS: THERMAE ROMAE

Public baths architect Lucius Modestus (Hiroshi Abe) is amazed by what he sees as he travels back and forth through time in THERMAE ROMAE

THERMAE ROMAE (Hideki Takeuchi, 2012)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Sunday, July 14, 5:15
Series runs July 11-21
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Adapted from Mari Yamazaki’s popular manga series, Thermae Romae is a bizarre, hysterical tale about the importance of public baths throughout history. In the year 128, architect Lucius Modestus (Hiroshi Abe) has lost his mojo, losing his job to a youngster with more modern ideas and being hounded by his wife to have greater ambition. Down on his luck, he is contemplating his bleak future when he sees a crack at the bottom of a pool, which sucks him into a contemporary Japanese bath house where a bunch of old men are relaxing. The confused fish out of water is amazed by what he sees, from bottled drinks to a clothing basket, and upon magically returning to Rome, he adds these elements to a new bath design that is a huge hit. Soon, every time he goes into water in Rome, he ends up in Japan, bumping into the adorable Mami Yamakoshi (Aya Ueto) and bringing back more ideas, eventually designing bath houses for Emperor Hadrian (Masachika Ichimura), who believes the public bath is a key way to maintain a good relationship with the common people. But despite his success, Lucius can’t help feeling like a fraud, and things only get more complicated when he gets involved in the political machinations of Rome revolving around Hadrian’s successor, either the dedicated Antoninus (Kai Shishido) or self-obsessed womanizer Ceionius (Kazuki Kitamura). Abe is a riot as Lucius, displaying wonderful deadpan flare as he stands naked in front of men and women, refers to the modern-day folk as a flat-faced tribe, and gazes in wonder at a flush toilet. His trips from Rome to Japan evoke the tunnel in Being John Malkovich, complete with appropriately goofy special effects. Writer Shōgo Mutō and director Hideki Takeuchi keep things moving at a playful pace, celebrating social interaction as well as potential romance, complete with a fun Greek chorus of Japanese bath lovers. A sequel has just come out in Japan, but you can catch the first film on July 14 at 5:15 as part of the annual “Japan Cuts” series at Japan Society, which runs July 11-21 and includes such other works as Takashi Miike’s Lesson of the Evil, Yukihiro Toda’s There Is Light, Yuki Tanada’s The Cowards Who Looked to the Sky, Mika Ninagawa’s Helter Skelter, and Keishi Otomo’s Rurouni Kenshin, many of which are copresentations with the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New York Asian Film Festival.

SANBASO, DIVINE DANCE

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
March 28-29, $30-$50
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org

In conjunction with the major Guggenheim exhibition “Gutai: Splendid Playground,” which continues through May 8, the museum is teaming up with Japan Society to present the North American premiere of Sanbaso, divine dance, taking place in the rotunda of the Frank Lloyd Wright building March 28 at 2:00 and 8:00 and March 29 at 8:00. The ancient celebratory ritual dance will feature Kyogen actor Mansai Nomura (Onmyoji, Ran) as the title character, joined by five noh musicians and three noh chanters, with the set and costumes designed by Japanese artist Hiroshi Sugimoto based on his recent “Lightning Fields” series of photographs. “It is believed that the roots of Sanbaso lie in the myth of Amaterasu-omikami, the goddess of the sun, who hid in the heavenly rock cave Ama-no-Iwato,” Sugimoto explained in a statement. “This performance expresses how the gods descend to earth and is regarded as the most important performance piece among all the Shinto rituals. . . . The audience of this performance will witness the gods’ presence even in these jaded modern times.” This special program, a tribute to Gutai avant-garde artist Shiraga Kazuo’s Ultramodern Sanbasō, which opened the seminal “Gutai Art on Stage” presentation in 1957, is sold out, but there will be a standby line, with each person allowed to buy one ticket if any become available. In addition, on March 26, Japan Society will host a screening of Yuko Nakamura’s 2012 documentary Memories of Origin — Hiroshi Sugimoto, which follows Sugimoto around the world and includes appearances by architect Tadao Ando, artist Lee Ufan, critic and curator Akira Asada, and actor Mansai Nomura; Sugimoto will introduce the film and participate in a Q&A afterward.

Striking production of SANBASO, DIVINE DANCE lights up the Guggenheim (photo by Enid Alvarez; © 2013 Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York)

Update: Slow and steady, performed with split-second timing, Sanbaso, divine dance is a striking piece, a highly stylized, precisely choreographed combination of music, vocalization, movement, architecture, and design, beautifully tailored to its surroundings in the Guggenheim rotunda. The mesmerizing performance begins with a noh music medley featuring drums and flute, a traditional sonic introduction that sets the mood for what follows. After the trio of musicians departs, the full cast enters, with Kazunori Takano as Senzai, Haruo Tsukizaki as Koken, and kyogen star Mansai Nomura as the title character, along with a slightly larger group of musicians and vocalists. They all proceed slowly down the spiral from the Guggenheim’s second floor, emerging from behind one of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s lightning-themed curtains and winding their way to the bare stage, which stands about three feet off the ground. As the musicians play — the earlier trio of Rokurobyoe Fujita on fue (flute), Atsushi Ueda on ko-tsuzumi (small hand drum), and Keinosuke Okura on o-tsuzumi (large hand drum) is joined by Yotaro Uzawa on ko-tsuzumi (lead hand drum), Kensaku Araki on waki-tsuzumi (second small hand drum), and a ji-utai (chorus) of Ren Naito, Hiroharu Fukata, and Shuichi Nakamura — a ritual takes place in which the senzai is presented with gold hand chimes, known as suzu, from a box held by the koken. Soon Sanbaso approaches the koken and is given a small, dark mask of an old man’s face that he puts on, then starts taking loud steps and shaking the chimes in unison with the drummers. Flashing his lightning-patterned blue robe designed by Sugimoto, he stops, jerks his head, then lifts and brings down a heavy foot, creating an echo that reverberates throughout the Guggenheim. Nomura is also wearing a tall, dark hat — similar to the one he wore in the two fantastical Onymoji films — that reflects light and the late Motonaga Sadamasa’s water tubes, which arc across the museum, in such a way that it looks like bolts of lightning are streaking down it. At times, Nomura’s foot stomps are like thunder, matching Rie Ono’s lighting that makes the bolts on Sugimoto’s curtains come alive, as if a storm has suddenly arrived. Having honored the gods, Sanbaso returns the mask and chimes to the koken, and the company prepares for the finale, after which they go back up the winding Guggenheim ramp and disappear behind the lightning curtains. It’s nearly impossible to take your eyes off Nomura, who inhabits his role like it’s part of his soul. He even adds a final flourish as he accepts the accolades of the delighted audience, which on Thursday night included Sugimoto as well as Cai Guo-Qiang, whose stunning “I Want to Believe” exhibition filled the Guggenheim five years ago.

INTO THE SHINTOHO MIND WARP — FROM THE SECOND AGE OF JAPANESE FILM: GHOST STORY OF YOTSUYA

Penniless samurai Iemon Tamiya (Shigeru Amachi) plots a murderous path to success in GHOST STORY OF YOTSUYA

GLOBUS FILM SERIES 2013: GHOST STORY OF YOTSUYA (TOKAIDO YOTSUYA KAIDAN (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2009)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Wednesday, February 27, $12, 8:00
Series runs February 27 – March 10
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Last year, Japan Society’s Globus Film Series, “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” featured contemporary films from Japan and Korea that explored love, sex, fetishism, and violence in unusual ways. This year Globus focuses its attention on the Japanese film studio Shintoho, which broke off from the famous Toho Company during a strike and went on to make more than five hundred movies during the 1950s and 1960s, many becoming low-budget cult classics. Curated by Mark Schilling, “Into the Shintoho Mind War: Girls, Guns & Ghosts from the Second Golden Age of Japanese Film” kicks off February 27 with Nobuo Nakagawa’s Ghost Story of Yotsuya (Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan), an oft-told Macbeth-like tale based on an 1825 kabuki play written by Tsuruya Nanboku IV. Filled with ambition and no moral code, penniless samurai Iemon Tamiya (Shigeru Amachi) and his servant, Naosuke (Shuntarô Emi), decide to murder their way up the ladder to success. First they meet the innocent sisters Iwa (Katsuko Wakasugi) and Sode (Noriko Kitazawa), but they have to get rid of Iwa’s fiancée, Yomoshichi (Ryûzaburô Nakamura), if Iemon is to marry her and then Naosuke is to take Sode. Once Iemon and Iwa wed and have a child, he starts eyeing Ume Itô (Junko Ikeuchi), whose wealthy father could lift his still-low standing, but that means Iemon would have to dispose of Iwa and her loyal friend, Takuetsu (Jun Ôtomo). However, as Iemon soon finds out, death does not necessarily deny vengeance. Shot in lurid reds and greens by Tadashi Nishimoto, Ghost Story of Yotsuya takes quite a while to get going, spending far too much time establishing Iemon and Naosuke as evil characters with no conscience, but once it delves into the horror realm, it becomes wickedly good fun, including fantastic makeup and genuine chills, along with plenty of strangeness. Much of the film doesn’t make sense, and some of it is downright monotonous, but the ending is quite a memorable one. The screening at Japan Society will be followed by the Enka Ecstasy party, with attendees encouraged to wear black-and-white clothing with two color accessories (we suggest red and green, of course); Neo Blues Maki will perform. The series, with all films being New York premieres, continues through March 10 with Teruo Ishii’s Flesh Pier and Yellow Line, Yoshiro Ishikawa’s Ghost Cat of Otama Pond, Michiyoshi Doi’s The Horizon Glitters, Toshio Shimura’s Revenge of the Pearl Queen, Kyotaro Namiki’s Vampire Bride, and Nakagawa’s Death Row Woman.

ROBOT THEATER PROJECT

Robot Theater Project includes a pair of one-act plays starring real robots at Japan Society (photos by Tsukasa Aoki and Tatsuo Nambu)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
February 7-9, $28, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Last month the Resonance Ensemble revived Karel Čapek’s 1920 play, R.U.R., the work that introduced the word “robot” to the world — and a highly influential story that involved machines gaining sentience and threatening humankind. Seinendan Theater Company takes that to the next level this week at Japan Society with Robot Theater Project, a pair of one-act plays written and directed by company founder Oriza Hirata in which real robots play characters onstage. In Sayonara, a woman with a terminal illness is cared for by Geminoid F, described in the cast biographies as “a female type tele-operated android [with the] potential to go beyond an experimental platform and become a commonly used robot in human society.” In I, Worker, a man struggles to deal with the loss of his child while his robot questions the meaning of life; the mechanical being is played by Robovie R3, “a life-sized robot invented to research communications between humans and robots.” While Geminoid F is making its theatrical debut, Robovie R3 previously appeared in Hirata’s Three Sisters, Android Version. The human actors include Bryerly Long, Hiroshi Ota, and Minako Inoue. The two plays, developed in collaboration with Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at Osaka University, will be performed February 7-9 at Japan Society, Sayonara in English and Japanese with subtitles and I, Worker in Japanese with subtitles. Hirata and Dr. Ishiguro will participate in Q&As following the February 8-9 shows. In addition, Hirata will lead an acting workshop, “Exploring Naturalism,” on February 9 at 1:00, delving into his unique “contemporary colloquial theater.”

Robots and humans interact in moving ways at Japan Society

Update: As the audience enters the Japan Society theater for Sayonara, the first of a pair of one-act plays, two characters are already onstage, sitting in chairs. Although it appears to be two women, one brunette and Asian, the other blonde and Caucasian, it turns out that while the latter is a living, breathing female, Bryerly Long as a young woman dying of a terminal disease, the former is Geminoid F, a remarkably realistic android playing a robot who has been hired by the woman’s father to recite beautiful poetry to make his daughter’s final days peaceful. Geminoid F, who is powered through air pressure via twelve motorized actuators, doesn’t mouth the words exactly, which, along with her vacant eyes, are the only things that give her away as a mechanical being until she is carried off at the end, a long tube connecting her to electronic controls. The interplay between the android and the human is quite moving and believable, with a new scene added involving the nuclear disaster at Fukushima and how robots can help in the aftermath. In I, Worker, Hiroshi Ota (who also plays a small part in Sayonara) and Minako Inoue (who voices Geminoid F) are parents trying to cope with the death of their child. The husband is having more difficulties getting back to a relatively normal existence, which is also the case with the family’s two robots, played by Robovie R3s. While Geminoid F was created to look like a human, Robovie R3 is more in the mode of a futuristic R2D2/Dr. Who type, with fanciful colors and round, wide eyes. Just like the parents, the male robot has lost purpose in his life and is trying to find the will to go on, but I, Worker contains much more humor, supplied by the robots themselves, including how they exit the stage at the end. The two plays work because writer-director Oriza Hirata has created two pieces in which the stories themselves deal with the interchange between humans and robots; he has not cast the androids as real people going through completely real situations, and human actors are not playing robots. The plays would not be successful if they were performed only by robots or only by humans; instead, by bringing the two together, Hirata and robotic scientist Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro have built a fascinating meta that surrounds the tales, a harbinger of things to come both on- and offstage in our ever-evolving world.

CONTEMPORARY DANCE SHOWCASE 2013: JAPAN + EAST ASIA

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, January 11, and Saturday, January 12, $28, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society gathers together dancers and choreographers from Tokyo, Kyoto, and Taipei this weekend for the fifteenth annual Contemporary Dance Showcase: Japan + East Asia. Makotocluv founder Makoto Enda, who specializes in environmental performances, teams up with former Dairakudakan dancer Kumotaro Mukai on Misshitsu: Secret Honey Room – Duo Version, what is being called “post-post-post-butoh.” The officially stated goal of Tokyo-based hip-hop superstar Kentaro!! and his company, Tokyo Electrock Stairs, is “to touch your heart and break through it,” and they’ll attempt to do just that with Send It, Mr. Monster, a work set to Japanese pop songs and standards. In Kyoto-based choreographer Kosei Sakamoto’s elegiac Haigafuru~Ash is falling, five members of his Monochrome Circus company move very slowly over a stage continually changing color; the piece was inspired by his personal reaction to the Fukushima nuclear disaster. And in the multimedia, interactive Seventh Sense, Taipei-based choreographer Chieh-hua Hsieh blends sound, movement, and color as his Anarchy Dance Theatre and the audience itself influence motion sensors that reconfigure the space and alter perception. The January 11 show will be followed by a Meet-the-Artists reception.

SILVER WIND: THE ARTS OF SAKAI HŌITSU (1761–1828)

Sakai Hōitsu, “Cranes,” two-panel folding screen, ink and colors on paper, circa 1820 (courtesy the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 6, $15 (free Friday from 6:00 to 9:00)
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Born in Edo to an aristocratic samurai family and trained in Kyoto, Sakai Hōitsu became a master artist specializing in gorgeous depictions of nature, particularly birds, plants, waves, and flowers, often painted on gold-leaf backgrounds. Dozens of his dramatic works are on view in the sumptuous “Silver Wind: The Arts of Sakai Hōitsu (1761–1828),” continuing at Japan Society through January 6. This first major American retrospective of Hōitsu, who was also a poet and became a Buddhist monk in 1797, follows his development as a student of the Rimpa school, copying and/or inspired by works by brothers Ogata Kōrin and Ogata Kenzan, and concludes with paintings by Hōitsu’s own pupil, the supremely talented Suzuki Kiitsu. In the two-panel folding screen “Cranes,” Hōitsu portrays five cranes on a gold landscape cut in half horizontally by a winding black river; the detail in the birds’ eyes and feet is dazzling. “Spring and Autumn,” a pair of two-panel screens, and “Maples and Cherry Trees,” two six-panel screens, come alive with spectacular colors so vibrant you can practically smell the grass and flowers spread across them. “Views of Xiao and Xiang” is much subtler, a peaceful purple-gray scene with emptiness leading to the titular Chinese mountains in the background. In the hanging scroll “The Poet Hitamaro,” Kakinomoto no Hitomaro, one of the Thirty-Six Immortal Poets, is shown sitting cross-legged on the right, gently smiling at a forest on the left. The last room dedicated to Hōitsu is the stunning “Birds and Flowers of the Twelve Months,” as he lyrically depicts the changing seasons with grace and beauty, featuring such birds as the white camellia, the Siberian blue robin, the warbler, and the sparrow. The exhibition ends with the work of his primary disciple, Kiitsu, whose lush style predicts the popularity of Japanese manga as a method of visual storytelling. “Silver Wind” is a breathtaking exhibition that holds that much more power as the year finishes up with dreary gray days filled with dank cold and rain.