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JAPAN CUTS: FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM 2023

Under the Turquoise Sky is centerpiece of 2023 Japan Cuts fest

JAPAN CUTS: FESTIVAL OF NEW JAPANESE FILM
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
July 26 – August 6
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Always one of the best fests of the year, Japan Society’s Japan Cuts is back for its sixteenth iteration, consisting of two dozen features and fifteen shorts from across genres, including sci-fi/fantasy, romance, action-adventure, animation, comedy, mystery, thriller, and family drama. The Festival of New Japanese Film opens July 26 with Takehiko Inoue’s The First Slam Dunk, based on his 1990s manga about the Shohoku High School basketball team. The centerpiece is the US premiere of KENTARO’s Under the Turquoise Sky, a road movie set in Mongolia. The festival closes August 6 with the US premiere of Ryuhei Kitamura’s The Three Sisters of Tenmasou Inn, a supernatural drama set in a way station.

Japan Cuts pays tribute to the late composer Ryuichi Sakamoto with a special screening of Elizabeth Lennard’s 1985 documentary Tokyo Melody: A Film about Ryuichi Sakamoto, introduced by Akiko Yano, one of the pianist’s ex-wives, and will be followed by a Q&A with the director. The Next Generation sidebar comprises a half dozen flicks by emerging filmmakers, from actor Hiroki Kono’s debut, J005311, and Yusuke Morii’s Amiko to Ryohei Sasatani’s award-winning, 1960s-set Sanka: Nomads of the Mountain and Yuho Ishibashi’s When Morning Comes, I Feel Empty (followed by a Q&A with the director). Below is a look at several of this year’s selections, with more to be added as the festival continues.

Yuta Shimotsu’s Best Wishes to All weaves between past and present focusing on a frightening recipe for happiness

BEST WISHES TO ALL (みなに幸あれ) (MINA NI KO ARE) (Yuta Shimotsu, 2023)
Thursday, July 27, 9:00
japansociety.org

“Are you happy?” an elderly woman asks her grown granddaughter in Yuta Shimotsu’s creepy existential horror film, Best Wishes to All, making its North American premiere July 27 in Japan Society’s Japan Cuts festival. When a young Tokyo nursing student (Kotone Furukawa) returns to her grandparents’ farm in the Chikuho region, she is greeted by a surprise behind one of the doors. Or maybe it’s not really such a shocker, especially when her parents and little brother arrive and try to tell her what they claim she knew all along but refuses to face. Meanwhile, she rekindles a friendship with an old friend who is decidedly against what her family is doing.

Released earlier this year, Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75 was a fictional, though frighteningly believable, tale about a government program in which Japanese citizens, upon reaching seventy-five years of age, could receive cash and free cremation in exchange for being euthanized in order to prevent further population growth. In Best Wishes to All, Shimotsu offers a bizarre twist on the idea of life, death, and happiness, involving — well, it wouldn’t be fair to say any more about that. But suffice to say it isn’t pretty. “I’m sorry that young people are sacrificed for old folks like me,” an old woman says to the befuddled nurse. And her grandmother scolds, “I bet you believe the world is good, right? You know nothing about the world.”

Written by Rumi Kakuta based on a story by Shimotsu, Best Wishes to All evokes such films as Takashi Miike’s The Happiness of the Katakuris and Gozu and Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On series, the latter of which makes sense, as Shimizu is an executive producer on the film. Shimotsu and cinematographer Ryuto Iwabuchi weave between the past and the present as the secret is slowly revealed, but don’t try to think too hard about it, as it doesn’t make a whole lotta sense. Furukawa (Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy) is appealing as the nurse, and the rest of the cast ably do their part playing characters who have no names, adding to the mystery and confusion.

A trio of new friends try to save humanity in From the End of the World

FROM THE END OF THE WORLD (世界の終わりから) (SEKAI NO OWARI KARA) (Kazuaki Kiriya, 2023)
Saturday, August 5, 9:30
japansociety.org

Kazuaki Kiriya’s fourth film in twenty years, From the End of the World — following 2004’s Casshern, 2009’s Goemon, and 2015’s Last Knights — is a rousing thriller, if not quite the epic it aims to be. It’s 2030, and seventeen-year-old Hana Shimon (Aoi Itô) has just lost her beloved grandmother who raised her after her parents were killed in an accident. Instead of sending her to a children’s home, Shogo Ezaki (Katsuya Maiguma) and Reiko Saeki (Aya Asahina), who may or may not be some kind of government agents, lets her stay in her home if she tells them about the dreams she’s been having. Hana often slips into terrifying black-and-white nightmares involving death and destruction, where she is joined by a young girl named Yuki (Mio Masuda) and an unidentifiable creature.

She soon finds out from an old woman with spectacular hair (Mari Natsuki) that the world will be ending in two weeks and that Hana is the only one with the power to prevent disaster. “What’s your impression of the word destiny?” the woman asks Hana. At school, Hana is befriended by Takeru (Jiei Wakabayashi), bullied by Sora (Ai Tominaga), and taught by a teacher played by director Shunji Iwai; she is also pursued by Chief Cabinet Secretary Satoshi Koreeda (Katsunori Takahashi), who has other plans for her. As the clock keeps ticking, a time capsule serves as a critical plot point as past and present merge toward an uncertain future.

Evoking elements of Stranger Things as well as both Takashi Miike (The Great Yokai War) and Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro), From the End of the World — which Kiriya says will be his final directorial effort — looks fantastic, courtesy of cinematographer Chigi Kanbe, with gorgeous production design throughout as Hana travels through history. Itô (Missing, Gangoose) captures the fear and trepidation experienced by teenagers, whether having to turn in homework, battle a bully, or, well, save the Earth.

“Humans aren’t looking for salvation,” a hooded figure tells Hana. She might not have asked to be in this position, but does she have a choice?

EXTINCTION RITUALS

Akane Little is one of the performers in LEIMAY’s Extinction Rituals at Japan Society (photo by Takaaki Ando)

EXTINCTION RITUALS
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, June 9, and Saturday, June 10, $20, 7:30
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org
www.leimay.org

Since 2001, Colombian dancer, director, and choreographer Ximena Garnica and Japanese video and installation artist Shige Moriya have been presenting mesmerizing, meditative multimedia productions that incorporate movement, light, music, and song. In such works as Becoming – Corpus, Floating Point Waves, and Furnace, they explore the relationship between humanity and the natural environment. During the pandemic, Garnica and Moriya, cofounders of the Brooklyn-based LEIMAY Ensemble, staged Correspondences in Astor Plaza, a sculptural performance art installation in which dancers wearing only gas masks were trapped in vertical transparent chambers partly filled with sand.

On June 9 and 10 at 7:30, LEIMAY, which is the Japanese term for a moment of change or transition, brings the work-in-progress dance-opera Extinction Rituals to Japan Society. In the below promotional video, Garnica describes it as “a multiyear, multidimensional project that will result in a series of performances and visual artworks.” They recently asked an AI, “What does ‘extinction’ mean to you?” and “What does ‘ritual’ mean to you?” The AI defined extinction as the “silent demise of vibrant stories, echoes silenced forever” and ritual as “sacred dance, rhythmic harmony, timeless connection, soul’s embrace.”

Garnica and Moriya directed, choreographed, and designed the piece, which deals with life and loss, celebration and remembrance, focusing on Japan, Colombia, and New York; it will be performed by dancers Masanori Asahara, Akane Little, Damontae Hack, Peggy Gould, and Yusuke Mori, with live music by composer and instrumentalist Kaoru Watanabe and Colombian composer and singer Carolina Oliveros. Each show will be followed by a Q&A with Garnica and Moriya; Shinnecock and Montauk elder and recovery coach Jennifer E. Cuffee-Wilson will moderate the opening-night discussion, “Extinction: Beyond Flora and Fauna.”

MONTHLY ANIME: THE PLACE PROMISED IN OUR EARLY DAYS / VOICES OF A DISTANT STAR

The Place Promised in Our Early Days is part of Japan Society double feature celebrating Makato Shinkai

THE PLACE PROMISED IN OUR EARLY DAYS (Makoto Shinkai, 2004) / VOICES OF A DISTANT STAR (Makoto Shinkai, 2002)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, March 17, $15, 7:00
www.japansociety.org

Makoto Shinkai, who took the anime world by storm with his 2002 hit Voices of a Distant Star, a short film made completely on his home computer, followed that up with his first feature-length work, the magical and mystical The Place Promised in Our Early Days. Set in an alternate futuristic post-WWII world, The Place Promised centers on three friends, Hiroki, Takuya, and Sayuri, who make a vow to fly Hiroke and Takuya’s plane, Bela C’ielo, into the Tower, a monolithic structure rising into the sky that symbolizes the postwar division between the Union and US-Japanese forces. With war imminent, an older Takuya and Hiroki find themselves on opposing sides, with Sayuri lost in a coma dreamworld.

Although the plot — especially the science aspects — gets rather complex and confusing, The Place Promised is a beautiful-looking film, both tenderly sweet and harshly depressing, presenting a rather bleak forecast of the future. But stunning visual moments such as a setting sun with an illuminated halo that forms a shining star twinkling into an abandoned factory make it all worth it. Shinkai’s film was deservedly named Best Animated Film at the Mainichi Film Awards, where it topped the much more heralded Steamboy (Katsuhiro Otomo, 2004) and Howl’s Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, 2004).

In celebration of the April 14 North American release of Shinkai’s latest film, Suzume, a coming-of-age story about a seventeen-year-old protagonist, Japan Society is screening The Place Promised in Our Early Days on March 17 at 7:00 in its monthly anime series. It will be preceded by Voices of a Distant Star, a devastatingly melancholic and hauntingly gorgeous twenty-five-minute exploration of loneliness as Mikako chases the evil Tarsians through the galaxies with the UN Space Army carrier Lysithea (named after a Greek mythological figure and a genus of red algae) while Noboru, her true love since they were fifteen, waits for her messages, which take longer and longer to reach him the farther out the battle takes her. Tenmon’s piano score is heartbreaking in one of the saddest and most poignant animes ever made.

SEIJUN SUZUKI CENTENNIAL

Tokyo Drifter is part of six-film Japan Society tribute to master filmmaker Seijun Suzuki

SEIJUN SUZUKI CENTENNIAL
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
February 3-11, $15
japansociety.org

“I am often told that a script with a dark subject always turns into a more cheerful movie in my hands,” master Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki says in a brief Criterion “Suzuki on Suzuki” video interview. “Maybe it is due to my personality that I dislike dark stories. I always start by thinking about the style and design of the film. I choose the costumes and sets based on that initial image. Rather than using the same color, isn’t if more fun if each scene is a different color?”

Suzuki’s 1966 yakuza yarn, Tokyo Drifter, is a prime example of his philosophy of cinema, a berserk noir screening February 4 in the Japan Society tribute “Seijun Suzuki Centennial,” honoring the Tokyo-born director of more than fifty films between 1956 and 2005; Suzuki died in February 2017 at the age of ninety-three.

Tokyo Drifter must be seen on the big screen to be fully appreciated. Nearly every set is an eye-popping work of art, courtesy of production designer Takeo Kimura, and lushly photographed by cinematographer Shigeyoshi Mine. Black-and-white morphs into bold and brash reds, yellows, and blues for no reason. Backgrounds disappear so it looks like a shootout is taking place in a black void. A statue of a woman holding some kind of prehistoric giant donut switches hues as the action continues around it. Our hero, whose blazer goes from powder blue to yellow to cream to white, turns a corner and is suddenly running down a heavenly white German expressionist passageway. A villain uses his black gun to dial on a red phone. Hajime Kaburagi’s jazzy noir score mixes with romantic ballads, complete with a man in black playing a white piano. Red blood squirts into the air. Shinya Inoue’s editing is inconsistent and choppy, adding to the derangement, whether done on purpose or not.

Suave Tetsu “Phoenix” Hondo (Tetsuya Watari) and his boss, Kurata (Ryūji Kita), are getting out of the yakuza game, but Otsuka (Hideaki Esumi) and his gang, including Tatsu “the Viper” (Tamio Kawaji), are not going to let it be easy for them. Kurata owes an important building payment to Keiichi (Tsuyoshi Yoshida), who is willing to make a fair deal, as Kurata does not have all the money. But Otsuka sneaks in and threatens Keiichi to sell to him so Otsuka can take over the immensely valuable property. Kurata’s assistant, Mutsuko (Kaoru Hama), reads comic books and is secretly in cahoots with Otsuka, while Tetsu’s girlfriend, Chiharu (Chieko Matsubara), is a sweet-natured lounge singer who performs in a far-out nightclub. (Watari sings the song over the opening credits.) Double crosses lead to characters questioning loyalty and trust as the body count rises amid a groovy avant-garde Pop art setting unlike any other yakuza flick. (Suzuki followed it up with Tokyo Drifter 2: The Sea Is Bright Red as the Color of Love, a very different kind of film.)

Copresented by the Japan Foundation and guest curated by University of Alberta assistant professor William Carroll, “Seijun Suzuki Centennial” runs February 3-11 and comprises imported 35mm films from throughout Suzuki’s career: the ghost story Kagero-za (1981), the second part of his Taisho Trilogy, which began with 1980’s Zigeunerweisen and concluded with 1991’s Yumeji; a double feature of the director’s first Nikkatsu yakuza thriller, Satan’s Town (1956), and the forty-minute melodrama Love Letter (1958); 1966’s Carmen from Kawachi, one of three Suzuki adaptations of novels by Tôkô Kon; and A Tale of Sorrow and Sadness (1977), about a model turned golf star who faces stress and a stalker, Suzuki’s first film in ten years following a battle with Nikkatsu, which decided it no longer liked his unpredictable work after Branded to Kill.

“As Suzuki worked in a transforming film industry, he experimented with new possibilities given by changes in technology and took up new stylistic trends as they were developed by his colleagues, but he pushed them toward more abstract ends. As a result, Suzuki’s style was a constantly shifting target,” Carroll writes in Suzuki Seijun and Postwar Japanese Cinema. “Ultimately, the Seijunesque is defined less by a singular trait or tendency than by a push-or-pull, direct juxtaposition, or synthesis between multiple tendencies that would seem to be irreconcilable.” All that and more is on view in this tribute to a film icon.

MONTHLY ANIME: MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO / CONTEMPORARY THEATER TALK: BEHIND-THE-SCENES

Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro wonderfully captures the joys and fears of being a child

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (TONARI NO TOTORO) (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Film: Friday, November 4, $15, 7:00
Talk: Thursday, November 10, $20, 6:30
japansociety.org
www.nausicaa.net

The Royal Shakespeare Company is currently presenting a live-action stage adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved My Neighbor Totoro at the Barbican, where it is receiving glowing reviews. The show was written by Tom Morton-Smith and is directed by Phelim McDermott, with a score by longtime Miyazaki collaborator Joe Hisaishi and puppetry by Basil Twist. As part of its monthly anime series, Japan Society will be screening a 35mm print of the 1988 film on November 4 at 7:00, followed November 10 at 6:30 by a discussion with Twist (Symphonie Fantastique, Dogugaeshi) about the making of the show.

In many ways a precursor to Miyazaki’s masterpiece, Spirited Away, the magical multi-award-winning My Neighbor Totoro is a fantastical trip down the rabbit hole, a wondrous journey through the sheer glee and universal fears of childhood. With their mother, Yasuko, suffering from an extended illness in the hospital, Satsuki and her younger sister, Mei, move to a new house in a rural farming community with their father, anthropology professor Tatsuo Kusakabe. Kanta, a shy boy who lives nearby, tells them the house is haunted, and indeed the two girls come upon a flurry of black soot sprites scurrying about. Mei also soon discovers a family of totoros, supposedly fictional characters from her storybooks, living in the forest, protected by a giant camphor tree. When the girls fear their mother has taken a turn for the worse, Mei runs off on her own, and it is up to Satsuki to find her.

Basil Twist will be at Japan Society to share behind-the-scenes stories of the Totoro stage show

Working with art director Kazuo Oga, Miyazaki paints the film with rich, glorious skies and lush greenery, honoring the beauty and power of nature both visually as well as in the narrative. The scene in which Satsuki and Mei huddle with Totoro at a bus stop in a rainstorm is a treasure. (And just wait till you see Catbus’s glowing eyes.) The movie also celebrates the sense of freedom and adventure that comes with being a child, without helicopter parents and myriad rules suffocating them at home and school. Twist’s talk will go behind-the-scenes of the RSC production, discussing the creation of puppets based on animated characters and sharing backstage images.

9000 PAPER BALLOONS

9000 Paper Balloons tries to bridge the distance between generations

Who: Maiko Kikuchi and Spencer Lott
What: A Contemporary Puppet Theater Piece
Where: Japan Society, 333 East Forty-Seventh St. at First Ave.
When: October 28–30, $30
Why: During WWII, Japan employed Fu-Go balloon bombs, hydrogen balloons made of paper or rubberized silk that carried incendiary devices and an anti-personnel explosive, launching more than nine thousand from Honsho in 1944-45 with the express purpose of flying across the Pacific Ocean and starting forest fires on the West Coast of the United States. American puppeteer Spencer Lott and Japanese animator Maiko Kikuchi share the true tale of this little-remembered weapon in 9000 Paper Balloons, making its in-person world premiere October 28–30 at Japan Society; Lott will portray his grandfather, a navigator on a US bomber plane, while Kikuchi will play her grandfather, who fought for Japan and was a prisoner of war.

“Distance is definitely a central theme to the play, the distance between our generation and our grandfathers, the difference between America and Japan, the distance between a fighter jet and a paper balloon,” Lott said in a statement. “We know that war capitalizes on that distance, both real and perceived. War is a throughline in our play, but our central question is, How can we collapse the distance between us? We are witnessing moments in 2022 that remind us that the distance between our generation and the WWII generation may not be all that distant after all.”

The play, which was presented virtually by HERE in November 2021, is told in the form of a ghost story, with live-feed cameras, animation projections, masks, dioramas, and more than one hundred puppets, with a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at how it’s all done as the narrative unfolds; it is directed by Aya Ogawa, who was most recently at Japan Society with their intimate and personal The Nosebleed, in which they played their own father and son. The October 28 performance will be followed by a reception with the creators, and the October 29 show will conclude with an artist Q&A.

“Because of a war, one that happened eighty years ago, there is a gap between us and our grandfathers and this gap exists in so many families, this play is our desperate attempt to collapse the distance between us and our grandparents,” Kikuchi and Lott have also said. “We aren’t pretending that this puppet show is going to end conflict or AAPI violence, but in a world that is heavy with social and political strife, we think it’s a good opportunity to gather in the dark, together as a community, and share a remarkable story that is as much about ingenuity as it is war.”

MONTHLY CLASSICS: RINGU

Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) finds herself and her young son in danger in Ringu

RINGU (Hideo Nakata, 1998)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, October 7, $15, 7:00
212-715-1258
japansociety.org/events

In many ways, Hideo Nakata’s 1998 classic, Ringu, is the ultimate horror movie: a film about a film that scares people to death. But Ringu is not chock-full of blood, gore, and violence; instead it’s more of a psychological tale that plays out like an investigative procedural as two characters desperately search for answers to save themselves from impending death.

Journalist Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) and her ex-husband, professor and author Ryūji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada), are both on tight deadlines — for their lives. After Reiko’s niece, Tomoko Ōishi (Yuko Takeuchi), suddenly dies, apparently from fright, Reiko discovers a rumor that Tomoko and some of her friends had watched a short video, then received a phone call in which an otherworldly voice told them they would die in a week. And they did.

Reiko tracks down the eerie videotape and watches it herself — a few minutes of creepy, hard-to-decipher grainy images — after which the phone rings, telling her she has one week to live. She shows the tape to Ryūji, who has extrasensory powers, and they start digging deep into who shown in the tape and what it is trying to communicate. As they begin uncovering fascinating facts, their son, Yōichi (Rikiya Ōtaka), gets hold of the video and watches it, so all three are doomed if they don’t figure out how to reverse the curse — if that is even possible.

Adapted by screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi from the 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki, Ringu is a softer film than you might expect, maintaining a slow, even pace, avoiding cheap shocks as the relatively calm and gentle Reiko continues her research and is able to work together with her former husband, who has not been a father to Yoichi at all. The film gains momentum as Reiko and Ryūji learn more about the people in the video, but Nakata, who went on to make several sequels in addition to Dark Water, Chaos, The Incite Mill, and the Death Note spinoff L: Change the World, never lets things get out of hand. The supporting cast includes pop singer Miki Nakatani as Mai Takano, one of Ryūji’s students; the prolific Yutaka Matsushige (he’s appeared in more than one hundred films and television shows since 1992) as Yoshino, a reporter who assists Reiko; and Rie Inō as the strange figure hiding behind all that black hair.

The 2019 twentieth anniversary digital restoration of Ringu is screening October 7 at 7:00 in Japan Society’s Monthly Classics series, which continues October 14 with Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg. Oh, and just for the record, a “homomorphism” — the word is written on Ryūji’s blackboard of mathematical equations — is a map between algebraic objects that come in two forms, “group” and “ring,” the latter being a structure-preserving function.