Tag Archives: japan society

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.

MONTHLY CLASSICS: KILL!

Tatsuya Nakadai has a ball in Kihachi Okamoto’s campy Eastern Western

KILL! (KIRU) (Kihachi Okamoto, 1968)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, September 2, $15, 7:00
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Kihachi Okamoto’s Kill! is a goofy, fun Eastern Spaghetti Western, loaded with references to other samurai flicks. If some of it feels familiar, that’s because it is based on Shūgorō Yamamoto’s novel Peaceful Days, which was also turned into Akira Kurosawa’s 1962 Asian oater Sanjuro, though with significant changes. But this time around, it’s played more for laughs. Tatsuya Nakadai, one of the main villains in both Sanjuro and Yojimbo, stars as former samurai Genta, a laid-back dude who gets caught up in the middle of an inner struggle of a split clan (one group of which contains seven rogue samurai). He meets up with former peasant farmer Hanjiro (Etsushi Takahashi), who dreams of becoming a brave samurai and involves himself in the same battle, though on an opposing side. As the plot grows more impossible to follow, with lots of betrayals, double crosses, would-be yakuza, and romantic jealousy, so does the riotous relationship between Genta and Hanjiro. Masaru Sato’s score is fab as well. Another example of Okamoto’s (The Sword of Doom, Rainbow Kids) mastery of multiple genres, Kill! is screening September 2 at 7:00 as part of Japan Society’s ongoing “Monthly Classics” series, which continues October 7 with Hideo Nakata’s unforgettable Ringu.

MONTHLY CLASSICS: 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.
Friday, August 12, $15, 7:00
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society’s Monthly Classics series continues on August 12 with Hirokazu Kore-eda’s second narrative feature, After Life, an 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 their 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. 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 when the time comes.

MONTHLY ANIME: PRINCESS MONONOKE

Japan Society will host special twenty-fifth-anniversary screening of Princess Mononoke this week

PRINCESS MONONOKE (もののけ姫) (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, July 22, $15, 7:00
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

In his April 1995 project proposal for Princess Mononoke, Japanese animator, director, and Studio Ghibli cofounder Hayao Miyazaki explained, “There cannot be a happy ending to the fight between the raging gods and humans. However, even in the middle of hatred and killings, there are things worth living for. A wonderful meeting, or a beautiful thing can exist. We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation.”

Released in 1997, Princess Mononoke is one of the greatest anime adventures ever made. The environmental story about cursed warrior Ashitaka (voiced by Yōji Matsuda), the warrior princess and forest protector San (Yuriko Ishida), Irontown ruler Lady Eboshi (Yūko Tanaka), and mercenary monk Jiko-bō (Kaoru Kobayashi) is having a special twenty-fifth-anniversary 35mm screening July 22 at 7:00 at Japan Society, concluding the institution’s “Monthly Anime” series, which began in April with Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell and continued with Peter Chung’s The Animatrix in May and Masaaki Yuasa’s The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl in June.

Thankfully, they are showing the original Japanese version with English subtitles; the dubbed version features an all-star lineup of familiar voices that distracts from the narrative (including Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver, Billy Bob Thornton, Gillian Anderson, and Keith David). Anime master Miyazaki has also made such classics as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, and Spirited Away, all with soundtracks by Joe Hisaishi. Although the screening is sold out, there will be walk-up tickets available at the door; it should be quite an experience watching the film in person with a devoted crowd of Miyazaki maniacs, of which I am certainly one.

MONTHLY CLASSICS: MOTHRA

Mothra flies into Japan Society for special screening on July 8

MOTHRA (KAIJU) (Ishirō Honda, 1961)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, July 8, $15, 7:00
www.japansociety.org

Look, up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s — well, eventually, it’s a gigantic gynnidomorpha alisman, commonly known as a moth. But first, it’s an enormous caterpillar that moves across Japan slower than the giant breast in Woody Allen’s 1972 Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* But Were Afraid to Ask. And while the mammoth mammary Victor Shakapopulis is hunting down in Allen’s comedy shoots out mother’s milk, the giant lepidoptera, labeled Mothra, dispenses powerful silk.

In the 1950s and ’60s, a series of Japanese films featured monsters born of the aftereffects of the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fear of alien invasion. It all started with Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla in 1954 and also included Honda’s Rodan and King Ghidorah and Noriaki Uasa’s Gamera as well as endless sequels.

In 1961, Honda gave us Mothra, a melding of Godzilla — Gojira in Japanese, the last two letters of which were added to the otherwise harmless word “moth” to make it appear much more dangerous — and the basic plot of King Kong. In fact, the next year Honda made King Kong vs. Godzilla.

The tale begins as human life is discovered on Infant Island, where the government of Rolisica (a combination of Russia and America) conducted hydrogen bomb tests thinking the land mass was uninhabitable. A group of explorers is assembled to investigate, led by the evil Rolisican Clark Nelson (Jerry Ito), who has ulterior motives. Among the others on the expedition are Dr. Shin’ichi Chûjô (Hiroshi Koizumi), an anthropologist and linguist who is excited by what might be discovered, and Zen’ichirō Fukuda (Frankie Sakai), a stowaway reporter (and comic relief) who is trying to get the big story for his demanding editor, Sadakatsu Amano (the great Takashi Shimura of Akira Kurosawa fame).

On the island, they discover a pair of “tiny beauties” (identical twins Yumi Ito and Emi Ito of the pop duo the Peanuts) called the Shobijin, singing sisters who are a mere one foot tall. Using weapons against the peaceful indigenous population, Nelson captures the fairies and brings them to Japan to exploit them. The islanders then perform a ritual ceremony to summon a great monster from its shell to bring the women back. “Whatever some giant monster does is completely unrelated with our work,” Nelson’s cohort declares, setting the stage for a final showdown in New Kirk City, a version of New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Mothra is a bizarrely masterful movie, a warning about the dangers of atomic warfare, government greed, rampant capitalism, and disregard for indigenous societies. Written by Shinichi Sekizawa, who penned dozens of monster flicks, the film is a kind of parable of the human life cycle from birth to death. The Shobijin, two miniature women, are found on the deftly titled Infant Island, and they are almost like children, growing up in front of us as they learn to speak. Mothra evolves from egg to caterpillar to moth. It’s as if the whole world has been reborn in the aftermath of WWII, with Russia and America merging together to try to become the parents of the planet.

The special effects, courtesy of Eiji Tsuburaya, are often hilarious. When Nelson picks up the tiny beauties, it is obvious he is holding two small dolls. It is clear that many of the cars are toys, and the breaking of a dam looks like a kid’s unwieldy science experiment. Pre-CGI superimposition of characters over various locations is shaky. For some reason, the military pauses for what seems like hours while Mothra spins its cocoon. The skin of the actors portraying the indigenous denizens of Infant Island was (poorly) darkened in a way that would be totally unacceptable today (and should have been in 1961).

But then, amid an attack by Japanese planes on Mothra doing the breaststroke across the ocean, an unintended rainbow flashes for just a second, as if the heavens are declaring him our hero and promising that things will turn out okay, a feeling that is echoed in the Peanuts’ haunting, memorable song.

Mothra is screening in 35mm at Japan Society on July 8 at 7:00 and will be introduced by Kevin Derendorf, author of SF: The Japanese Science Fiction Film Encyclopedia and Kaiju for Hipsters: 101 Alternative Giant Monster Movies. In addition, there will be a Kaiju-themed pop-up sponsored by Seismic Toys, with an exclusive limited-edition Mothra Mini-Print by Robo7 on sale in the lobby.