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.
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.
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.
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.
Go Takamine’s Paradise View kicks off Japan Society series about the Okinawan transition
VISIONS OF OKINAWA: CINEMATIC REFLECTIONS
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
May 13 – June 3, $15 in-person screenings, $10 online rentals (three-film pass $24) www.japansociety.org
“Did you have your fortune told?” a character asks in Go Takamine’s Paradise View. “Yes, things are looking good” is the answer.
On June 17, 1971, the last of the Ryukyu Islands was returned to Japanese control. Japan Society began its celebration of that pivotal event in March with “Waves Across Time: Traditional Dance and Music of Okinawa.” The tribute continues May 13 to June 3 with “Visions of Okinawa: Cinematic Reflections,” consisting of five in-person screenings and three streaming films, all set around the transition of power. Part of the “Okinawa in Focus: Globus Film Series,” the festival begins May 13 at 7:00 with the North American premiere of the 2021 edit of Go Takamine’s Paradise View, followed by a reception; the 1985 work, which deals with a funeral, a wedding, dangerous snakes, and painful dentistry, will be available for streaming starting May 14.
Chris Marker’s 1996 Level Five, a French film involving a computer game restaging the Battle of Okinawa as part of an investigation into the Japanese tendency to bury the past, will be shown May 14 at 4:30, followed at 7:00 by a rare archival 35mm print of Nagisa Oshima’s 1972 Dear Summer Sister, in which Oshima, who appears in Level Five, takes viewers on an unusual tourist trip across Okinawa. Sadao Nakajima’s 1976 Terror of Yakuza, inspired by actual gang warfare on Okinawa and starring the great Sonny Chiba, screens May 20 at 7:00; an imported 35mm print of Go Takamine’s 1989 Untamagiru, an adaptation of the uchina shibai play and featuring John Sayles as a US military commander who really loves his dog, will be shown May 21 at 7:00.
Motoshinkakarannu explores the complicated transition of power on Okinawa
The virtual screenings also include the special “Focus on the Nihon Documentarist Union (NDU),” a pair of black-and-white guerrilla-style nonfiction works by the NDU, which was founded in 1968 at Waseda University. The 1971 Motoshinkakarannu and 1973 Asia Is One are screening for the first time outside of Japan, with new English subtitles, taking on immigration, socioeconomic issues, labor protests, and other complex issues.
CONTEMPORARY DANCE FESTIVAL
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, January 14, and Saturday, January 15, $30, 7:30
212-715-1258 www.japansociety.org
Following last year’s cancellation because of the pandemic, Japan Society’s “Contemporary Dance Festival: Japan + East Asia” (previously known as “Contemporary Dance Showcase”) returns for its nineteenth installment, albeit slightly changed because of the omicron surge. Two of the presenting companies will perform in person, while a third will be seen in a prerecorded video because of travel restrictions. The biennial event takes place January 14 and 15, beginning in the lobby at 6:45 with FreeSteps — NiNi, a thirty-minute site-specific solo choreographed by Wei-Chia Su, founder of the Taiwanese troupe HORSE, and performed by Yu-Ting Fang that is open to the first one hundred people, including those without tickets for the rest of the show.
The festival then moves into the theater at 7:30 with a video of A HUM SAN SUI, a duet choreographed and performed by Japanese butoh artists Kentaro Kujirai and Barabbas Okuyama. Subtitled in English Mountains and Rivers from Alpha to Omega, the piece features an electronic score by FUJIIIIIIIIIIITA, set design by T O J U, and costumes by Mika Tominaga and is divided into three chapters: “The Reincarnation Michinoku, the Back Country,” “The Soul of the Dead,” and “Mountains and Rivers in Tokyo.” The screening is followed by the live North American premiere of Choi x Kang Project’s Complement, a playful work with props and live video from Korean creators Choi Min-sun and Kang Jin-an. The evening concludes with the North American premiere of Hao “Demian” Cheng’s Touchdown, in which Hao, the founder of the Taiwanese company Incandescence Dance, incorporates his mathematical background and knowledge of quantum physics into a solo of movement and monologue set on a stage that mimics a school blackboard on which he draws in chalk, with lighting by Ke-Chu Lai and sound by Chao-En Cheng. The Friday night show will be followed by a reception with the artists, while the Saturday performance will be followed by a Q&A.
COOKING UP (KOSHIRAERU
Japan Society
333 East Forty-Seventh St. at First Ave.
Monday, December 6, $10/$15, 7:30 japansociety.org
Japan Society will present the sixteenth installment of its annual play reading series, “Contemporary Japanese Plays in English Translation,” with Shoko Matsumura’s Cooking Up, directed by Jordana De La Cruz. Originally scheduled for March 2020 and postponed because of the pandemic lockdown, the staged reading will take place December 6 at 7:30. The story, which combines the surreal with naturalism, is set in a restaurant where the pastry chef is missing, the cook is cheating on his wife, and his mistress becomes a housecat. “Every time you think you understand the story line or the plot, something else happens,” the Brooklyn-based De La Cruz (Jack) says in a Japan Society video. “It’s a very intricate play, and it’s powerful, and it talks about isolation and companionship and really makes you think about the people that you have in your corner.”
The Yokohama-born Matsumura (Hanpuku to Junkan ni Fuzui suru Bon’yari no Boken) has acted with Toshiki Okada’s chelfitsch company and founded her own troupe, Momeraths, in 2013. Translated by Amanda Waddell, Cooking Up is part of Japan Society’s fiftieth anniversary celebration honoring New York City woman writers with ties to Japan and will be followed by an audience Q&A with De La Cruz.
