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Uncharacteristically for the sprawling filmography of director Mikio Naruse, “The Approach of Autumn” (also known as “Autumn Has Already Started”) centers on two children and can be described as a coming-of-age drama. One of the director’s most original and fascinating features, it still bears all the hallmarks of a master who was by then reaching the apex of his skills as a filmmaker.

Sincerity is screening at Japan Society as part of the Mikio Naruse: The World Betrays Us program

The movie opens with the arrival in Tokyo of Shigeko (Nobuko Otowa) and her young sixth-grade son, Hideo. Shigeko is a widow (a typical character in Naruse’s films), coming from Ueda to start a new job as a hostess in a ryokan, while Hideo is left to live with his uncle’s household nearby. Whereas a typical Naruse film would have focused on Shigeko, this time we follow Hideo,...

Filmmaker Kihachi Okamoto, throughout his career, made it abundantly clear he hated war. He experienced the horrors on the battlefield firsthand during World War II and forever was disgusted by the atrocities committed by the Empire of Japan. Okamoto’s war movies boast an anti-war mindset while blending tragedy with dark comedy. His early projects, such as “Desperado Outpost,” primarily showed the director’s sense of humor, with western inspired elements thrown into the mix. Over time, these projects became more grounded and progressively darker. “Fort Graveyard” tells the tragic story of musician youths forced into combat, and “Japan’s Longest Day” recounts the terrifying final hours before the country’s surrender during the Second World War. With his ambitious and brutal epic “Battle of Okinawa,” audiences are reminded war spares no one.

Even with the budgetary issues the Japanese film industry was plagued with at the time, Okamoto would not be stopped.