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Stars: Mari Atsumi, Akemi Negishi, Yusuke Kawazu, Kô Nishimura, Ryoichi Tamagawa, Sanae Nakahara | Written by Yoshihiro Ishimatsu, Yasuzô Masumura | Directed by Yasuzō Masumura

Film fans have been treated to many yakuza films in the last few years. We have witnessed such physical media releases as Yakuza Wives, Big Time Gambling Boss, Jakoman and Tetsu and A Certain Killer / A Killer’s Key. Well, it is time for another yakuza film to take the physical media centre stage… 1970s Play It Cool.

Yasuzō Masumura, the director behind such Japanese classics as Blind Beast and Irezumi, both of which have already received Blu-ray releases. Now his film Play It Cool, also known as Electric Jellyfish, or as it was originally titled Denki Kurage, is receiving the deluxe treatment from Arrow Video.

Yumi (Mari Atsumi) is a pretty fashion student who shares a cramped home with her mother Tomi and good-for-nothing stepfather Ryoichi.

Produced through Art Theatre Guild, “At This Late Date, the Charleston” represents one of the most daring and personal works in the late career of director Kihachi Okamoto, a war survivor himself. Best known internationally for his biting samurai films like “Kill!” and “Sword of Doom”, Okamoto’s oeuvre is in fact as irreverent as it is diverse. His partnership with Atg allowed him the freedom to experiment both formally and thematically, as already demonstrated in “The Human Bullet” (1968) and “Battle Cry” (1975). With “Charleston”, he leapt fully into absurdist satire, crafting a tragicomic allegory of postwar Japan wrapped in the skin of a zany farce, in a style that definitely draws from Seijun Suzuki’s similar films. Though not widely screened abroad, the film was met with critical acclaim domestically and is now recognized by cinephiles as a hidden gem of 1980s Japanese cinema.

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Junichiro Tanizaki‘s novel “Manji,” which translates to “Swastika” and later given the English title “Quicksand,” is a popular erotic story of obsession, jealousy, and destruction surrounding a four-way bisexual love affair that develops between upper-class citizens, the four lovers meant to comprise the Buddhist swastika symbolically. This iconic literary work has seen numerous film adaptations throughout the years. However, the most famous and arguably best one comes from director Yasuzo Masumura with his 1964 classic “Manji,” also known by the titles “Swastika” and “All Mixed Up.” This version would notably have a screenplay written by Kaneto Shindo, who international moviegoers will best remember for directing the horror masterpiece “Onibaba.”

Manji is screening at Camera Japan

Plotwise, married woman and artist Sonoko Kakiuchi is unhappy with her marriage to her husband, Kotaro. While attending a private art school, she meets fellow student Mitsuko Tokumitsu, whose beauty and devilish charm entices Sonoko.

Graduating as Ozu’s assistant with his debut feature-length at Shochiku in 1960, Masahiro Shinoda (b. 1931) saw the dawn of the Japanese New Wave and rose to prominence alongside the likes of Nagisa Oshima, Yasuzo Masumura, Koreyoshi Kurahara, and Shohei Imamura among a whole host of others. Though he would spend most of his career reinterpreting and reimagining whole genres including the yakuza film and jidaigeki, the films across his four-decade-long career would predominantly be united by a re-examination of Japanese historical, societal, and national identity, complete with a focus on alienation, mythologies, and religious and moral turmoil. Frequently coupled with composer Toru Takemitsu, cinematographers Masao Kosugi and Tatsuo Suzuki, and actress Shima Iwashita (whom he would go on to marry), Shinoda’s films grapple with man’s perturbing darkness and its effect on the personal and national conscience. Like most of his Nūberu Bāgu compatriots, Shinoda frequently negated cinematic and narrative traditions,...