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Director and screenwriter Haruhiko Arai worked as an assistant director for Wakamatsu Productions before making his screenwriting debut with Shinjuku, Messy District: I'll Be There (1977), directed by Chusei Sone. He established his reputation in Japan and worldwide with works such as W's Tragedy (1984), Flakes of Snow (1985), and Someday (2011). For the latter Haruhiko received the Screenplay of the Year Award by the Japan Academy Film Prize. Body and Soul (1997) was his directorial debut. A Spoiling Rain (2023), IFFR 2024 selection, is his fourth feature film.

On the occasion of “A Spoiling Rain” screening at IFFR, we speak with him about the changes he have seen in the industry through the years, love and sex, adapting the particular novel, the casting and the current situation of the Japanese film industry.

translation by Shione Kunimori

My name is Haruhiko Arai. It has been 27 years since I was at the IFFR last time. 27 years ago, I...

It might be said that besides murder-mysteries, no other genre rejoices as much in the deaths of its human pawns for a satisfying puzzle. The only one to match this gleeful indulgence and exploitation might be pink film. Chusei Sone's Agatha Christie-esque “Case of the Disjointed Murder” marries these 2 cinematic phenomena in an explosion of violent elegance. Though unequal in its attempts at profundity, “Case of the Disjointed Murder” earns memory as a conflicted venture, made during Sone's ironic struggle to depart from pink filmmaking – an artistic struggle that eventually led to his own, equally mysterious disappearance.

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Sone's beginnings as a cinephile for foreign titles distributed by Art Theatre Guild (Atg) possibly cemented that he would always have a taste for the arthouse. Despite becoming a veteran director of Nikkatsu's Roman Porno series by 1977, his...

Stars: Meiko Kaji, Hoki Tokuda, Makoto Satô, Hideo Sunazuka, Shirô Ôtsuji, Tôru Abe, Yoshi Katô, Yôko Takagi, Tatsumi Hijikata, Shirô Yanase | Written by Teruo Ishii, Chûsei Sone | Directed by Teruo Ishii

When you start to watch a film called Blind Woman’s Curse starring Meiko Kaji you would expect a tale of revenge, probably featuring samurai swords and plenty of action. I think in Arrow Video’s latest release it is fair to say that you do get action, but in a very surreal way. Often hard to keep up with Teruo Ishii’s visually stunning movie is a ride into a vulgar world of the weird and very strange.

Meiki Kaji stars as Akemi Tachibana the leader of a Yakuza Gang. At the start of the movie we see her and her men fighting for vengeance against their opponents. Fighting the leader, Akemi lunges her sword only to miss...

Three young male Japanese friends live a life at the bottom of the food chain, working dirty jobs, living in lower class squalor and raping women as a hobby. The three disenfranchised friends form a micro biker gang of three, although they only have two bikes between them. In this film we follow these three different, yet equally despicable young men as they burn rubber around an unnamed Japanese city, causing chaos and assaulting anyone they come across at will.

So you may have heard us talking about our adventures into the world of Takashi Ishii's Mange to screen adaptations know as the Angel Guts series. The thread which links these movies as a series is in fact very thin, All based on Adult orientated manga comics from the pen of Takashi Ishii, all produced as "Roman Porno", by the Nikkatsu studio in Japan and finally all link by...

When a pornographic magazine worker becomes obsessed with the star of a rape film, he discovers the implications of the sex industry are wider reaching and much darker than he ever could have imagined.

The second edition in the Angel Guts box set sees director Chusei Sone, who also directed our initiation into this disturbing Pandora's Box, High School Co-ed, once more at the helm for the next, and equally uncompromising, glance down the dirty alley-way of sexual assault. Made a year later than its predecessor, Red Classroom is just as powerful in its portrayal of what is a notoriously problematic area for film. Taking the common Angel Guts theme of rape, Sone turns Takashi Ishii's manga to life once more with startlingly different effect to his previous work. Where High School Co-ed focused on the brutality of the act itself, Red Classroom looks at the horrific aftermath with frighteningly forceful results.