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When Daiei Studios and star Shintaro Katsu made “The Tale of Zatoichi” in 1962, little would they have known that in just 8 years, they would be on the 20th entry in the series. No mean feat, they managed to reach the mammoth number by continually reinventing the narratives while still staying true to the same formula and putting a number of different directors at the helm, with five of the twenty titles made by Kenji Misumi. For the twentieth, they aimed to make the biggest and most ambitious entry yet, getting none other than the legendary Toshiro Mifune to share screen with Katsu, playing one of his most famous on-screen incarnations, the nameless ronin he played so wonderfully in “Yojimbo” and its follow-up “Sanjuro”. But how did they fare? Let’s find out.

Tired of all the killings and wandering, Zatoichi returns to his hometown after a long time,...

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.

“The Wife’s Confession” (also known as “A Wife Confesses”) is a courtroom drama directed by Yasuzo Masumura, who worked at Daiei Film alongside Kenji Mizoguchi or Kon Ichikawa, but to this day is not as recognizable as other post-war Japanese filmmakers. Although the leading actress, Ayako Wakao, won the award for the Best Actress in 1962 at Kinema Junpo Awards, and Blue Ribbon Awards, the movie gained popularity only in the 21st century. It was screened at the 17th Athens International Film Festival, the 26th Shanghai International Film Festival, and the 57th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.

The Wife’s Confession is screening at Camera Japan

The story, written by Masato Ide based on the novel by Masaya Maruyama, presents a trial – a young woman, Ayako (Ayako Wakao), is accused of murdering her husband (Eitaro Ozawa) while on a mountaineering expedition. The alleged motive for this crime is her desire to escape...

Blind Beast.You could start cradled like the kidnapped woman in the undulating foam curves that resemble a gigantic female torso in Blind Beast (1969). You could make your approach via the swing of a Super-8 camera towards the steps of a courthouse at the beginning of A Wife Confesses (1961). You could drift into A Cheerful Girl (1957) through the kitchen window, onto a table laden with groceries and bottles of fluorescent orange soda-pop. You could inject yourself like morphine into Red Angel (1966), seep like body ink into the skin of Spider Tattoo (1966), or slide into the fevered bloodstream of All Mixed Up (1964) like powdered poison swallowed from a kite-paper pouch. Whether you arrive on the tip of a blade or the cusp of a kiss, there is no wrong place to start with Yasuzo Masumura, the postwar Japanese director whose astonishing accomplishment should by rights have him mentioned in the same...

What’s singular about many of the films of Yasuzo Masumura (1924–1986) is that they’re intellectual forms of exploitation—politically incorrect experiences that are consciously sociopolitical critiques, unlike the roller-coaster rides of Tarantino. You might even say that they shock us into thinking. But it’s hard to make too many generalizations about someone who made 58 films, mostly assignments at Daiei before that studio closed in 1971. (source: https://metrograph.com/the-intellectual-and-sociopolitical-exploitations-of-yasuzo-masumura/)

In our latest column, we will have each contributor pick a specific person and present a list about him. The first selection belongs to Adam Symchuk.

1. Kisses (1957)

Yasuzo Masumura’s first feature-length film, “Kisses” may not be his most defined vision and is a, mostly, straightforward love story. However, the debut stands as an obvious testament of his trajectory in the film industry being one of profound skill. His ability to craft a love story at the forefront...

Yasuzo Masumura amazes us with yet another sensual stunner. This period way-of-all-flesh tale is almost a horror film, but the supernatural shivers are far outpaced by the daily Evil that Men Do. Japanese superstar Ayako Wakao blazes across the screen as a self-decreed avenger of the female sex, who allows men to destroy themselves and uses them to destroy each other. The bloody killings orbit around the desire to possess the irresistible Spider Woman, an in an ‘annihilating noir.’ The screenplay is by the equally famous Kaneto Shindo, from a Japanese ‘amor fou’ novel by Junichiro Tanizaki.

Irezumi

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

1966 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 86 min. / Street Date June 22, 2021 / Spider Tattoo / Available from Amazon / 39.95

Starring: Ayako Wakao, Akio Hasegawa, Gaku Yamamoto, Kei Sato, Fujio Suga, Reiko Fujiwara, Asao Uchida, Kikue Mori.

Cinematography: Kazuo Miyagawa

Production Designers: Hiroaki Fujii, Shiro Kaga

Art Director: Yoshinobu Nishioka

Film Editor: Kanji Suganuma

Original Music: Hikaru...

Yasuzo Masumura’s searing outrage didn’t abate in the 1960s; this unflinching view of the WW2 Japanese counterpart of a ‘M.A.S.H.’ unit cuts straight to the ugly truth of war, as the unending destruction of human bodies and minds. The horrors of ad hoc amputations match the behaviors of the demoralized patients. Masumura’s top muse Ayako Wakao is the traumatized battlefield nurse who becomes intimate with a surgeon who can only cope with his work by becoming a morphine addict. Excellent analysis by Rony Rayns and David Desser brings us closer to the director’s obsession with disturbing truths.

Red Angel

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

1966 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen / 95 min. / Akai tenshi / Street Date January 18, 2022 / Available from / 39.95

Starring: Ayako Wakao, Shinsuke Ashida, Yusuke Kawazu, Ranko Akagi, Daihachi Kita, Takashi Nakamura.

Cinematography: Setsuo Kobayashi

Production Designer: Shigeo Mano

Art Director: Tomoo Shimogawara

Film Editor: Tatsuji Nakashizu

Original...

The Japanese wartime drama Red Angel (1966) will be available on Blu-ray January 18th from Arrow Video

Directed by Yasuzo Masumura, Red Angel takes an unflinching look at the horror and futility of war through the eyes of a dedicated and selfless young military nurse.

When Sakura Nishi is dispatched in 1939 to a ramshackle field hospital in Tientsin, the frontline of Japan’s war with China, she and her colleagues find themselves fighting a losing battle tending to the war-wounded and emotionally shellshocked soldiers while assisting head surgeon Dr Okabe conduct an unending series of amputations. As the Chinese troops close in, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Okabe who, impotent to stall the mounting piles of cadavers, has retreated into his own private hell of morphine addiction.

Adapted from the novel by Yorichika Arima, Masumura’s harrowing portrait of women and war is considered the finest of his collaborations with...

Yasuzo Masumura may be practically unknown to the west, but he is quite famous and respected in Japan, with filmmakers like Shinji Aoyama and Nagisa Oshima considering him as one of the precursors of the Japanese New Wave of the sixties, and one of the most important creators in postwar Japan. Thankfully, Arrow Films has done a significant effort to change the fact, by releasing a number of his lesser known titles. “Irezumi” is of the first films that established his exploitation style, which was later implemented in his most well known ones, like “Hanzo the Razor: The Snare” and “Blind Beast.”

Based on a novel by Junichiro Tanizaki and scripted by the great Kaneto Shindo, the story revolves around a true femme fatale named Otsuya, a daughter of a rich merchant. In the beginning of the film, she persuades her lover, Shinsuke to betray her father,...

Yasuzo Masumura’s Irezumi (1966) will be available on Blu-ray June 22nd From Arrow Video

Drawn from the pen of one of Japan’s foremost writers of the 20th century, Junichiro Tanizaki, Irezumi is a stylish tale of lust, betrayal and revenge directed by Yasuzo Masumura.

Masumura’s muse Ayako Wakao stars as Otsuya, the daughter of a rich merchant, who is tempted by her lover, Shinsuke, a lowly employee of her father’s, to elope. During their flight, Otsuya’s beauty attracts the gaze of Seikichi, a mysterious master tattooist who sees her pristine white skin as the perfect canvas for his art. The image of the large demonic spider that he emblazons across Otsuya’s back marks her as the property of another man, radically altering her relationships with all around her as her personality transforms under its influence.

Available for the first time outside of Japan in a new 4K restoration,...

Fetch Publicity releases the first 4K Blu-ray release outside of “Irezumi,” (1966) Yasuzo Masumura’s early masterwork, outside of Japan. The Blu-ray will be available on 21 June 2021.

From us: Yasuzo Masumura may be practically unknown to the west, but he is quite famous and respected in Japan, with filmmakers like Shinji Aoyama and Nagisa Oshima considering him as one of the precursors of the Japanese New Wave of the sixties, and one of the most important creators in postwar Japan. Irezumi is of the first films that established his exploitation style, which was later implemented in his most well known ones, like “Hanzo the Razor: The Snare” and “Blind Beast.”…“Irezumi” is an exploitation film of rare quality that will definitely satisfy fans of the genre, as it paved the way for the surge of the category that occurred in the 70’s.” (Panos Kotzathanasis)

From Fetch: Drawn from...

Probably Yukio Mishima’s best known acting part, “Afraid to Die (aka Man of the Biting Wind) is a lesser known Yakuza film, that eventually led the Nobel Prize nominee to write the novella “Star”, based on his experiences starring in the movie. On the occasion of the English translation of the novella, Japan Society is screening the film Friday, May 10.

The film revolves around Takeo Asahina, who is released from prison as the story begins, after serving a few years for stabbing a sub-boss of a rival Yakuza clan, Sagara. With a murder attempt aimed at him just before his release, Takeo is forced to go into hiding, ending up in an old cinema the family is running. Despite the fact that the whole Sagara gang and an asthmatic killer-for-hire are on his heels, Takeo continues his criminal endeavors with his lawyer-degree associate Aikawa, under the instructions of the clan’s uncle Gohei.

Japan Society will be celebrating the English translation of Yukio Mishima’s novella “Star”, based directly on his experience starring in Yasuzo Masumara’s film “Afraid to Die” with a 35mm screening of the film on Friday, May 10th, 2019 at 7pm.

Clad in a black leather jacket, renowned Japanese writer Yukio Mishima struts and preens as a small-time yakuza underboss in this oddity of postwar Japanese cinema directed by Yasuzo Masumura. Fresh out of jail and hiding out above a rundown Tokyo movie theater, the unsympathetic tough is hounded by a rival gang and an asthmatic killer-for-hire as he struggles to reconcile his criminal life with a newfound love interest (Ayako Wakao). “Afraid to Die” screens in celebration of a brand new English translation of Mishima’s 1961 novella Star (New Directions Publishing, 2019), a fictionalized account of his experience working on Masumura’s film.

The screening will be introduced by Star...

From May 28 to June 2, 2019 the nineteenth edition of the Nippon Connection Film Festival will take place in Frankfurt am Main. As the biggest festival for Japanese cinema worldwide, it offers an exciting insight into the current state of the Japanese film scene with more than 100 short and feature length films from all genres. Numerous filmmakers and artists from Japan will be present to introduce their works and establish a lively exchange with the German audience. A diverse cultural program including workshops, lectures, and concerts gives visitors the chance to explore the multifaceted culture of Japan. The main venues are at the Künstlerhaus Mousonturm and the Theater Willy Praml in der Naxoshalle.

Still from “And Your Bird Can Sing

Film Highlights

At the Nippon Connection Film Festival, numerous outstanding productions from Japan will be screened, most of them having their German premieres. Shinsuke Sato is considered a specialist for successful manga adaptations.

The 75th Venice International Film Festival has finally announced the line-up in a press conference in Rome, hosted by the President of the Biennale di Venezia Paolo Baratta and by the Director of the Cinema department Alberto Barbera.

The Venice International Film Festival has been welcoming in the past many Asian movies especially under the previous Director Marco Muller (2004-2011), a dedicated advocate and promoter of Asian Cinema, but this year the Asian presence is particularly poor. A bit surprising after the success in Cannes of Palme d’Or director Hirokazu Kore’eda with “Shoplifters” and Lee Chang-dong with “Burning”.

Only one film – Japanese director Shinya Tsukamoto’s new movie “Zan” – is in the Official Competition and few more “usual suspects” are scattered in the other sections. Chinese director Tsai Ming-Liang – a regular of the festival – is in the Out of Competition Section with his “Ni De Lian“, where other...

An Actor’s Revenge

Blu ray

Criterion

1963 / Color / 2.39:1 / 113 Min. / Street Date February 20, 2018

Starring Kazuo Hasegawa

Cinematography by Setsuo Kobayashi

Written by Daisuke Itô, Teinosuke Kinugasa

Edited by Shigeo Nishida

Directed by Kon Ichikawa

From Twelfth Night to Homicidal, casting calls for cross-dressers are a Hollywood tradition. The stories are alike in their differences; Katherine Hepburn was dodging the cops, Jack Lemmon was fleeing the mob, Dustin Hoffman was just an actor begging for work. Yukitarō, the enigmatic hero of An Actor’s Revenge, is gainfully employed but his motives are far more complicated than Hoffman’s needy thespian.

The story of a female impersonator’s vengeful killing spree, Kon Ichikawa’s 1963 film boasts a plot line John Waters would surely appreciate. But where Waters revels in the high comedy of lowlifes, Ichakawa’s movie is a ravishing melodrama set in the elevated atmosphere of death-dealing samurai, 19th century Kabuki...

Conceived by Daiei as a tribute to the 300th screen appearance of veteran actor Kazuo Hasegawa, “An Actor’s Revenge” is a remake of the homonymous, 1935 film, which also starred Hasegawa. The screenplay, written by Ichikawa’s wife, Natto Wada, was based on the adaptation by Daisuke Ito and Teinosuke Kinugasa of a newspaper serial originally written by Otokichi Mikami, which was used for the 1935 version.

Yukitaro is a famous onnagata, a male actor who plays female roles in the kabuki theatre, whose Osaka-based troupe, headed by Kikunojo Nakamura, is making its first appearances in Kyoto. Yukitaro however, has his eyes set on revenge upon three men: Sansai Dobe, Kawaguchiya, and Hiromiya, who plotted and eventually led his father to death and his mother to suicide when he was just seven years old. In order to achieve his goal, Yukitaro, whose stage name is Yukinojo, uses his handsomeness,...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

Lynch, Hitchcock, Bride of Frankenstein and more come together in “Goth(ic).”

Letter from an Unknown Woman and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg also screen.

Film Society of Lincoln Center

Rossellini, Murnau, Warhol, Pialat and more screen as part of “The Non-Actor.”

Film Forum

The Passion of Joan of Arc has its final days

One of Murnau’s greatest films,...

Street of Shame is a beautiful drama film that follows the daily lives of five prostitutes situated in Yoshiwara, Tokyo’s red light district, during the mid-1950s. The American occupation has ended and the majority of the Japanese population is still struggling to get by after the destructive Second World War that ended over a decade ago. For the sex-workers times have become extra challenging as the Diet is considering to ban prostitution, which would mean losing their income. But for some it would also mean a way out of the life they are stuck in.

Street of Shame is the last film of legendary Japanese filmmaker Kenji Mizoguchi, director of timeless classics like Ugetsu (1953) and The Life of Oharu (1952). He died a few months after the film was released, leaving his audience with a strong motion picture as a closure to a prolific career. The film was a...

Music can be one of cinema's great pleasures. When used with inspiration—not dictating our viewing experience with a death grip or slathered like bad wallpaper over the rest of a sound mix—it can transform either solitary shots or spliced sequences of moving images into entirely new expressions, galvanizing details within the raw photographic cinematographic material or contrapuntally complicating the initial impressions of the image.

Given our love for movie music in all its forms, whether a soundtrack features original orchestral compositions, near-abstract soundscapes, or acts as a curatorial force for collecting, exposing and (re-) contextualizing existent music, Lost Sounds and Soundtracks will serve to highlight some of our favorites, obscure and not so obscure, commercially available and ripped directly from audio-tracks where necessary. Unless analyzed within their original context, all will be divorced from their image-tracks in hopes that we might briefly give them their singular due.

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What...

Oh man, I wish I was going to be in New York in April. From March 31st through April 18th, New York's Japan Society will be running a series called Mad, Bad... and Dangerous to Know - Three Untamed Beauties. The series will feature screenings of 4 films starring Ayako Wakao, 5 starring Meiko Kaji and 4 starring Mariko Okada. How awesome is that?...