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When Nobuhiko Obayashi sadly passed away in April 2020, most social media was filled with many posts showing pictures of the director and perhaps the feature most people remember, his 1977 film “Hausu”. While there is no denying about the quality of said film, given the vast career of Obayashi which spans over five decades, these pictures also indicate that so many viewers still need to discover for themselves the multitude of themes and the experimental visual style of the majority of his body of work, in which his debut feature makes up only a small portion. One way to start this journey into Obayashi’s work may be the upcoming release of his penultimate work, “Hanagatami” by Third Window, a touching and very poetic film about growing up during war times.

“Hanagatami” is screening at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, as part of the Obayashi Nobuhiko Film Show Case

In 1941, Toshihiko (Shunsuke Kubozuka), a sixteen-year-old teenager,...

In the last decade of his long and prolific career, Nobuhiko Obayashi (1938-2020) — best-known in the U.S. as the filmmaker behind the cult hit House (1977) — wrote and directed a trio of deeply personal and formally audacious films that confronted Japan’s wartime past.

Made in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami of March 2011 and informed by Obayashi’s firsthand experience as a child born on the eve of World War II in Hiroshima Prefecture, the staggering films in this trilogy—consisting of Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2012), Seven Weeks (2014) and, Hanagatami (2017)—collectively consider the loss of innocence for an entire generation of Japanese youth raised in the shadow of war and national disaster.

Kimstin is proud to present Nobuhiko Obayashi’s War Trilogy, which opens at Japan Society, NY and nationwide virtual cinemas and theatres on July 9th

Hanagatami

Drama • 2h 51m • 2014

After being diagnosed...

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1-21 July

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Upcoming Releases

3 great Japanese films available to pre-order Hanagatami

Out July 6th

In 2016, Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of the cult Japanese film House (Hausu) was diagnosed with lung cancer and given only a few months to live. Despite not much time left, for what was supposed to be his final film he adapted Kazuo Dan’s 1937 novella Hanagatami, his passion project 40 years in the making.

In 1941, as Japan prepares its attack on Pearl Harbor, 16 year-old Toshihiko (Shunsuke Kubozuka) leaves his parents in Amsterdam and moves to the seaside town of Karatsu where his aunt Keiko (Takako Tokiwa) cares for his ailing cousin Mina (Honoka Yahagi). Immersed in the exquisite nature and phenomenal culture of Karatsu,...

Three upcoming Japanese films from Third Window Films are now available for preorder.

Hanagatami

Out July 6th

In 2016, Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of the cult Japanese film House (Hausu) was diagnosed with lung cancer and given only a few months to live. Despite not much time left, for what was supposed to be his final film he adapted Kazuo Dan’s 1937 novella Hanagatami, his passion project 40 years in the making.

In 1941, as Japan prepares its attack on Pearl Harbor, 16 year-old Toshihiko (Shunsuke Kubozuka) leaves his parents in Amsterdam and moves to the seaside town of Karatsu where his aunt Keiko (Takako Tokiwa) cares for his ailing cousin Mina (Honoka Yahagi). Immersed in the exquisite nature and phenomenal culture of Karatsu, Toshihiko befriends the beautiful, Apollo-like Ukai (Shinnosuke Mitsushima), the contemplative Kira (Keishi Nagatsuka), the ingenuous Akine (Hirona Yamazaki) and the brooding Chitose (Mugi Kadowaki) as they all contend with the war’s inescapable gravitational pull.

When Nobuhiko Obayashi sadly passed away in April 2020, most social media was filled with many posts showing pictures of the director and perhaps the feature most people remember, his 1977 film “Hausu”. While there is no denying about the quality of said film, given the vast career of Obayashi which spans over five decades, these pictures also indicate that so many viewers still need to discover for themselves the multitude of themes and the experimental visual style of the majority of his body of work, in which his debut feature makes up only a small portion. One way to start this journey into Obayashi’s work may be the upcoming release of his penultimate work, “Hanagatami” by Third Window, a touching and very poetic film about growing up during war times.

In 1941, Toshihiko (Shunsuke Kubozuka), a sixteen-year-old teenager, returns from Europe to his Japanese home to attend school.

Born in 1938 in Onomichi, a port town facing Japan’s Inland Sea, Nobuhiko Obayashi began making experimental films in the 1960s and showing them at galleries and other sites around Tokyo. With lines forming around the block for these films, which captured the free-spirited, anything-goes mood of the times, Obayashi branched out into TV commercials. His ads featuring Charles Bronson, Kirk Douglas, Catherine Deneuve and other international stars had a freshness of style and humor that won him new fans.

In 1977 Obayashi made his feature debut with “House,” a horror-fantasy about a haunted house that devours its schoolgirl visitors. Critically pummeled on its release, this wildly imaginative and irresistibly charming film later became an international cult hit.

Obayashi went on to direct more fantasy-themed films featuring cute teens, including “School in the Crosshairs” (1982), “Transfer Student” (1982) and “The Little Girl Who Conquered Time” (1983). His main producer in this period was Haruki Kadokawa,...

Nobuhiko Obayashi's Hanagatami (2017) is showing January 24 – February 22, 2019 exclusively on Mubi as part of the series Direct from Rotterdam.It may be easy to dismiss Nobuhiko Obayashi as a cult horror film director due to the notoriety of his celebrated debut feature, Hausu (1977), but what does not get discussed often enough is Obayashi as a thinker who has always pushed the boundaries of the cinematic medium. He was a central figure in the 1960s Japanese 8mm and 16mm experimental film scene, his pop-star vehicle “idol” films in the 1980s were national sensations, and he continues to make convention-defying movies with his abundant use of green screens in digital cinema. His diverse and prolific filmography spans across genres including horror, crime, comedy, documentary, family dramas, coming-of-age dramas and even animation. Watch Exchange Student (1982) and you'll see that Makoto Shinkai's Your Name (2016) was made decades earlier. Many may know that Obayashi was...

With the unconventional, emotionally engrossing Hanagatami, maverick indie director Nobuhiko Obayashi wraps up his anti-war trilogy that includes Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2012) and Seven Weeks (2014). Based on a novel by Kazuo Dan, Hanagatami (The Flower Basket) follows a group of adolescent friends living in an idyllic seaside town in the months leading up to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and entry into World War II. Nearly three hours of dense storytelling roll by while a sprawling and vividly drawn cast of characters explore young love and the meaning of life. Everything is overshadowed by the knowledge that few of them ...

With the unconventional, emotionally engrossing Hanagatami, maverick indie director Nobuhiko Obayashi wraps up his anti-war trilogy that includes Casting Blossoms to the Sky (2012) and Seven Weeks (2014). Based on a novel by Kazuo Dan, Hanagatami (The Flower Basket) follows a group of adolescent friends living in an idyllic seaside town in the months leading up to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and entry into World War II. Nearly three hours of dense storytelling roll by while a sprawling and vividly drawn cast of characters explore young love and the meaning of life. Everything is overshadowed by the knowledge that few of them ...

If there is a theme that often reappears in Nobuhiko Obayashi’s oeuvre, it is the impact of war. While this theme was already present in his very first full-length feature “House” (1977), which has to read as a symbolic expression of the destruction of the A-bomb, it seems to have become a more urgent matter for him in the last couple of years. “Kono Sora no Hana”, a narrative he directed in 2012, concerned the bombing of Nagaoka, and “No No Nanananoka”, which he made two years later, handled Japan’s wartime responsibility.

With “Hanagatami”, a project Obayashi abandoned 40 years ago to make “House” instead and his third anti-war movie in a row, he once again underlines his personal motivation to carry out the dream and philosophy of the late Akira Kurosawa: to achieve world peace with the power of the cinematographical narrative. This time, by adapting Kazuo Dan’s...