TRAVELLING ACTORS (JAPAN/1940/MIKIO NARUSE)

Hyoroku and Senpei are two actors whose ‘big break’ comes in the form of a role as the front and back halves of a horse in a baffling pantomime production. Despite the relative unimportance of their role, the two men are desperate to prove their mettle, discussing their trade as if they were revered professionals and showing off to geishas. When their theatre manager books in a live horse in their place for a performance in a rural area, the show becomes a bigger hit than expected, and the actors are informed that they will soon be replaced. Beaten at their own game by an animal, the men are left to fight a battle for their self-esteem.

Sharing the same playful but sincere comedy as Mikio Naruse’s earlier Wife, Be Like A Rose! , Travelling Actors is a gentle meditation on serious issues. Though ostensibly a comedy, it is clear that Naruse has a motive in championing these hack actors over the locally conscripted soldiers. The men’s role as the horse appears to consist simply of resisting the instruction of the owner, an act tirelessly portrayed performance after performance. This by extension is Naruse’s own conscientious objection, and an attempt to underline the importance on the arts in reflecting a nation’s status. Naruse occasionally throws in a shot of the men’s legs, as if to remind us that this is all the audience sees of them, whereas of course we as a film audience witness much more. A minor treat.

SINCERITY (JAPAN/1939/MIKIO NARUSE)

A subtly complex story about class values in Japan, Sincerity concerns the friendship of two schoolgirls from different backgrounds. Nobuko lives with her parents in a lavish, state-of-the-art house where she is given what she wants, while Tomiko shares a very modest house with her seamstress mother Tsutako, the father figure noticeably absent. When Nobuko gets a middling report card, her mother consults the teacher who advises her to take after Tsutako’s style of raising a child. As the teacher continues his favouritism towards Tomiko, Nobuko’s father loses his temper and before long, a devastating secret is revealed that could destroy both families.

At little over an hour, it’s not the most memorable of films and is unlikely to ever sit amongst Japanese classics, but Sincerity is nonetheless an interesting slice of drama with a timeless social dilemma at its heart. All of the characters in Sincerity are given a fair amount of screentime as the problem here affects everyone. Intimate close-ups, as in Naruse’s earlier Avalanche, echo the intensity of emotions. Playing against type, the strongest of Naruse’s characters are the two children, Nobuko and Tomiko, whose insistent questioning about the structure of family drive the narrative through its peaks and troughs – in fact, the girls appear to understand a little too much about relationships given their age for the story to be completely convincing. Perhaps most notable about the film is that the war context becomes little more than a plot detail in the context of family values.

KISSES (JAPAN/1957/YASUZO MASUMURA)

After a bizarre encounter visiting their respective fathers in prison, teenagers Kinichi and Akiko fall into a troubled relationship that leads them deeper than they bargained for. Having won money on a bet at the races, the pair confide each other’s money woes, learning that their priorities lie on rescuing their fathers. Kinichi is determined to make bail of 100,000 yen for his father, who has been imprisoned for election fraud, and realises that he will have to call upon his estranged mother for help. Akiko decides she must pay back the 100,000 yen of public funds that her father embezzled, but her job as an artist’s model fails to fetch enough to cover her mother’s hospital bills, let alone her father’s release.

For those familiar with the work of Yasuzo Masumura, Kisses might feel a particularly tame debut film, but that’s not to say it lacks his flair. Though not exactly the twisted duo of Nagisa Ôshima’s Cruel Story of Youth, Kinichi and Akiko’s forced independence seems representative of the post-war period, but Masumura allows his characters to enjoy the freedom they are also given by their circumstances. A sequence at the beach allows the young couple to experience the simple joys of being a teenager, before the streets of town remind them of their harsh reality. There are some superb shots too, particularly as an untethered camera follows the couple as they motorcycle to the beach. The story might be forgettable, but it’s hard to finish Kisses unmoved.

GUZOO (JAPAN/1986/KAZUO ‘GAIRA’ KOMIZU)

Opening with a sinister pan across an unidentified goo-spewing organism, Guzoo starts off as innocent as one could imagine. A group of female friends – Minako, Kazuko, Yuka and Mayumi, if we’re being formal – excitedly head for a trip to an isolated house in the country, little knowing what is about to befall them. The owner of the house, one Tomoko Kujo, is a researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Takamura, the archaeologist father of Minako. Once in their separate rooms, the girls experience strange phenomena, and Tomoko begins to get more shifty about the experiments she is conducting in a private room in the house. After Yuka sustains a bizarre injury in the swimming pool, the girls start to distrust their landlady – and rightly so.

Anyone who has seen the cinematic LSD trip that is Hausu might expect something similar from this film as the set-up is almost identical, but where Hausu starts to get hilariously psychedelic at the first hint of terror, Guzoo plays it pretty safe. The main attraction here is the camp design – Freudian tentacles emerge from unexpected places, and the soundtrack is pure 1950s B-movie – as besides that, there isn’t much to write home about. At just forty minutes in length, the film struggles to get the story out before overdosing on special effects. As a relic of low-budget horror in the VHS era however, Guzoo is of immeasurable value, and like the infamous Evil Dead Trap series, could eventually gain cult value through religious rewatching.

WOMEN'S FLESH: MY RED GUTS (JAPAN/1999/TAMAKICHI ANARU)

A relic of the Japanese craze for extreme video nasties in the 1980s, Women’s Flesh: My Red Guts eschews any notion of plot, instead displaying the slow, painful suicides of two mentally disturbed women. The film opens with a series of overexposed stills of the deceased women, presumably from a coroner’s camera, although the content of the photos implies an inappropriate sexual fascination with them. We then see the first woman attacking herself with a toothbrush, as if taken over by some demonic force. She then runs a knife around her mouth before slicing through her tongue. The second woman, sat against a black curtain, sits distracted before slowly committing hara-kiri. Hazy black and white interludes add scant detail to the women’s emotional deterioration.

While there have previously been intellectual cinematic explorations into sado-masochistic practices, Women’s Flesh disturbingly appears to be designed solely for thrills and, quite terrifyingly, is not the most extreme feature by infamous director Tamakichi Anaru. Nothing in the film suggests the viewer’s need to ‘understand’ or empathise with these women, their actions little more than a graphic display. Though utterly abhorrent in its themes and purpose, the film is at least interesting for its extremely lo-fi shooting style. VHS artefacts make each image difficult to make out, while a soundtrack of noise and electronic blips adds a supernatural element to the proceedings. Far too pointlessly morbid and puerile to warrant attention, Women’s Flesh is a bewildering bit of VHS-era gore designed merely to shock and disgust.

MORNING'S TREE-LINED STREET (JAPAN/1936/MIKIO NARUSE)

A young woman named Chiyo boards a taxi to Tokyo, leaving behind her family home in the countryside in favour of finding a job in the city. Following directions scrawled in her diary, she meets up with childhood friend Hisako who, under the new name of Shigeyo, has taken an unappealing job as a bar hostess, confessing that it was the only employment she could find given her rural upbringing. Chiyo heeds her advice, but after an unsuccessful jobhunt, she too finds herself working as a hostess in one of Tokyo’s poorer quarters. Here she learns about the broken dreams and relationships of her colleagues and the obstacles encountered by country girls in the city.

One of three films that Mikio Naruse made with his wife-to-be Sachiko Chiba in 1936, Morning’s Tree-Lined Street came at a time that Naruse began to notice a supposed lapse in the quality of his films, a problem he ascribed partly to his relationship with Chiba. In her role here as Chiyo, Chiba is vulnerable and uninitiated, and her trajectory is largely shaped by the vicarious experiences of the other characters. Though unconstrained by the ideals of home and family usually seen in his films, the film is an oddly personal document, and the elevation in visual creativity, which sees the camera outdoors as often as indoors, suggests a shift in Naruse’s state of mind. An extra scene of Chiyo’s family might have helped illustrated her disillusionment in the city, but the film succeeds elsewhere.

TOCHUKEN KUMOEMON (JAPAN/1936/MIKIO NARUSE)

Tochuken Kumoemon is a renowned actor whose arrogant reputation precedes him. He views the stage as his domain and does not give much consideration to the feelings of his colleagues, a fact that dutiful wife Otsuma knows all too well. She accompanies his theatrical balladry on the shamisen, but this collaboration appears to be the closest the two ever get. Alienated from romantic feelings, Tochuken pursues a young geisha with little consideration for the feelings of his wife or son. Even when Otsuma falls ill, Tochuken refuses to visit under the proviso that it would dismantle their relationship as performers were he to be seen tending to her as a husband.

Tochuken Kumoemon seems to refer to director Mikio Naruse’s own practice, an allegory about keeping one’s feet on the ground in the duplicitious world of theatre. Though not entirely indistinguishable for the audience, the film’s two realities often intertwine, hinting that the viewer is to see the film from Tochuken’s perspective, although he is hardly a sympathetic character. As in Naruse’s later Avalanche, the male lead carries the story, but it is the wife’s sufferance which is intended to resonate with the viewer. Unfortunately, too much effort is expended on profiling Tochuken before the true story begins, and his relationship with his son is scarcely described. There are still strong moments of drama, particularly as Otsuma struggles to get through to her husband, but viewed through the prism of the performer’s ego, they ultimately amount to little true emotion.

WIFE, BE LIKE A ROSE! (JAPAN/1935/MIKIO NARUSE)

Energised by her recent engagement, a spirited young woman named Kimiko decides to seek her father’s approval, with the ulterior motive of reuniting her estranged parents. With the support of her good-humoured uncle, Kimiko travels out to her father’s lowly abode in the countryside, only to discover that he has a family with a former geisha called Oyuki. The shocking discovery uproots Kimiko’s scheme, but she continues with it nonetheless, persuading her father to return to the city where he had brought her up during happier times. The illusion continues to dissolve as Kimiko’s poetess mother takes offence at her ex-husband’s presence, and good intentions are lost in the mix as old wounds are reopened.

The initial impression one gets of Kimiko is that she already has everything she needs in her life and has clearly flown from the nest. Rather than leaving the audience wondering the point of her failed attempt to reconnect her parents, director and writer Mikio Naruse constantly keeps us aware of Kimiko’s position in the family. In the presence of her mother, Kimiko becomes an excitable child, seemingly responsible for keeping her spirits up, and her search for father is more than just a search for the missing piece. As the artificiality in Kimiko’s mission is obvious to everyone but herself, one wonders whether there ought to have been more moments where she reflected on her expectations of the upcoming marriage, but such an immediate connection is perhaps too facile for a master like Naruse.

THREE SISTERS WITH MAIDEN HEARTS (JAPAN/1935/MIKIO NARUSE)

Mikio Naruse’s first sound film, Three Sisters With Maiden Hearts centres on the relationship between three siblings living in a geisha house run by their curmudgeonly mother Hahaoya. Oren is the prodigal older sister, independent-minded but somewhat ignorant in her plans to start a new life with her husband. Osome is the middle sister and the most responsible of the three, playing shamisen in local bars to support their mother. Youngest sister Chieko, a cabaret dancer, seeks little more in life than love and affection, and appears to find it in Aoyama, an older shop owner. It is her choice in life that Hahaoya disapproves of the most, and she spares no consideration for her innocence.

Naruse makes great use of sound to bind together the sisters’ stories, drawing comparisons by use of incidental music and voiceover. At times it is hard to follow the plot, not only for the overlapping storylines, but also because Hahaoya treats all the geishas in the house as her own children. This is perhaps what sets it apart from Naruse’s earlier work, as the family dynamic is corrupted and replaced by a disciplinarian hierarchy which blurs the lines between work and play. There is warmth between the sisters, particularly Osome and Chieko as they worry about Oren’s eventual fate, but the stronger feeling is that of distance. Chieko’s relationship plays out in secret and is made to feel unnatural, and by the end of the film one wonders if she will follow Oren’s path.

THE SUN'S BURIAL (JAPAN/1960/NAGISA ÔSHIMA)

In the poorer quarters of Osaka exists a network of young criminals, seemingly rejected by society and forced into a life of unsavoury exploits. Shin and Ohama are leaders of warring gangs whose main concern is protecting their respective territories. Ohama’s gang appear to have the upper hand, as much of the film follows Shin balancing menace with fear. Caught up in the fracas is the naïve Takeshi, a do-gooder who finds himself in too deep after trying to sample to gangster lifestyle. Shin sees a little of himself in Takeshi and takes advantage of his innocence. Rivalling Shin’s propensity for manipulative behaviour is Hanako, a duplicitous prostitute who runs an illegal blood transfusion scheme. The two engage in a passionate affair, but Hanako’s opportunism soon pulls Takeshi into a dangerous situation.

Many of Nagisa Ôshima’s detractors have pointed out that he wallows in misery and destruction without offering a solution, but it is exactly this attitude that makes his early works so vital. Admittedly The Sun’s Burial lacks subtlety in its attempts to sketch a metaphor for Japan – the title in particular spells it out – but there is heart in Ôshima’s mission. The character of ‘the Agitator’, an embittered war veteran who observes the turf war dismissively, is the ghost of Japan past, and a brief glimpse of an optimistic banner ushers in a new Japan, one to exist in the future after the film. Gorgeously shot and scored, The Sun’s Burial is a historically important, deceptively nihilistic thriller.

GHOST OF HANGING IN UTSUNOMIYA (JAPAN/1956/NOBUO NAKAGAWA)

Ryutaro is a spy employed by the shogun Tokugawa Iemitsu, who is the target of assassination attempts that aim to hand power over to his younger brother Tadanaga. Before learning of these plots, Ryutaro discovers himself in a predicament of his own when he rushes to the defence of a local girl who is caught between her boyfriend and a greedy businessman. The situation results in many violent one-on-one skirmishes between Ryutaro and the businessman’s many samurai defendants, one of whom enigmatically refuses to reveal his face or use more than just the one hand. Before long, Ryutaro’s top priority is not protecting Iemitsu as it should be, but rather unearthing the true identity of the mystery samurai.

Director Nobuo Nakagawa is well known for mixing the supernatural with diverse genres of film, and in Ghost Of Hanging In Utsunomiya, he does a sublime job of giving the chanbara (or samurai) genre a much-needed boost. While it may not be as subversive a work as some of its contemporaries, the film has a wonderfully simple premise, and Nakagawa uses the time to reinforce Ryutaro’s story with some colourful characters. With his bizarre hood and penchant for spinning walnuts in his fingers, the unnamed samurai walks the line between clown and sinister threat, and the scene where he reveals his true face is unusually tense. It may not be for everyone, but Ghost Of Hanging In Utsunomiya is a brilliant mix of history and the ethereal, making for great evening viewing.

NIGHTLY DREAMS (JAPAN/1933/MIKIO NARUSE)

An estranged, unemployed man named Mizuhara is struggling to come to terms with the divorce that stopped him seeing his son Fumio, and thus caused him to lose motivation. In a last-ditch attempt to get the family back together, Mizuhara pays a visit to ex-wife Mitsu, who is quickly irritated by his presence. Mizuhara persists, demanding to see more of Fumio and promising to find work that would mean Mitsu could quit her unsavoury job as a bar hostess. But despite the uplifting prospects of being a family again, Mizuhara sees himself beaten to the floor once again, and one is left to wonder if he’ll ever get back up.

Nightly Dreams is a dark episode in Mikio Naruse’s oeuvre, a blunt portrayal of what low self-esteem and superstition can do to a man. While none of Naruse’s films find universal satisfaction for the characters, the destructive powers in Nightly Dreams eat away at both protagonists and their son, and the world outside becomes a dangerous place. Naruse captures little moments of human vincibility that other directors would have forgotten, using abrupt zooms to give scenes unexpected emotional impact. Although the story arc belongs to Mizuhara, who undergoes more peaks and troughs than anyone else, the film belongs to Mitsu, the strong, passionate female figure so frequently seen in Naruse’s works. The innocence of childhood is not forgotten in this family drama, and Mizuhara’s relationship with Fumio seems more fraternal than paternal. Nightly Dreams is a saddening, quietly powerful film.

CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH (JAPAN/1960/NAGISA ÔSHIMA)

Makoto is a coquettish student who believes that her feminine wiles are enough to get her through life. When she is threatened sexually by a driver with whom she had hitchhiked, another student named Kiyoshi comes to her rescue, throwing the man off and warning him that he could destroy his reputation. Makoto is convinced that she has finally found her prince charming and the pair spend time together, but as Kiyoshi starts to blow hot and cold, it becomes clear that he is as questionable a character as her attacker. A hard-up student, Kiyoshi makes scraps of cash by sleeping with older women and leasing his room to couples, and when Makoto’s attacker offers a bribe to prevent them heading to the police station, his money-grabbing instinct takes over.

As in a few of Nagisa Ôshima’s films, the issue at the heart of Cruel Story Of Youth is the commodification of human beings. Makoto is an incredibly naïve and vulnerable character, and because of this, it is painful to witness her story arc, but she is difficult to sympathise with given that she has essentially created her circumstances. Ôshima does a superb job of narrating the woes of adolescence, even as the story gets decidedly adult. A sequence wherein Kiyoshi refuses to save Makoto from drowning unless she does everything he says is particularly memorable and sums the film up succinctly. Raw, sexual and dangerous, Cruel Story Of Youth is a still relevant evocation of the rebellious teenage spirit.

A (JAPAN/1998/TATSUYA MORI)

The Aum Shinrikyo group, now known as Aleph, are a cult religion in Japan whose central tenets combine elements of Christianity and Buddhism. In 1995, the group was reviled for a sarin attack they carried out on a Tokyo underground train, which killed at least twelve people. The attack was supposedly arranged by the cult’s leader Shoko Asahara in response to rumours that the police had planned to raid his headquarters. In his documentary A, investigative filmmaker Tatsuya Mori managed to integrate himself into the cult’s headquarters shortly after the attack, spending time with members to understand them as people. Spokesperson Hiroshi Araki cuts a bashful image, and one wonders how, if at all, he was selected as a representative given his relative ignorance to the origin of the attacks.

The film plays out as a sort of press pack, arranging interviews and news items chronologically to measure the repercussions of the attack. Rather than sensationalising events unnecessarily, Mori remains as neutral as possible, an approach which allows the subjects to loosen up and contently discuss their beliefs. For the first half of the film, it is hard to conceive of the dangers of a cult represented in the media by someone like Araki, but as Mori probes deeper, he unexpectedly uncovers a stash of chemicals in a storeroom, instantly changing the audience’s perception of the film. At 133 minutes, it may be a little longer than necessary, but A is otherwise a respectably unobtrusive profile of a terrifying sect.

APART FROM YOU (JAPAN/1933/MIKIO NARUSE)

Kikue is a geisha who is constantly fraught with worry. Her son Yoshio has fallen in with the wrong crowd at school and is often inclined to bunk off, to the chagrin of his mother. The two have frequent arguments in which both parties question the love of the other. Additionally, a client who had once been obsessed with her appears to be losing interest as he discovers the younger geishas in the house. Kikue’s younger friend and colleague, a more popular geisha named Terugiku, notices the family spat and intervenes by inviting Toshio to join her on a trip to visit her family. Initially grateful for the break, Toshio soon realises Terugiku’s ulterior motive, as her father proves to be an unpleasant man wholly undeserving of his social stature. Toshio determines to learn from the visit, but his attempts to reform himself aren’t without difficulty.

Apart From You feels like any other Mikio Naruse film, asides from the fact that the dramatic camerawork appears to be compensating for the lack of sound. In a peculiar way, the film is stronger for its silence, as we are able to observe the characters’ frustrations purely in their expressions and actions. With just three key characters, Naruse is able to spend time fleshing them out, with Toshio a particularly strong identity in the film. A simple story with a cherishable message at its core, Apart From You is a pleasant drama which stands up to the early silent films of Yasujiro Ozu.

SOUND OF THE MOUNTAIN (JAPAN/1954/MIKIO NARUSE)

Kikuko is a married woman who, despite being beset by problems, always puts on an upbeat façade, particularly when talking to her caring parents-in-law. The biggest issue she faces is her crumbling relationship with husband Shuichi, an officious individual who is cheating on her. Watching Shuichi’s sister interact unenthusiastically with her own children, Kikuko begins to question the virtues of raising a child from an unhappy marriage, and soon accepts that her own fate is as good as doomed. Disappointed by the negligence of his own children, father-in-law Shingo lavishes attention on Kikuko and provides her with succour. The relationship grows stronger than ever, transcending familial boundaries, but Shingo is constantly reminded that, by betraying his own son, he is no better than him.

Based on the eponymous novel by Nobel Prize winner Yasunari Kawabata, Sound of the Mountain is a subtle but comprehensive study of a family concerned with expectations and responsibility. The films of director Mikio Naruse often feature women who quietly carry the weight of the world on their shoulders, and Kikuko is a fine example of this, balancing her own wishes and desires with those of her adopted family. Naruse’s film also reflects neatly on themes of death and memory, particularly in the character of Shingo. As he succumbs to old age, Shingo holds on to the fragments of the past that may never resurface, and his romantic feelings for Kikuko echo a former longing he had for his wife’s deceased sister. An elegant family drama.

BROTHERS AND SISTERS OF THE TODA FAMILY (JAPAN/1941/YASUJIRO OZU)

When Shintaro, the elderly patriarch of the titular Toda family dies on his 69^th birthday, eldest son Shinichiro is left to discover a mountain of debt. After some deliberation, the family decides to pay off the debts by selling off Shintaro’s entire collection of antiques and properties, save for a seaside house. The process forces the family to move out, and each member finds a different arrangement to suit them, except for the mother and youngest daughter Setsuko. Feeling uncomfortable at the house of Shintaro’s wife Kazuko, Mrs. Toda and Setsuko move in with eldest daughter Chizuko, only to encounter similar disagreements. Finding no luck living at any of her children’s houses, Mrs. Toda unhappily moves into the ramshackle house by the sea with Setsuko, and it isn’t until the return of second son Shojiro (who had upped sticks to China after Shintaro’s death) that the family’s strained ties are made clear.

As with every Yasujiro Ozu film, the drama is gentle but abundant, and is sweetly complemented by a sparing score. While she isn’t exactly a lovable character, Mrs. Toda is endearing in her own way, and the tense relationships she has with her children unravel at a realistic pace – we are never forced to believe the issues are irreconcilable, but are able to understand Mrs. Toda’s motives for moving. With all the characters involved, it is sometimes hard to tell who’s who, but Brothers And Sisters Of The Toda Family is otherwise a pleasant minor work from Ozu.