ABE Yutaka

(February 2, 1895–January 3, 1977)

阿部豊

A director from the mid-twenties, Abe had trained in Hollywood, where he played bit parts in films starring his compatriot, Sessue Hayakawa. After returning home, he became known as the Lubitsch of Japan, a reputation founded on his witty and polished social satires. A Mermaid on Land (Riku no ningyo, 1926) traced the romantic rivalry between two young women, one spoilt and rich, the other poor but sincere. Five Women around Him (Kare o meguru gonin no onna, 1927) focused on a bachelor and his several girlfriends. Most famous was The Woman Who Touched the Legs (Ashi ni sawatta onna, 1926), a twice-remade ironic comedy about a writer’s encounter with a female thief. These films, along with most of Abe’s prewar work, are now lost, but among his prewar sound films, Children of the Sun (Taiyō no ko, 1938) remains extant. This interesting story about a home for delinquent children in Hokkaido revealed his eye for landscape and confirmed his capability in a more serious vein.

The vague liberalism of that film was soon abandoned as Abe, with blockbusters such as Flaming Sky (Moyuru ōzora, 1940) and Fire on That Flag (Ano hata o ute, 1944), became one of the leading producers of nationalistic propaganda before and during the Pacific War. Even in the fifties, Battleship Yamato (Senkan Yamato, 1953) and I Was a Siberian POW (Watashi wa Shiberiya no horyo datta, 1952) exposed his continuing admiration for Japanese militarism. Much of Abe’s postwar work consisted of undistinguished genre films such as Desert in Ginza (Ginza no sabaku, 1958), a brutal and silly crime thriller set against the backdrop of Tokyo’s fashionable yet seedy Ginza district. However, he achieved a commercial success with the first film adaptation of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s novel about life among Osaka’s prewar upper middle class, The Makioka Sisters (Sasameyuki, 1950). Later, the freewheeling comedy Season of Affairs (Uwaki no kisetsu, 1959) carried some of his old satirical feeling in its amused take on contemporary social mores. It is unfortunate that the films which earned Abe his fame as a satirist in the silent era are not preserved today.

1925 Bokō no tameni / For the Alma Mater

Hasha no kokoro / Heart of a Champion

Shōhin eigashū / Collection of Short Stories on Film (co-director)

1926 Shinsei no aikō / New Life through the Light of Love

Nyōbō kawaiya / Loving Wife

Setsujoku no hi / Day of Vindication

Kyōko to Shizuko / Kyoko and Shizuko

Sekai no chiemono / The World’s Wisest Man

Riku no ningyo / A Mermaid on Land

Ashi ni sawatta onna / The Woman Who Touched the Legs

Shin Nihontō / New Japanese Island

1927 Kare o meguru gonin no onna / Five Women around Him

Tabi geinin / Traveling Players

Ningyō no ie / A Doll’s House

Shikabane wa katarazu / The Dead Don’t Talk

1928 Hanayome hanamuko saikonki / Record of the Bride and Groom’s Remarriage

Chikyū wa mawaru: Dainibu: Gendai hen / The World Turns: Part 2: Modern Chapter

Haha izuko / Where Is Mother?

1929 Kyōen onna samazama / Women in Competition

Karatachi no hana / Trifoliate Orange Blossom

Aojiroki bara / Pale Blue Rose

Hijō keikai / Caution: Emergency

1930 Josei homare / Woman’s Reputation

Nihonbare / Fair Weather

Haha sannin / Three Mothers

Nikkatsu onparēdo / Nikkatsu on Parade

1931 Nikkatsu aramōdo / Nikkatsu à la Mode

Gōruin / Success

1932 Tengoku no hatoba / Heaven’s Pier

Modan seisho: Tosei risshi tokuhon kan’ichi / Modern Bible: Model for Success in Modern Times, Volume One

1933 Hikari: Tsumi to tomo ni / Light: With a Sin

Suma no adanami / Ebb and Flow at Suma

Atarashiki ten (Zenpen; Kōhen) / The New Heaven (Parts 1 and 2)

1934 Kokoro no hatoba / The Heart’s Pier

Tetsu no machi / Town of Iron

Wakafūfu shiken bekkyo / Trial Separation of a Young Couple

Tajō busshin / Fickle but Not Unfeeling

1935 Nichizō getsuzō / Keepers of the Sun and Moon

Kaikoku Dainippon / Greater Japan, Maritime Nation

Midori no chiheisen (Zenpen; Kōhen) / The Green Horizon (Parts 1 and 2)

1936 Hakui no kajin / Beautiful Women in White

Ren’ai to kekkon no sho: Ren’ai hen / Book of Love and Marriage: Love Volume

Ren’ai to kekkon no sho: Kekkon hen / Book of Love and Marriage: Marriage Volume

1937 Jūji hōka / Crossfire

1938 Taiyō no ko / Children of the
Sun

1939 Waremokō: Zenpen / The Great Burnet: Part 1

Waremokō: Kōhen: Sen’ya ni saku / The Great Burnet: Part 2: Blooming on the Battlefield

Roppa no Hōjiro-sensei / Roppa as Mr. Hojiro the Teacher

Onna no kyōshitsu: Gakkō no maki: Nanatsu no omogake / Women’s Classroom: School Reel: Memories of Seven

Kodomo to heitai / Children and Soldiers

Onna no kyōshitsu: Kōhen / Women’s Classroom: Part 2

1940 Moyuru ōzora / Flaming Sky / Burning Sky

1942 Nankai no hanataba / Bouquet of the South Seas

1944 Ano hata o ute / Fire on That Flag / Dawn of Freedom

1945 Uta e! Taiyō / Sing! The Sun!

1946 Boku no ojisan / My Uncle

1947 Ai yo hoshi to tomo ni / Love, Live with the Stars!

1948 Ten no yūgao / Heaven’s Evening Glory

1949 Ryūsei / Shooting Star

Daitokai no kao / Face of the Big City

1950 Sasameyuki / The Makioka Sisters (lit. A Light Snowfall)

Aizenka / Scent of Enlightenment

1951 Nozokareta ashi / The Leg That Was Peeped At

Tsuki yori no haha / Mother from the Moon

1952 Ōzora no chikai / Oath of Heaven

Watashi wa Shiberiya no horyo datta / I Was a Siberian POW

Otome no honnō: Bōto hachinin musume / Young Woman’s Instinct: 8 Girls and a Boat

1953 Onna to iu shiro: Mari no maki / A Castle Called Woman: Mari’s Reel

Onna to iu shiro: Yūko no maki / A Castle Called Woman: Yuko’s Reel

Koibito no iru machi / Town of Lovers

Senkan Yamato / Battleship Yamato

1954 Shunshuku Oden no kata: Edo-jō enjō / The Desirable Lady Oden: Great Fire of Edo Castle

Nihon yaburezu / Japan Undefeated / Immortal Japan

1955 Seishun kaidan / Ghost Story of Youth

Hana shinju / Flower Pearl

Hanran / Rebellion

1956 Daihachi kanbō / Cell No. 8

Iro zange / Penitence for Lust

Nikutai no mitsuyu / People Smuggling

1957 Saigo no totsugeki / The Last Charge

Madamu / Madame

Suashi no musume / The Barefoot Girl

Mebana / The Awakening (lit. Female Flower)

1958 Shundeini / The Story of a Nun

Unga / The Flow / The Canal (lit.)

Ginza no sabaku / Desert in Ginza / Wasteland of a Metropolis

Ōsaka no kaze / Wind of Osaka

1959 Kamen no onna / Masked Woman

Nirenjū no Tetsu / “Double-Barreled” Tetsu

Uwaki no kisetsu / Season of Affairs

1960 Kizudarake no okite / Tarnished Rule

Shizukana datsugokusha / The Quiet Fugitive

1961 Daishusse monogatari / Story of Great Success

Inochi no asa / Morning of Life / Dawn of a Canvas

ADACHI Masao

(b. May 5, 1939)

足立正生

Adachi’s career testifies to the opportunities which “pink” cinema provided for the expression of dissident attitudes. He had achieved notice as a student filmmaker collaborating on such creative experimental films as The Lacquered Bowl (Wan, 1961), a tragedy set in an isolated village. From 1966 to 1971, he worked for Kōji Wakamatsu’s production company, scripting some of Wakamatsu’s own works, and directing a sequence of “pink” films in which sexual titillation was secondary to political commentary advanced from a far-left perspective. Sex Play (Seiyūgi, 1968) charted the personal and ideological entanglements of two groups of leftist students, drawing imprecise parallels between sexual and political liberation. Female Student Guerrillas (Jogakusei gerira, 1969) took this theme to an extreme in its account of the violent revolutionary activities of a group of students in the mountains. The film’s portrayal of their brutalities was unenlightening, but there were suggestive moments; the opening and closing shots of Mount Fuji—the Shochiku logo—seemed not only to demolish a national symbol, but also to mock the studio system.

Although rough-and-ready in execution, these films were visually inventive, revealing the influence of Jean-Luc Godard in their use of such distancing devices as onscreen text and switches from black and white to color. More mature in theme and somewhat more professional in style was Prayer of Ejaculation: 15-Year-Old Prostitute (Funshutsu kigan: 15-sai no baishunfu, 1971), an austere, affecting examination of the tragic life and suicide of a teenage prostitute, in which Adachi’s political concerns seemed more directly anchored in the realities of individual experience. The hypocrisy of the adult world was suggested by the character of the middle-aged teacher who begins an affair with the heroine, while images of tanks in the streets hinted at a wider context. Outside the “pink” arena, Adachi made AKA Serial Killer (Rakushō: Renzoku shasatsuma, 1969), an admired documentary, which recorded the locations that must have been visited by teenage serial killer Norio Nagayama before he committed his crimes.

In 1971, Adachi journeyed with Wakamatsu to the Middle East, visiting territory disputed between Israel and her Arab neighbors. Their encounters with a group of Palestinian guerrillas and interviews conducted in Beirut with artists, refugees, hijackers, and others, formed the basis of a documentary, Red Army–PFLP–Declaration of World War (Sekigun–PFLP–Sekai sensō sengen, 1971), screenings of which were restricted by pressure from the Japanese police. Adachi returned in 1975 to Beirut, where he lived for more than two decades, acting as a spokesman for the Japanese Red Army in Lebanon. In 1997, he was arrested and deported on the orders of the Lebanese government and, on returning to Japan, spent two years in prison. After his release, he documented his life in an autobiographical book, Film/Revolution (Eiga/Kakumei, 2003), and took steps to restart his directorical career. Prisoner/Terrorist (Yūheisha: Terorisuto, 2007) controversially charted the ill-treatment in Israeli captivity of Kōzō Okamoto, one of the perpetrators of the 1972 Lod Airport Massacre. This lengthy, repetitious, and rather amateurish work was not a particularly distinguished comeback: a fact that is doubly regrettable, since Adachi’s own experiences would certainly offer fascinating material for drama or documentary.

1961 Wan / The Lacquered Bowl (16mm short; co-director)

1963 Sa’in / The Sealed Vagina (co-director)

1966 Datai / Abortion

Hinin kakumei / The Birth Control Revolution

1967 Gingake / The Galaxy

1968 Sei chitai / Sex Zone

Seiyūgi / Sex Play

1969 Jogakusei gerira / Female Student Guerrillas / The High School Girls’ Revolt

Ryakushō: Renzoku shasatsuma / AKA Serial Killer

1970 Sakarame: Mugen jigoku / Woman in Revolt: Phantasmagoric Hell

1971 Funshutsu kigan: 15-sai no baishunfu / Prayer of Ejaculation: 15-Year-Old Prostitute

Sekigun–PFLP–Sekai sensō sengen / Red Army–PFLP–Declaration of World War (co-director)

2007 Yūheisha: Terorisuto / Prisoner / Terrorist

AOYAMA Shinji

(b. July 13, 1964)

青山真治

Aoyama’s work resembles that of Kiyoshi Kurosawa (also a former student at Rikkyō University of film theorist Shigehiko Hasumi) in its offbeat approach to generic motifs. The gulf between his nineties exploitation films and his twenty-first-century art movies is more apparent than real: his recent, more rarefied work has drawn inspiration, at several removes, from thrillers and science fiction, while his early genre films borrowed the stylistic attributes of art movies. In such offbeat gangster films as Helpless (1996) and Wild Life (Wild Life: Jump into the Dark, 1997) he used extended sequence shots and slow, meditative camera movements to record not only violent action, but also the dead spots in between: snacks in cafes and restaurants, morning showers, journeys, time spent waiting and doing nothing. The individuality of these films lay in their unglamorous concentration on the mundane realities of criminal life. An Obsession (Tsumetai chi, 1997), another crime thriller, reworked Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (Nora inu, 1949) in its story of a police detective whose stolen gun is used in a series of murders. This film’s setting in an alternative present-day Tokyo, peopled by executioners in anti-radiation suits, foreshadowed the apocalyptic tone of Aoyama’s later work.

In the late nineties, Aoyama also worked in genres other than the crime film. Embalming (EM Enbāmingu, 1999) was a silly horror movie pastiche, notable mainly for a slyly self-mocking performance from director Seijun Suzuki.Shady Grove (1999), loosely inspired by a Sōseki Natsume short story, was a melancholy romantic comedy about a young woman trying to come to terms with rejection. Around this time, Aoyama also made a documentary, To the Alley (Roji e: Nakagami Kenji no nokoshita firumu, 2000): in part an examination of the plight of the burakumin underclass, this was more centrally an investigation of the role of cinema itself in preserving history.

Aoyama gained an international reputation with Eureka (2000), about the gradual recovery of three survivors from the trauma of a bus hijack. Over three hours long, virtually plotless, and shot in sepia-tinted monochrome, this extraordinary, haunting film took its director’s style to a new extreme; its slow, sinuous camera movements, sometimes following the characters, sometimes moving independently, conveyed the sense of a world indifferent to individual suffering. Even closer to abstraction was Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani (Eri eri rama sabakutani, 2005), a Werner Herzog-like vision of apocalypse set in a dystopian future where an infectious disease is inducing mass suicides. Though lacking the narrative control of Eureka, it contained passages of breathtaking visual beauty. Desert Moon (Tsuki no sabaku, 2001) was a more socially critical film, focusing on a selfish businessman whose obsession with work threatens to destroy his marriage. While thematically intriguing, it was somewhat ponderous in execution.

Aoyama’s films have often focused on the tension between free will and determinism. He has seemed sometimes to view human actions as wholly governed by external factors: in Embalming, for instance, the human brain can be mechanically reset like a computer. Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani, albeit more ambiguously, traced suicidal actions to the influence of a virus, and even Eureka, though more psychological in emphasis, saw violence as a kind of infection, the trauma of the original hijack leading one victim to commit murder in turn. Sad Vacation (Saddo vakeishon, 2007), about a man scarred by his mother’s desertion, also examined the way in which past events determine human behavior, a theme given a metacinematic dimension by the presence of characters from Aoyama’s own earlier work. Nevertheless, Aoyama’s recent films have generally been therapeutic in theme, charting a process of recovery. Often a change of environment permits a cure: if Eureka portrayed a countryside contaminated by urban phenomena such as crime, Desert Moon found tentative hope in the protagonists’ rejection of urban for rural life, while the suicidal heroine of Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani is cured in a remote field. In these films, the affection between individuals was also seen as grounds for hope, and it may be that Aoyama is moving towards a genuine humanism.

The tension between freedom and determinism is reflected in Aoyama’s technique, which allows his collaborators a certain latitude to improvise: thus, he apparently often permits his regular cameraman, Masaki Tamura, to make his own choices about where and how to move the camera. This improvisional aspect relates also to Aoyama’s interest in the spontaneity of music (which cures the disease victims in Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani). Significantly, in addition to fiction features, he has directed concert films, and collaborated with students at the Film School of Tokyo on an epic documentary about music critic Akira Aida, who introduced free jazz to Japan in the 1970s. The variety and eccentricity of his work make it difficult to predict future developments, but Aoyama will likely remain an original and suggestive filmmaker.

1996 Helpless

Chinpira / Two Punks

1997 Wild Life: Jump into the Dark / Wild Life

Tsumetai chi / An Obsession (lit. Cold Blood)

1998 Kaosu no fuchi / June 12, 1998: The Edge of Chaos

1999 Shady Grove

EM Embāmingu / Embalming

2000 Eureka

Roji e: Nakagami Kenji no nokoshita firumu / To the Alley (lit. To the Alley: The Film Left by Kenji Nakagami)

2001 Tsuki no sabaku / Desert Moon

2002 Sude ni oita kanojo no subete ni tsuite wa kataranu tameni / So as Not to Say Everything about Her Already Aged Self (video)

Shiritsu tantei Hama Maiku: Namae no nai mori / A Forest with No Name

2003 Deka matsuri / Cop Festival (co-director)

Ajimā no uta: Uehara Tomoko tenjō no utagoe / Song of Ajima: Tomoko Uehara, Voice of Heaven

Nokishita no narazumono mitai ni / Like a Desperado under the Eaves (short)

Shūsei tabi nikki / Days in the Shade (short)

2004 Reikusaido mādā kēsu / Lakeside Murder Case

2005 Eri eri rama sabakutani / Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani / My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

2006 Kōrogi / Crickets

AA

2007 Saddo vakeishon / Sad Vacation