HANEDA Sumiko

(b. January 3, 1926)

羽田澄子

Haneda has sustained a half-century-long career in documentary filmmaking, realizing numerous films on cultural, socially critical, and feminist themes. She worked initially at Iwanami Productions, where she served as assistant to Susumu Hani before making her debut with Women’s College in the Village (Mura no fujin gakkyū, 1957), which earned praise for its realism. Her next film, Ancient Beauty (Kodai no bi, 1958), became the first in a trilogy of documentaries depicting works of art and artifacts in the possession of the Tokyo National Museum. Meanwhile, in films such as Cabbage Butterflies (Monshirochō: Kōdō no jikkenteki kansatsu, 1968), she applied innovative techniques to the depiction of the natural world.

Haneda made her first independent film with the acclaimed The Cherry Tree with Gray Blossoms (Usuzumi no sakura, 1977); this, in Eric Cazdyn’s words, was “a gorgeously haunting representation of a famous cherry tree’s seasonal transformations, punctuated by the coming-of-age changes of a teenage girl.” Shortly thereafter, Haneda left Iwanami Productions permanently to work freelance. Among her most important later films were two works documenting the problems of the elderly: How to Care for the Senile (Chihōsei rōjin no sekai, 1985) and Getting Old with a Sense of Security (Anshin shite oiru tameni, 1990). On a related topic, All’s Well That Ends Well (Owari yokereba subete yoshi, 2007) was a study of terminal medical care, posing the question of whether it is possible to achieve a “good death.”

Elsewhere, Haneda has examined the place of women in Japanese society, particularly with a historical focus. Women’s Testimony: Pioneering Women in the Labor Movement (Onnatachi no shōgen: Rōdō undō no naka no senkuteki joseitachi, 1996) depicted the role of women in labor unions during an oppressive era, while Woman Was the Sun: The Life of Raicho Hiratsuka (Hiratsuka Raichō no shōgai: Genshi, josei wa taiyō de atta, 2002) related the life story of the noted early twentieth-century Japanese writer, peace activist, and feminist. Haneda has also realized a sequence of films, initiated by Welfare as Chosen by Our Town’s Citizens (Jūmin ga sentaku shita machi no fukushi, 1997), about local politics in modern Japan; these charted the efforts of a reforming mayor in a northern town to improve the lot of senior citizens and to boost local participation in politics.

Haneda’s most consistent focus, however, has been the cultural traditions of Japan, particularly in the performing arts. Ode to Mount Hayachine (Hayachine no fu, 1982) recorded a devotional dance performed in northern Iwate Prefecture and juxtaposed this tradition, unaltered since the medieval era, with the changes reaching the mountainous region in a time of modernization. It won widespread commercial distribution in Japan, an achievement rare for a documentary. By contrast, Akiko: Portrait of a Dancer (Akiko: Aru dansā no shōzō, 1985) charted the work and life of one of the country’s most important modern dancers. Haneda has also made several films about Kabuki, including a series of documentaries charting the final years of actor Nizaemon Kataoka. More recently, Into the Picture Scroll: The Tale of Yamanaka Tokiwa (Yamanaka Tokiwa, 2004) used a famous picture scroll to retell the tragic legend of folk hero Yoshitsune’s quest to avenge his mother’s murder.

Haneda has not only tackled a broad range of subjects but has also revealed a determination to explore them exhaustively, often making sequences of films in which each episode touches on a new facet of her theme. That her work remains almost unknown in the West probably says more about audience attitudes towards the documentary medium than anything else.

1957 Mura no fujin gakkyū / Women’s College in the Village

1958 Kodai no bi / Ancient Beauty

1967 Fūzokuga: Kinsei shoki / Genre Pictures in the Late 16th Century

1968 Monshirochō: Kōdō no jikkenteki kansatsu / Cabbage Butterflies (lit. Cabbage Butterflies: Experimental Observation of Their Activity)

1969 Kyōgen / Kyogen

1971 Hōryū-ji kennō hōmotsu / Treasures Donated to Horyu-ji

1972 Gendai rinshō igaku taikei / The System of Modern Clinical Medicine

1973 Fuyu ni saku hana wa dō naru ka / What Will Become of the Flowers That Blossom in Winter?

Ōta-ku ni tsutawaru mukei bunkazai / Intangible Cultural Assets of Ota-ku

1974 Ki to ie / Wood and Houses

1975 Bamboo

1976 Tenkoku: Kokuji / Writing Carved in Stone

1977 Usuzumi no sakura / The Cherry Tree with Gray Blossoms

1979 Karei: Hada no henka to sono shikumi / Ageing: The Change of the Skin and its Mechanics

1980 Uemachi : Ima mukashi / Uemachi: Now the Past

1981 Hayachine: Kagura no sato / Hayachine: Village of Kagura

1982 Hayachine no fu / Ode to Mount Hayachine

Kabuki no miryoku: Kanshōjō Kataoka Nizaemon / The Appeal of Kabuki: Nizaemon Kataoka as Sugawara no Michizane

1983 Tsukuba 1983

1985 Kabuki no miryoku: Ongaku: Osan Mohei daikeishi mukashi koyomi ni miru / The Appeal of Kabuki: Osan and Mohei the Great Fortune Tellers: Looking in an Old Almanac

Akiko: Aru dansā no shōzō / Akiko: Portrait of a Dancer

Chihōsei rōjin no sekai / How to Care for the Senile

1987 Kabuki no miryoku: Shin kabuki / The Appeal of Kabuki: New Kabuki

1990 Anshin shite oiru tameni / Getting Old with a Sense of Security

1992 Kabuki yakusha: Kataoka Nizaemon / Kabuki Actor: Nizaemon Kataoka

1994 Kabuki yakusha: Kataoka Nizaemon: Tōsen no maki / Kabuki Actor: Nizaemon Kataoka: Chapter of Tosen

1995 Kadoya Shichirōbei no monogatari: Betonamu no Nihonjin machi / Tale of Shichirobei Kadoya: A Japanese Town in Vietnam

1996 Onnatachi no shōgen: Rōdō undō no naka no senkuteki joseitachi / Women’s Testimony: Pioneering Women in the Labor Movement

1997 Jūmin ga sentaku shita machi no fukushi / Welfare as Chosen by Our Town’s Citizens

2000 Zoku jūmin ga sentaku shita machi no fukushi: Mondai wa kore kara desu / Welfare as Chosen by Our Town’s Citizens, Part 2: Questions Yet Remain

2002 Hiratsuka Raichō no shōgai: Genshi, josei wa taiyō de atta / Woman Was the Sun: The Life of Raicho Hiratsuka

2004 Yamanaka Tokiwa / Into the Picture Scroll: The Tale of Yamanaka Tokiwa

2006 Ano Takanosumachi no sono go / Takanosumachi Thereafter

Ano Takanosumachi no sono go: Zokuhen / Takanosumachi Thereafter: Sequel

2007 Owari yokereba subete yoshi / All’s Well That Ends Well

HANI Susumu

(b. October 10, 1928)

羽仁進

If Imamura was the anthropologist of the Japanese New Wave, then Hani was its sociologist. During the nineteen-sixties, his subtle, probing films explored many of the social issues confronting postwar Japan, including the gap between rich and poor, the role of women in society, the alienation of youth, and the country’s relations with the outside world. His early documentaries, made for Iwanami Productions, focused particularly on children and paved the way for his first feature, Bad Boys (Furyō shōnen, 1960), a low-key study of the lives of juvenile delinquents in a reformatory. With its use of amateur actors and location shooting in a real reformatory, it seemed as much neo-realist as New Wave. Its non-judgmental approach would prove typical of Hani, who was to return to the theme of life in a community of children in Children Hand in Hand (Te o tsunagu kora, 1964), an engaging remake of a 1948 Hiroshi Inagaki film which observed teaching methods and the relations between schoolfellows in a progressive school.

Meanwhile, in A Full Life (Mitasareta seikatsu, 1962) and She and He (Kanojo to kare, 1963), Hani crafted intricate miniatures of Japanese society, focused through the attempts of independent women to find meaning in life. The former linked its heroine’s struggle for personal emancipation with the political campaign against the U.S.-Japan security treaty. The latter examined the growing disparity between rich and poor through its portrait of the relationship between a middle-class woman, her husband, and a local ragpicker living in the slums adjacent to their modern apartment block. A detailed examination of the attitudes of the prosperous towards the poor and the gulf between bourgeois and working class morality, this was also a penetrating psychological study of the motivation behind one woman’s compulsive desire to do good. Hani’s most famous film abroad, the powerful Inferno of First Love (Hatsukoi: Jigoku hen, 1968), was more purely
psychological in its concerns, tracing the roots of an adolescent boy’s impotence to the trauma of childhood sexual abuse. Adolescent psychology was likewise the subject of Morning Schedule (Gozenchū no jikanwari, 1972), an incoherent experimental film whose failure marked the end of Hani’s regular feature film production.

Hani is a rare case of a Japanese director who has worked successfully abroad: Bride of the Andes (Andesu no hanayome, 1966) was shot in Peru, Mio (Yōsei no uta, 1971) in Sardinia, and The Song of Bwana Toshi (Buwana Toshi no uta, 1965) and Africa Story (Afurika monogatari, 1980) in Kenya. Of these, Bwana Toshi and Bride of the Andes were intriguing studies of culture clash: in the former, the Japanese hero, posted to Africa, learns gradually to cooperate with the locals in building a house, while the latter was about a mail-order bride who goes to marry an archaeologist stationed in a tribal village. Both films explored the way in which the experience of being an expatriate impels people to self-definition and also implicitly criticized Japan’s insular mentality.

Although Inferno of First Love expressed its hero’s psychological traumas through visual pyrotechnics typical of the New Wave, Hani’s style was generally more restrained than those of such contemporaries as Nagisa Ōshima, Shōhei Imamura, and Masahiro Shinoda. His gently probing, often handheld camera observed his characters with sympathetic detachment: Bad Boys neither condemned, nor approved of, the actions of its juvenile delinquents, while The Song of Bwana Toshi extended the same placid curiosity to the Japanese hero, his African colleagues, and the animals of the savannah. Often, Hani’s actors improvised scenes, a method taken to its extreme in Morning Schedule, where the actors themselves collaborated on shooting 8mm footage which was incorporated into the final film. With his semi-documentary approach, it was not surprising that Hani eventually came to specialize in wildlife documentaries for television. The curtailment of his career in feature filmmaking is to be regretted, for his sixties films rank among the most humanly engaging products of the Japanese New Wave.

1952 Seikatsu to mizu / Life and Water (short)

1953 Yuki matsuri / Snow Festival (short)

Machi to gesui / The Town and Its Drains (short)

1955 Kyōshitsu no kodomotachi / Children in Class (short)

1956 E o kaku kodomotachi / Children Who Draw (short)

Sōseiji gakkyū / Twin School (short)

1957 Dōbutsuen nikki / Zoo Diary (short)

1958 Umi wa ikiteiru / The Sea Is Alive (short)

Hōryū-ji / Horyu-ji (short)

1960 Furyō shōnen / Bad Boys

1962 Mitasareta seikatsu / A Full Life

1963 Kanojo to kare / She and He

1964 Te o tsunagu kora / Children Hand in Hand

1965 Bwana Toshi no uta / The Song of Bwana Toshi

1966 Andesu no hanayome / Bride of the Andes

1968 Hatsukoi: Jigoku hen / Inferno of First Love / Nanami: First Love

1969 Aido / Aido: Slave of Love

1970 Koi no daibōken / Love’s Great Adventure

1971 Yōsei no uta / Mio (lit. The Fairy’s Song)

1972 Gozenchū no jikanwari / Morning Schedule

1980 Afurika monogatari / Africa Story

1982 Yogen / Prophecy

1983 Rekishi = Kakukyōran no jidai / History: Age of Nuclear Madness

HARA Kazuo

(b. June 8, 1945)

原一男

Hara’s small body of work—six features in thirty-five years—has earned him a reputation as one of the most creative and challenging Japanese documentarists. From the beginning, he tackled controversial subject matter. His remarkable debut, Goodbye CP (Sayōnara CP, 1972), focused on sufferers of cerebral palsy at a time when people with disabilities were virtually ostracized from Japanese society. Moreover, Hara probed aspects of the lives of the disabled, such as their sexuality, which even today are not often publicly acknowledged. His credo, stated in interview, is that “a documentary should explore things that people don’t want explored, bring things out of the closet, to examine why people want to hide certain things [….] These personal taboos and limitations reflect societal taboos and limitations. I want to get at just the things they don’t want to talk about, their privacy.” His second film, Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 (Kyokushiteki Erosu: Renka 1974, 1974), was a frank examination of Hara’s own personal life: depicting his relationships with two women, it explored alternatives to traditional family structures and, obliquely, examined U.S.-Japan relations through its setting on Okinawa, the site of a considerable American military presence.

The goal of investigating taboos acquired more explicitly political dimensions in Hara’s most famous film, The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Yuki yukite shingun, 1987), an account of the one-man crusade by war veteran Kenzō Okuzaki to expose the responsibility of the Emperor and the Japanese people for wartime atrocities. Here, Hara probed a national taboo, and showed how history is shaped or concealed by personal testimony with personal motivations. A Dedicated Life (Zenshin shōsetsu­ka, 1994) combined a study of a man facing death with another investigation of the fallibility of individual testimony: its subject was the cancer-stricken writer Mitsuharu Inoue, who had not only created fictions, but also fictionalized his personal history.

Despite the individuality of Hara’s style, his approach is necessarily collaborative: he has consistently allowed his subjects considerable input into the content of his documentaries, and the power of his work depends on the responses of people to the act of being filmed. He has stated that “when one is in front of the camera, one cannot help being conscious of the camera”; indeed, the sophistication of his films lies in their awareness that a situation is changed by the act of recording it. Consequently, his work seems to call into question the morality of the documentary form: the viewer watches the birth of a child in Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974 wanting the filmmaker to assist, or an assault by Okuzaki on an elderly man unwilling to admit his guilt in The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On feeling that he should intervene.

Given Hara’s collaborative method, it was appropriate that he should make My Mishima (Watashi no Mishima, 1999), a study of the daily life and customs in a remote island off Western Japan, in cooperation with the members of Cinema Juku, a discussion group for young aspiring filmmakers. Hara’s most recent film, Days of Chika (Mata no hi no Chika, 2005), examined four stages in the life of a woman as seen through the eyes of four men. Though, as his first fiction feature, it marked a new departure in his work, it nevertheless sustained his abiding concern with the inescapable interrelation of the personal and the political.

1972 Sayōnara CP / Goodbye CP

1974 Kyokushiteki Erosu: Renka 1974 / Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974

1987 Yuki yukite shingun / The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On

1994 Zenshin shōsetsuka / A Dedicated Life

1999 Watashi no Mishima / My Mishima (co-director)

2005 Mata no hi no Chika / Days of Chika / The Many Faces of Chika

HARADA Masato

(b. July 3, 1949)

原田真人

If Ozu has sometimes been called “the most Japanese of Japanese directors,” then Harada, by common consent, is the most American. During the seventies, he reported from Hollywood for Japanese publications and while there met veteran director Howard Hawks, whose work significantly influenced his own. Harada has set several of his own films in America and elsewhere outside Japan; some have been co-productions, including the German-Japanese Windy (Uindī, 1984), about a racing driver. The U.S.-Japanese co-production Painted Desert (1993) was a curious story set in a Nevada cafe run by a Japanese-American woman, charting her relationship with a local mobster. Also set in America, though filmed in Canada, was Rowing Through (Eikō to kyōki, 1996), about a Harvard rower whose hopes of an Olympic medal are dashed when the U.S. boycotts the 1980 Moscow Games. More recently, Harada played the villainous Omura in Hollywood’s take on the end of the samurai era, The Last Samurai (2003, Ed Zwick).

Like another avowed Hawksian, John Carpenter, Harada appears to have been inspired more by his mentor’s able handling of genre than by his talent for exploring group dynamics. His debut, Goodbye Flickmania (Saraba eiga no tomoyo: Indian samā, 1979), recalled Hawks’ A Girl in Every Port (1928) and was intended as a homage. However, its theme of a film buff unable to tell celluloid from reality set the tone for much of Harada’s later career. The dystopian science fiction film Gunhed (Ganheddo, 1988) was not unlike Carpenter’s 1982 The Thing (itself a remake of a film Hawks produced) in stressing set design, action, and noise at the expense of nuanced characterization and emotional reality. Harada achieved a rare balance of tension and characterization in Kami­kaze Taxi (1994), a moving, well-acted account of the relationship between a small-time hood, on the run after robbing his colleagues, and his Peruvian-Japanese taxi driver. Filmed with intelligent restraint, it tackled the prejudices faced by foreigners even of Japanese extraction and the racist and belligerent attitudes of many mainstream Japanese politicians; it also caught a genuinely Hawksian mood of stoicism in the face of death.

Subsequently, however, Harada has tended to take on controversial themes in safe ways. Bounce KoGals (Baunsu koGALS, 1997), about the phenomenon of enjo kōsai (“compensation dating,” or less euphemistically, teenage prostitution) made its heroines so charming as to come close to endorsing their behavior. Certainly, its hyperactive camerawork lacked the discipline needed to comment constructively on their actions. Spellbound (Kin’yū fushoku rettō: Jubaku, 1999) was an entertaining but meretricious account of a bank scandal, with Kōji Yakusho’s air of irreproachable honesty used to imply that a mere change of personnel will suffice to root out institutional corruption. Inugami (2001), a fantasy about a family in remote Shikoku possessed by malevolent spirits, addressed incestuous themes and was apparently intended by Harada as a metaphor for the origins of the Imperial Family; however, these implications were obscured by the general tone of hysteria. The Choice of Hercules (Totsunyūseyo! Asama Sansō jiken, 2002) was criticized for avoiding political engagement by telling the story of the 1972 Asama Sansō Red Army hostage incident entirely from the point of view of the police.

The limitations of these films were those of Harada’s approach, which echoes the shallow facility of modern Hollywood: frenetic cutting is preferred to expressive composition, gloss supplants style. Nevertheless, with Bluestockings (Jiyū ren’ai, 2005), Harada won praise for combining intelligent dramaturgy with a trenchant account of the difficulties facing independent women during the Taisho period, an era torn between tradition and modernity. It is unfortunate that, Kamikaze Taxi aside, he has rarely integrated personal and political themes so successfully with generic material. Indeed with his recent horror films, The Suicide Song (Densen uta, 2007) and The Box of Evil Spirits (Mōryō no hako, 2007), Harada would appear to have made some of his most conventional work to date.

1979 Saraba eiga no tomoyo: Indian samā / Goodbye Flickmania

1984 Uindī / Windy / Races

1985 Tōsha: 250-ppun no 1-byō / Indecent Exposure / Out of Focus

1986 Paris-Dakar 15000: Eikō e no chōsen / Paris-Dakar 15000: Challenge for Glory

Onyanko za mūbī: Kiki ippatsu / Onyanko the Movie

1987 Saraba itoshiki hito yo / The Heartbreak Yakuza

1988 Ganheddo / Gunhed

1993 Painted Desert

1994 Kamikaze Taxi (2-part TV version released as “Fukushū no tenshi,” lit. “Angel of Revenge”)

1995 Toraburushūtā / Troubleshooters / Trouble With Nango

1996 Eikō to kyōki / Rowing Through (lit. Glory and Madness)

1997 Baunsu koGALS / Bounce KoGals / Bounce / Leaving

1999 Kin’yū fushoku rettō: Jubaku / Spellbound / Jubaku

2001 Inugami

2002 Totsunyūseyo! Asama Sansō jiken / The Choice of Hercules (lit. Break in! Asama Sanso Incident)

2005 Jiyū ren’ai / Bluestockings (lit. Free Love)

2007 Densen uta / The Suicide Song / Gloomy Sunday

Mōryō no hako / The Box of Evil Spirits / Kyogokudo 2

HASEBE Yasuharu

(b. April 4, 1932)

長谷部安春

Hasebe’s films are high on camp and low in intelligence, a combination that has earned him a cult reputation in some quarters. Having trained at Nikkatsu with Seijun Suzuki, he took the elder director’s fondness for absurd plots and stylized visuals to a disreputable extreme in films such as his debut, Black Tight Killers (Ore ni sawaru to abunai ze, 1966). This crazy pastiche of action movie conventions was admirable mainly for Akiyoshi Satani’s inventive art direction, but it established the director’s working relationship with tough/tender leading man Akira Kobayashi, who also starred in such serious yakuza films as Turf War (Shima wa moratta, 1968), Roughneck (Arakure, 1969) and Bloody Territories (Kōiki bōryoku: Ryūketsu no shima, 1969). The last of these, about a classically honorable yakuza clan being edged out by unscrupulous successors, achieved moments of elegiac power among its scenes of nihilistic violence. Hasebe also worked with a more macho action star, Jō Shishido, on Massacre Gun (Minagoroshi no kenjū, 1967), filmed in black and white and considered a companion piece to Seijun Suzuki’s contemporary Branded to Kill (Koroshi no rakuin, 1967).

In the early seventies, Hasebe realized three out of five entries in the Nikkatsu Stray Cat Rock (Nora neko rokku) series, starring Meiko Kaji as a gang girl; fans generally consider Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter (Nora neko rokku: Sekkusu hantā, 1970) to be the best. With its day-glo colors and stylized sets it was certainly visually striking, and its focus on Japanese concerns with racial purity—a gang leader sets out to clear a town of its mixed-race inhabitants—was intriguing. However, these virtues were overwhelmed by sadism, incoherence, and the limitations of the exploitation format. Hasebe was one of the few established Nikkatsu directors to remain at the studio after it switched to producing Roman Porno in the early seventies, apparently making some of the nastiest of this subgenre. Among these was Assault: Jack the Ripper (Bōkō: Kirisaki Jakku, 1976), a notorious film about a couple who become serial killers after being sexually aroused when they accidentally kill a hitchhiker.

In later years, Hasebe returned to mainstream production. Fossil Plain (Kaseki no kōya, 1982) was a big-budget action film; Dangerous Detectives (Abunai deka, 1987) was a slick but silly thriller about two cops with unorthodox methods; and Lesson (Ressun, 1994) was an uncharacteristically romantic story about a journalist who falls for an older widow. Alongside these occasional cinema features, Hasebe worked prolifically in television and on films made for straight-to-video release. Overall, the impressive style of his films has never sufficiently compensated for the shallowness and cruelty of their content.

1966 Ore ni sawaru to abunai ze / Black Tight Killers (lit. It’s Dangerous to Touch Me)

1967 Bakudan otoko to iwareru aitsu / The Singing Gunman (lit. The Guy Called the Bomb Man)

Minagoroshi no kenjū / Massacre Gun

1968 Shima wa moratta / Turf War / Territorial Dispute / Retaliation

1969 Yajū o kese / Savage Wolf Pack / Exterminate the Wild Beasts (lit.)

Arakure / Roughneck / Coarse Violence

Kōiki bōryoku: Ryūketsu no shima / Bloody Territories / District of Violence

1970 Sakariba jingi / Pleasure Resort Gambling Code / A Gangster’s Morals

Onna banchō: Nora neko rokku / Girl Boss: Stray Cat Rock

Ashita no Jō / Tomorrow’s Joe

Nora neko rokku: Sekkusu hantā / Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter

Nora neko rokku: Mashin animaru / Stray Cat Rock: Machine Animal

1971 Otoko no sekai / A Man’s World

Soshiki bōryoku: Ryūketsu no kōsō / Bloody Feud

1972 Sengoku rokku: Hayate no onnatachi / Sengoku Rock: Female Warriors / The Naked Seven

1973 Joshū sasori: 701-gō uramibushi / Female Convict Scorpion: Number 701’s Song of Hate

1974 Sukeban Deka: Dāti Marī / Girl Boss Detective: Dirty Mary

1976 Okasu! / Rape!

Bōkō: Kirisaki Jakku / Assault! Jack the Ripper

1977 Reipu 25-ji: Bōkan / Rape: 25 Hours of Sexual Assault

Maruhi hanemūn: Bōkō ressha / Secret Honeymoon: Assault Train

1978 Osou!! / Attack!!

Erochikkuna kankei / Erotic Liaisons

Yaru! / Rampage! / Outrage! /
Do It!

Kawajan hankōzoku / Leather Jacket Rebellious Tribe

1982 Kaseki no kōya / Fossil Plain / Petrified Wilderness

1987 Abunai deka / Dangerous Detectives

1994 Ressun / Lesson

HASEGAWA Kazuhiko

(b. January 5, 1946)

長谷川和彦

Hasegawa’s two features rank among the most provocative Japanese films to have emerged during the seventies. After some years spent at Nikkatsu as an assistant director and scriptwriter to Roman Porno directors such as Tatsumi Kumashiro, he made his debut, the ATG-produced Youth to Kill (Seishun no satsujinsha, 1976), an explosive account of a young man who murders his parents. Filming in a mixture of icy long takes and edgy montage, eliciting performances of devastating intensity from his actors, Hasegawa crafted a piercing study of alienation, fixed in the context of the disintegration of traditional Japanese family structures as the country modernized.

Three years later, at Toho, Hasegawa directed The Man Who Stole the Sun (Taiyō o nusunda otoko, 1979), about an eccentric science teacher who holds Tokyo to ransom with a nuclear bomb constructed in his flat. Although in its later scenes the film became a relatively conventional action movie, with car chases and implausible climactic twists, the early sequences, with their skillful balance of suspense and black comedy, were remarkable. Moreover, though some of the more gimmicky aspects of Hasegawa’s style now feel very much of their particular time, the theme of a lone individual armed with weapons of mass destruction seems unnervingly contemporary.

Hasegawa’s vision was extremely dark: his work focused on characters totally alienated from society. At the end of both his films, his anti-heroes have cheated death and eluded justice, but have no plausible future. Hasegawa hoped to continue his examination of people rebelling violently against conventional society with a project about the 1972 Asama Sansō Red Army hostage crisis; regrettably, this was never realized. Since the seventies, Hasegawa has devoted himself mainly to encouraging younger directors through his foundation of the Directors’ Company, though he also acted for Seijun Suzuki in Yumeji (1991). The power of his work, coupled with his subsequent unexpected retirement from cinema, has earned Hasegawa something of the cult status enjoyed in America by Terrence Malick, also the maker of two distinctive films during the seventies. Indeed, Youth to Kill had certain similarities in plot to Malick’s own debut, Badlands (1973). Sadly, Hasegawa, unlike Malick, has never subsequently returned to direction.

1976 Seishun no satsujinsha / Youth to Kill / Young Murderer

1979 Taiyō o nusunda otoko / The Man Who Stole the Sun

HASHIGUCHI Ryōsuke

(b. July 13, 1962)

橋口亮輔

A subtle dramatist and chronicler of gay subculture in Japan, Hashiguchi won the PIA Film Festival scholarship for his short film, A Secret Evening (Yūbe no himitsu, 1989), and thus was able to fund his first low-budget feature, A Touch of Fever (Hatachi no binetsu, 1993). This bleak yet compassionate story of the lives of teenage hustlers in Tokyo was followed by Like Grains of Sand (Nagisa no Shindobaddo, 1995), an appealingly quirky rites-of-passage movie about a high school boy’s crush on his best friend. Both films were intelligent examinations of the fluidity of youthful sexual identity. Hashiguchi’s next work was Hush (Hasshu, 2001), a melancholy comedy about the triangular relationship between a closeted, thirty-something gay man, his partner, and the unhappy woman who wants him to father her child. Looser and freer in style than his earlier films, it hinted that homosexuality might be liberating in the context of Japan’s restrictive family structures.

Hashiguchi’s work has proved admirable for its depth of characterization and delicacy of approach. He elicits subtle performances from his actors, using an austere technique which employs long takes, often without camera movement, to record details of gesture, posture, and intonation, thereby suggesting depths of feeling and motivation which are not verbally expressed. In consequence, his films paradoxically seem both dispassionate and intimate. His impartial, observant method respects the ambiguities of human behavior, acknowledging the gulfs between people and the impossibility of complete understanding. The viewer’s first impressions of his characters are often misleading: thus, in A Touch of Fever and Like Grains of Sand, the people who initially seem the most assured turn out ultimately to be the most insecure, while Hush deftly charted the shifting balance of power between lovers, friends, and family members.

Hashiguchi’s stories have striven to avoid pat dramatic effects, preferring to mirror the untidiness of real life. The endings of his first two features were remarkably inconclusive, and much of the power of Hush lay in its unpredictable switches between humor and tragedy (as in the sudden death of the protagonist’s brother). Hashiguchi’s non-judgmental sympathy for flawed individuals has made him one of the most engaging Japanese directors of recent years. It is a matter of regret that he has not been more prolific, especially as he seems intent on exploring new territory: at the time of writing, he had just completed his fourth feature, the first to focus primarily on heterosexual characters.

1982 Reberu 7 + α/ Level Seven + Alpha (8mm short)

Sansetto / Sunset (8mm short)

1983 Rara . . . 1981–1983 (8mm shorts)

Fa (8mm short)

1984 Shōnen no kuchibue / A Boy’s Whistle (8mm short)

1985 Hyururu (8mm)

1986 Mirāman hakusho 1986 / Mirrorman’s White Paper 1986 (8mm short)

1989 Yūbe no himitsu / A Secret Evening / The Secret of Last Night (8mm short)

1993 Hatachi no binetsu / A Touch of Fever / Slight Fever of a 19-Year-Old (16mm)

1995 Nagisa no Shindobaddo / Like Grains of Sand

2001 Hasshu! / Hush!

HATANAKA Ryōha

(b. May 21, 1877; d. 1963, precise date unknown)

畑中蓼坡

Primarily associated with the stage, Hatanaka trained as an actor in New York before returning to Japan in 1918, where he joined the theatrical company of actress Sumako Matsui, a pioneer of Western-style shingeki theater in Japan. After her suicide, he continued to work in shingeki, appearing in such plays as Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. His output as a filmmaker was limited, comprising only four films. Of these the most famous today is Winter Camellias (Kantsubaki, 1921), a melodrama, extremely well-acted by Masao Inoue and Yaeko Mizutani, about an elderly miller who kills his daughter’s disreputable suitor when he plans to rob her employers. In this film, Hatanaka combined Western and Japanese elements: the lyrical landscape shots were indebted to the American cinema of the teens, but the plot was rooted in the native traditions of shinpa, while long, static dialogue scenes were clearly conceived for the benshi to explain.

Hatanaka’s next film as director, Children of the Street (Chimata no ko, 1924), was a socially conscious account of urban child poverty; though also extant, it lacks the fame of its predecessor. After co-directing Easygoing Dad (Nonkina tōsan, 1925) with Tokuji Ozawa, Hatanaka returned to the theater. His postwar career included acting roles in some noteworthy Nikkatsu films, such as Tomotaka Tasaka’s The Pram (Ubaguruma, 1955) and Tadashi Imai’s Darkness at Noon (Mahiru no ankoku, 1956).

1921 Kantsubaki / Winter Camellias

1924 Chimata no ko / Children of the Street

1925 Nakayama Yasubei / Yasubei Nakayama

Nonkina tōsan / Easygoing Dad (co-director)

HAYASHI Kaizō

(b. July 15, 1957)

林海象

Hayashi is the movie brat of modern Japanese directors: his films, often shot nostalgically in black and white, have essayed postmodern reworkings of classical genres. Before directing, he worked with Shūji Terayama’s Tenjōsajiki theatrical troupe, a background faintly visible in the carnivalesque elements and surreal touches of To Sleep So as to Dream (Yume miru yōni nemuritai, 1986) and Circus Boys (Nijūseiki shōnen dokuhon, 1989). Both these early films showed definite promise. The former was a film buff’s joke: a silent film, shot in lustrous monochrome, in which two private detectives discover a kidnapping victim trapped in a fragment of an old chanbara. Though something of an exercise, the film played wittily with the way in which a star’s filmed image ultimately supplants the real, mortal self. More emotionally affecting was Circus Boys, a bittersweet account of the different paths taken in life by two brothers brought up in a traveling circus. Here the black and white visual poetry spoke for a human rather than an aesthetic nostalgia, creating a low-key poignancy in its sense of the difficulties and disappointments of adult life compared to the simplicity of childhood dreams.

In The Most Terrible Time in My Life (Waga jinsei saiaku no toki, 1994), Hayashi again opted for black and white, turning modern Yokohama into a moody backdrop to a marvelously well-judged pastiche of film noir. Though admittedly a little too reminiscent of a minor Truffaut twenty-five years too late, it was given human depth by Masatoshi Nagase’s superb performance as inept private eye Maiku Hama, and the ending was genuinely cathartic. Hayashi made two more films featuring the same character, but these, relatively blandly shot in color, suffered from the diminishing returns characteristic of most sequels. Nevertheless, Hayashi later revived the character for a television series in which each episode was directed by a filmmaker of note; Shinji Aoyama’s contribution, The Forest with No Name (Shiritsu tantei Hama Maiku: Namae no nai mori, 2002), later received a cinema release in its own right.

Hayashi’s attempts to parody other genres have proved less successful. Zipang (1990), was a wild jidai-geki set in a stylized medieval Japan vaguely inspired by Marco Polo’s misapprehensions; spectacular art direction did not compensate for its overall vacuity. Even sillier was Cat’s Eye (1997), a paper-thin, crudely characterized and clumsily plotted adaptation of a manga about a trio of female cat burglars. Nevertheless, Hayashi has remained willing to experiment with new approaches, even attempting a hyperrealist style in The Breath (Umihōzuki, 1996), which used only ambient light to film a story about a washed-up detective investigating a disappearance in Taiwan. With his first American film Lost Angeles (2000), Hayashi brought his penchant for pastiche to a realist genre, producing a spoof documentary about the experiences of a Japanese rock band in the United States. However, this was rather poorly received, and Hayashi has not since realized a theatrical feature. Even his best films clearly owed much to his collaborators, particularly art director Takeo Kimura and cinematographer Yūichi Nagata (significantly, his monochrome films have proved much better than his color ones). But the directorial flair and wit of Circus Boys and The Most Terrible Time in My Life should not be discounted.

1986 Yume miru yōni nemuritai / To Sleep So as to Dream

1988 Idea (short)

1989 Nijūseiki shōnen dokuhon / Circus Boys / The Boy’s Own Book of the 20th Century (lit.)

1990 Zipang / Zipang / The Legend of Zipang

1991 Figaro Stories (co-director)

1994 Waga jinsei saiaku no toki / The Most Terrible Time in My Life

1995 Harukana jidai no kaidan o / Stairway to the Distant Past

1996 Wana / The Trap

Umihōzuki / The Breath

1997 Romance (short)

Cat’s Eye

Chinnanē / Born to be Baby (short)

1998 Otome no inori / A Maiden’s Prayer (short; unreleased)

2000 Lost Angeles

HIGASHI Yōichi

(b. November 14, 1934)

東陽一

Known in the West mainly for one film, Village of Dreams (E no naka no boku no mura, 1996), Higashi has in fact produced an oeuvre of consistent intelligence and unobtrusive political commitment along liberal and progressive lines. His feature debut, People of the Okinawa Islands (Okinawa rettō, 1969), was hailed by Joan Mellen as “aesthetically the single finest example of the new documentary [then] emerging in Japan.” Using a hidden camera to record forbidden footage of American installations, Higashi produced a critical examination of the continuing U.S. military presence on Okinawa at the time of its reversion to Japanese rule. His next film and first fiction feature, Gentle Japanese (Yasashii Nipponjin, 1971), also dealt with the legacy of the Okinawan experience in World War II; it recounted the political awakening of a young man who, as a baby at the time of the defeat, had survived a mass suicide on the island. In Satori (Nihon yōkaiden: Satori, 1973), Higashi used a supernatural story to examine the anxieties of modern Japanese.

Higashi’s most critically acclaimed film in Japan was Third (Sādo, 1978), a powerful semi-documentary study of the life of a juvenile murderer in a reformatory, scripted by Shūji Terayama. The extreme understatement of Toshiyuki Nagashima’s lead performance, and the precision with which the camera picked out details in the bare prison environment, gave some scenes a near-Bressonian austerity. After this, Higashi switched his focus to women protagonists in a sequence of subtly feminist films. No More Easy Going (Mō hōzue wa tsukanai, 1979) was a melodrama about a college student who, torn between two unsatisfactory lovers, finally learns that she must live without them both. Natsuko (Shiki: Natsuko, 1980) subtly chronicled a 20-year-old woman’s quest for personal and professional fulfilment, while Manon (1981), vaguely inspired by the Abbé Prévost’s novel, followed the protagonist’s relationships with numerous men. Second Love (Sekando rabu, 1983) was about a woman trying to deal with the unmotivated jealousy of her insecure, younger second husband. These films were noted for their unusually strong heroines. In contrast, The Rape (Za reipu, 1982) and Metamorphosis (Keshin, 1986) dealt with the oppression of women in a patriarchal society.

During the nineties, Higashi adapted Sue Sumii’s epic novel, The River without a Bridge (Hashi no nai kawa, 1992), set in the Meiji and Taisho periods, about discrimination against the burakumin underclass. The same theme was touched on obliquely in Village of Dreams, a delicate account of the childhood of twin brothers in rural Shikoku during the late forties. Despite its hints of social criticism, the ultra-picturesque settings and elements of magic realism (the group of witches perching in the trees to comment on events) slightly over-sweetened the tone, but the film was atmospheric and affecting. In The Crying Wind (Fūon, 2004), Higashi used the same magical realist approach in a return to the Okinawa setting of his earliest features. The adult stories, in which now elderly protagonists come to terms with their memories of wartime traumas, were somewhat glib, but Higashi again showed his skill at dramatizing the intense emotional lives of children. My Grandpa (Watashi no guranpa, 2003) focused on a slightly older child, tracing the experiences of a 14-year-old girl ostracized at school after the discovery that her grandfather is a murderer. Again, this film revealed Higashi’s consistent sympathy for the outsider. Although his work is arguably more interesting in subject matter than in style, he commands respect for his intelligence and integrity.

1963 A Face (short)

1964 Higashi-Murayama-shi / Higashi-Murayama City (short)

1967 Jōdō / Motion-Emotion (short)

1969 Okinawa rettō / People of the Okinawa Islands (lit. Okinawa Archipelago)

1971 Yasashii Nipponjin / Gentle Japanese

1973 Nippon yōkaiden: Satori / Satori / A Japanese Demon / Spiritual Awakening

1978 Sādo / Third / Third Base / A Boy Called Third Base

1979 Mō hōzue wa tsukanai / No More Easy Going

1980 Shiki: Natsuko / Natsuko / The Four Seasons of Natsuko (lit.)

Rabu retā / Love Letter

1981 Manon

1982 Za reipu / The Rape

Jerashī gēmu / Jealousy Game

1983 Sekando rabu / Second Love

1984 Wangan dōro / Coastal Road

1986 Keshin / Metamorphosis

1988 Ureshi hazukashi monogatari / A Tale of Happiness and Shame

1992 Hashi no nai kawa / The River without a Bridge

1996 E no naka no boku no mura / Village of Dreams (lit. My Village in the Picture)

2000 Boku no ojisan / The Crossing (lit. My Uncle)

2003 Watashi no guranpa / My Grandpa

2004 Fūon / The Crying Wind

HIRAYAMA Hideyuki

(b. September 18, 1950)

平山秀幸

Hirayama has sustained parallel careers as a proficient craftsman of big-budget commercial entertainments and as an artist realizing small-scale, offbeat, and imaginative projects. After a long freelance apprenticeship to such directors as Jūzō Itami and Kichitarō Negishi, he made his debut, a comic horror film, for the Directors’ Company. Lighthearted horror continued to occupy him through much of the nineties, as he directed three installments of the popular Haunted School (Gakkō no kaidan) series, a sub-Spielberg exercise in thrills and spills for kids, with endearingly inept special effects. By this time, however, he had achieved critical notice with The Games Teachers Play (Za chūgakkō kyōshi, 1992), about a junior high school teacher trying to deal with delinquency by encouraging his charges to dispense their own justice. Mark Schilling praised the film’s “clear-eyed view of [the] teenage world, minus adult romanticizing, caricaturing, and demonizing.” Also well-received during the nineties was Begging for Love (Ai o kou hito, 1998), an account of a girl suffering abuse at the hands of her mother, which fixed its story in the context of the social instability of Japan after World War II.

Since the millennium, Hirayama has won further acclaim for two remarkable black comedies. The Laughing Frog (Warau kaeru, 2002) was a droll, dry satire with a faintly Bunuelian touch to its cynical portrait of bourgeois life, the black sheep husband ultimately proving the most sympathetic figure among the venal and selfish, if respectable, characters who surround him. Hirayama’s precise framing, using a mainly static camera, observed the unfolding comedy with neither indulgence nor contempt, and the performances were superb. Out (2002) focused on a middle-aged woman who murders her husband and conspires with her colleagues at a boxed lunch factory to dispose of the body. Despite the melodramatic premise, its theme was the ordinary frustrations of female experience in a patriarchal society.

Hirayama has continued to work in a variety of genres. Turn (Tān, 2001) was an engaging fantasy in which a woman finds herself doomed, after a car crash, to relive endlessly the same 24 hours in a parallel universe of which she appears to be the only inhabitant. Especially in the early stages, Hirayama intelligently dramatized the reactions of his heroine to her isolation, and the film was rather touching. Lady Joker (Redī Jōkā, 2004) used a thriller plot about a plan to kidnap a company president to launch an investigation into corruption in Japanese society. Samurai Resurrection (Makai tenshō, 2003), however, was a more purely commercial work: a large, dumb action movie which submerged story and characterization under a barrage of special effects. Still, while Hirayama remains an uneven director, he has been responsible for some of the more original and diverting Japanese films of recent years. In 2007, two films inspired by the style and tradition of rakugo comic storytelling confirmed his versatility: Talk, Talk, Talk (Shaberedomo shaberedomo) was a story about a modern practitioner of this old-fashioned art form training three reluctant recruits for a performance, while Three for the Road (Yajikita dōchū: Teresuko) was a lighthearted road movie reworking the oft-filmed eighteenth-century novel Shank’s Mare (Hizakurige).

1990 Maria no ibukuro / Maria’s Stomach

1992 Za chūgaku kyōshi / The Games Teachers Play (lit. The Junior High School Teacher)

1993 Ningen kōsaten: Ame / Human Crossroads: Rain

1994 Yoi ko to asobō / Let’s Play with the Good Children

1995 Gakkō no kaidan / Haunted School

1996 Gakkō no kaidan 2 / Haunted School 2

1998 Ai o kou hito / Begging for Love

1999 Gakkō no kaidan 4 / Haunted School 4

2001 Tān / Turn

2002 Warau kaeru / The Laughing Frog

Out

2003 Makai tenshō / Samurai Resurrection

2004 Redī Jōkā / Lady Joker

2007 Shaberedomo shaberedomo / Talk, Talk, Talk

Yajikita dōchū: Teresuko / Three for the Road

HIROKI Ryūichi

(b. January 1, 1954)

廣木隆一

Of the directors who have graduated from “pink film” to the mainstream, Hiroki has remained perhaps the most faithful to his origins: he continues to make films on sexual themes, though titillation has given was to analysis. In the eighties, after serving as assistant to prolific “pink” director Genji Nakamura, he made pornographic films for both straight and gay audiences; likewise, his first mainstream feature, 800 Two Lap Runners (1994), explored both hetero- and homosexual feeling in its account of the awkward relationship between a teenage runner and the former girlfriend of the dead trackmate with whom he once had a sexual experience.

Hiroki’s next film, Midori (Monogatari kara ashibyōshi yori: Midori, 1996), was another drama about adolescent emotions, focusing on a disaffected high school girl who feigns illness to spend time with her boyfriend. Female protagonists continued to be central to Hiroki’s most interesting work, which dealt with young adults and with their sexual conduct in the fragmented society of modern urban Japan. Tokyo Trash Baby (Tōkyō gomi onna, 2000), Vibrator (Vaiburēta, 2003), and Girlfriend: Someone Please Stop the World (Gārufurendo, 2004) were all moving, understated films about lonely, alienated women seeking solace in romantic fantasy and transient attachments. The heroine of Tokyo Trash Baby, obsessed with her neighbor, rifles through his garbage for mementos of his life; this rubbish, and the well-stocked but soulless convenience store where Vibrator begins, seemed metaphors for today’s prosperous yet rootless society, in which consumer goods fail to satisfy emotional needs. Hiroki shot these films on digital video, and his informal style, with its loose compositions and low-key performances, effectively dramatized the haphazard lives of his protagonists, insecure both in work and relationships. Darker and more melodramatic in plot was L’Amant (2004), a coolly observed account of a teenage schoolgirl who sells herself for a year as a sex slave to three brothers. By refusing to pass judgment on the perverse actions it depicted, Hiroki’s detached style forced the viewer to confront his own taboos. The director again explored the extremes of sexual behavior in M (2006); described by Jasper Sharp as “a Belle de Jour for the internet age,” it charted the experiences of a housewife who begins to work as a prostitute after receiving an email from a dating website.

Beside these troubling and emotionally complex films, The Silent Big Man (Kikansha-sensei, 2004) was an unexpectedly chaste, academic work, set safely in the past, and prettily photographed against the scenic backdrops of the Inland Sea. Recalling Keisuke Kinoshita in its story of a mute teacher assigned to an island school, it lacked Kinoshita’s skill for melodrama, and though Hiroki’s dry style restrained its sentimentality somewhat, he seemed ill suited to the material. Happily, with It’s Only Talk (Yawarakai seikatsu, 2005), a subtly compelling chronicle of the life of an unemployed thirty-something woman suffering from manic depression, Hiroki returned to his more fruitful preoccupation with the problems of contemporary urban life. Here his use of locations in Tokyo’s down-at-heel Kamata district was especially well judged, anchoring the drama in a near-documentary record of a specific place. Love on Sunday (Koi suru nichiyōbi, 2006), meanwhile, revisited the territory of the director’s earliest mainstream features, exploring adolescent emotions as it charted a teenage girl’s last 24 hours in her country home. In his recent work, Hiroki has proved himself one of the modern Japanese cinema’s most intelligent students of character, as well as one of the most precise analysts of Tokyo’s twenty-first-century zeitgeist and Japan’s twenty-first-century malaise.

1982 Seigyaku! Onna o abaku / Sexual Abuse! Exposed Woman / Urban Style

1983 Kimata Saburō-kun no koto: Bokura no jidai / Our Generation

Bokura no kisetsu / Our Season

1984 Nishikawa Serina: Nozokibeya no onna / Serina Nishikawa: A Woman Peeps into the Room

Hakuchū joshi kōsei o okasu / Raping a High School Girl in Broad Daylight

Chikan to sukāto / Pervert and Skirt

Sensei, watashi no karada ni hi o tsukenaide / Teacher, Don’t Turn Me On

Mitsu ni nureru onna / Woman with Wet Juice

1985 Yarinko Chie: Ichijiku shinsatsudai / Chie the Tart: Couch of Figs

Bokura no shunkan / Our Moment

1986 Hakui chōkyō / Training in a White Coat

Kindan: Ikenie no onna / Forbidden: Sacrificed Woman

SM kyōshitsu: Shikkin / SM Classroom: Toilet in the Wrong Place

Tōsatsu mania: Furaidē no onna / Secret Filming Mania: Friday’s Woman

Hatsujō musume: Guriguri asobi / Girl in Heat: Rubbing Play

Romanko kurabu: Ecchi ga ippai / Club Romanko: Highly Sexed

1987 Kobayashi Hitomi no honshō / The True Self of Hitomi Kobayashi

1988 Kikuchi Eri: Kyonyūzeme / Eri Kikuchi: Huge Breasts

Seijuku onna / Holy Mature Woman

1989 Dōtei monogatari 4: Boku mo sukī ni tsuretette / Story of a Male Virgin: Take Me Skiing Too

1990 Sawako no koi: Jōzuna uso no ren’ai kōza / A Love Affair with Sawako (lit. Sawako’s Love: Lecture on Convincing Lies in Love)

1991 Ji go ro: Āban naito sutōrī / Gigolo: Urban Night Story

1993 Maōgai: Sadisuchikku shitī / Sadistic City (video)

1994 Muma / Evil Dream

800 Two Lap Runners

1995 Kimi to itsu made mo / Forever with You

Gerende ga tokeru hodo koi shitai / I Want to Make Love Until the Ski Slopes Melt

1996 “Monogatari kara ashibyōshi” yori: Midori / Midori

1999 Tenshi no misuterareta yoru / The Night the Angel Turned Away

2000 Futei no kisetsu / I Am an S and M Writer (lit. Season of Adultery)

Tōkyō gomi onna / Tokyo Trash Baby

2001 Bikyaku meiro / Labyrinth of Leg Fetishism

2002 Rihatsu tenshu no kanashimi / The Barber’s Sadness

2003 Deka matsuri / Cop Festival (co-director)

Vaiburēta / Vibrator

2004 Kikansha-sensei / The Silent Big Man (lit. Mr. Locomotive)

Gārufurendo / Girlfriend: Someone Please Stop the World

L’Amant

2005 Female (co-director)

Yawarakai seikatsu / It’s Only Talk

2006 Koi suru nichiyōbi / Love on Sunday

Yokan / Premonition (short)

M

2007 Koi suru nichiyōbi: Watashi: Koi shita / Love on Sunday: I Did Love

HONDA Ishirō

(May 7, 1911–February 28, 1993)

本多猪四郎

The most famous director of Japanese monster movies or kaijū-eiga, Honda served as assistant at Toho to several directors, most notably Kajirō Yamamoto on Horse (Uma, 1941), Kato’s Falcon Fighters (Katō hayabusa sentōtai, 1944), and numerous comedies starring the clown Enoken (Ken’ichi Enomoto). After war service, he assisted Akira Kurosawa on Stray Dog (1949) before returning to Toho to become a director in his own right, working at first on documentaries. His fiction debut, The Blue Pearl (Aoi shinju, 1951), already revealed an interest in special effects as Honda used an underwater camera to record scenes of women diving for pearls. Eagle of the Pacific (Taiheiyō no washi, 1953) was a spectacular war film, but the course of Honda’s career was fixed by Godzilla (Gojira, 1954), a famous science fiction movie about an attack on Tokyo by a giant lizard, which achieved international distribution in a cut, dubbed version incorporating new footage starring Raymond Burr.

Honda continued to specialize in science fiction for the rest of his career, realizing numerous sequels to Godzilla, including some in which the monster encountered such figures from Western fantasy as Frankenstein and King Kong. Among his other notable monsters was the eponymous giant moth of Mothra (Mosura, 1961). These films retain a considerable sociological fascination: Godzilla’s rampages expressed Japanese anxieties about natural disasters and recalled the wartime devastation of the nation’s cities. Radiation was also a preoccupation: Godzilla was originally woken by nuclear tests, while, in The Mysterians (Chikyū bōeigun, 1957) about an invasion from space, the aliens have suffered genetic damage through nuclear war. Admittedly, these concerns were expressed in the scripts rather than through any directorial subtleties: Honda’s style was generally anonymous and pedestrian. His audiences were doubtless more interested in spectacle than in mise-en-scène, and his technique was likely restricted by the need to showcase Eiji Tsuburaya’s special effects. As evidence, one may note that Matango (1963), which used effects sparingly and was mainly a claustrophobic study of tensions among the marooned survivors of a shipwreck, was rather efficiently directed. Even so, Honda is remembered more because his name happens to be attached to some famous titles than because of any personal distinction. After retiring from direction, he collaborated again with his old friend and colleague Akira Kurosawa, working as an assistant and second-unit director on Kagemusha (1980), Ran (1985), Dreams (Yume, 1990), and Madadayo (Mādadayo, 1993).

1949 Kyōdō kumiai no hanashi / A Story of a Co-Op

1950 Iseshima / Ise Island

1951 Aoi shinju / The Blue Pearl

1952 Nangoku no hada / Skin of the South

Minato e kita otoko / The Man Who Came to Port

1953 Zoku shishunki / Adolescence 2

Taiheiyō no washi / Eagle of the Pacific

1954 Saraba Rabauru / Farewell Rabaul

Gojira / Godzilla

1955 Koi geshō / Love Makeup

Oen-san / Oen-san / Cry Baby

Jūjin yukiotoko / Beast Man, Snow Man / Half Human: The Story of the Abominable Snowman

1956 Wakai ki / Young Tree

Yakan chūgaku / Night School

Tōkyō no hito sayōnara / People of Tokyo, Goodbye

Sora no daikaijū: Radon / Radon, Monster from the Sky / Radon / Rodan

1957 Kono futari ni sachi are / Good Luck to These Two

Wakare no chatsumiuta / A Teapicker’s Song of Goodbye

Waga mune ni niji wa kiezu / A Rainbow Plays in My Heart

Wakare no chatsumiuta: Shimai hen: Onēsan to yonda hito / A Teapicker’s Song of Goodbye: Sisters Chapter: The Person I Called Sister

Chikyū bōeigun / The Mysterians / Earth Defense Force (lit.)

1958 Hanayome sanjūsō / Song for a Bride (lit. Trio for a Bride)

Bijo to ekitai ningen / The H-Man / Beauty and the Liquid Man (lit.)

Daikaijū Baran / Baran, Monster from the East / The Great Monster Baran (lit.)

1959 Kodama wa yondeiru / An Echo Calls You

Tetsuwan tōshu: Inao monogatari / Inao: Story of an Iron Arm

Uwayaku, shitayaku, godōyaku / Seniors, Juniors, Co-Workers

Uchū daisensō / The Great Space War / Battle in Outer Space

1960 Gasu ningen daiichigō / The First Gas Human / The Human Vapor

1961 Mosura / Mothra

Shinku no otoko / The Crimson Man

1962 Yōsei Gorasu / Gorath, the Mysterious Star / Gorath / Astronaut 1980

Kingu Kongu tai Gojira / King Kong vs. Godzilla

1963 Matango / Matango / Matango: Fungus of Terror

Kaitei gunkan / Atragon: Flying Supersub / Undersea Battleship (lit.)

1964 Mosura tai Gojira / Mothra vs. Godzilla / Godzilla Fights the Giant Moth / Godzilla vs. the Thing

Uchū daikaijū Dogora / Dogora / Dagora the Space Monster

Sandaikaijū: Chikyū saidai no kessen / Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster / Monster of Monsters / The Greatest Battle on Earth

1965 Furankenshutain tai chitei kaijū / Frankenstein vs. Baragon / Frankenstein vs. the Giant Devil Fish / Frankenstein Conquers the World

Kaijū daisensō / War of the Monsters / Godzilla vs. Monster Zero / Invasion of the Astros

1966 Furankenshutain no kaijū: Sanda tai Gaira / Frankenstein’s Monsters: Sanda vs. Gaira / Duel of the Gargantuas

Oyome ni oide / Come Marry Me

1967 Kingu Kongu no gyakushū / King Kong Strikes Back / King Kong Escapes

1968 Kaijū sōshingeki / Destroy All Monsters! / Monster Invasion (lit.) / All Monsters Attack

1969 Ido zero daisakusen / Latitude Zero / Atragon 2

Gojira, Minira, Gabara: Ōru kaijū daishingeki / All Monsters Attack / Godzilla’s Revenge / Minya: Son of Godzilla

1970 Kessen! Nankai no daikaijū / The Space Amoeba / Yog: Monster from Space (lit. Decisive Battle: Great Monster of the South Seas)

1972 Mirāman / Mirrorman

1975 Mekagojira no gyakushū / The Terror of Mechagodzilla / Revenge of Mechagodzilla (lit.) / Mechagodzilla vs. Godzilla

HORIKAWA Hiromichi

(b. December 28, 1916)

堀川弘通

Akira Kurosawa’s assistant on numerous films including Ikiru (1952) and Seven Samurai (Shichinin no samurai, 1954), Horikawa has never achieved his mentor’s fame. Kurosawa himself scripted his directorial debut, A Story of Fast-Growing Weeds (Asunaro monogatari, 1955), about an adolescent and the first three women in his life. A concern with youthful experience was also visible in Horikawa’s second and third films, Summer Eclipse (Nisshoku no natsu, 1956), a taiyōzoku (“sun tribe”) film based on a Shintarō Ishihara novel, and The Last Day of Oishi (“Genroku Chūshingura: Ōishi saigo no ichinichi” yori: Koto no tsume, 1957), a reworking of the Chūshingura story that focused particularly on the youngest of the participating ronin and his fiancée. Another retelling of a classical Japanese story was the Chikamatsu adaptation Oil Hell Murder (Onnagoroshi abura jigoku, 1957), but Horikawa returned to contemporary subject matter with The Naked General (Hadaka no taishō, 1958), a portrait of mentally handicapped collage artist Kiyoshi Yamashita. In this darkly humorous account of a stubborn non-conformist, Horikawa touched for the first time on the subject of World War II, ironically showing how the artist’s apparent madness enabled him to escape the draft. The melodrama Eternity of Love (Wakarete ikiru toki mo, 1961), tracing a woman’s unhappy marriages and affairs, also unfolded against a wartime backdrop.

During the sixties, Horikawa made several thrillers: the socially conscious aspects of these films suggest the continuing influence of Kurosawa while also evoking Masaki Kobayashi, whose regular actor Tatsuya Nakadai appeared in The Blue Beast (Aoi yajū, 1960) and Pressure of Guilt (Shiro to kuro, 1963). The former charted the rise and fall of a low-ranking executive who exploits both labor and management, while the latter was a tangled psychological thriller about an attorney who, having strangled his lover, faces a moral dilemma when another man confesses. Later, Goodbye Moscow (Saraba Mosukuwa gurentai, 1968) used the relationship between a Japanese jazz pianist, an American soldier on leave from Vietnam, and a group of young Russian dissidents as a metaphor for Japan’s situation in the Cold War era. The Militarist (Gekidō no Shōwashi: Gunbatsu, 1970) was a critical biopic of General Tōjō, which dramatized the military coup of February 26, 1936, while Sun Above, Death Below (Sogeki, 1968) was a conventional if snappily edited thriller about a doomed hitman.

By this time, Horikawa was considered Toho’s most reliable director of prestige material, but his seventies work was less noteworthy. He continued to deal with youthful experience in Have Wings on Your Heart (Tsubasa wa kokoro ni tsukete, 1978) and Song of Mutsuko (Mutchan no uta, 1985), both tragedies about terminally ill children. The latter again had a wartime backdrop, as did Horikawa’s last films: War and Flowers (Hana monogatari, 1989) was another account of female experience during the war years, while Asian Blue (Eijian Burū: Ukishima Maru sakon, 1995) focused on the sufferings of Korean forced laborers, in particular those killed in the sinking of a ship carrying them home after Japan’s surrender. Though Horikawa worked consistently with interesting subject matter, his films seem to have been imperfectly realized: Anderson and Richie condemned A Story of Fast-Growing Weeds for not fully developing Kurosawa’s script, Tadao Satō found Goodbye Moscow sentimental despite its political interest, and Joan Mellen criticized The Militarist for political naivety. Nevertheless, some of Horikawa’s films were considered worthy of foreign distribution in the sixties, and they may still merit revival.

1955 Asunaro monogatari / A Story of Fast-Growing Weeds / Growing
Up

1956 Nisshoku no natsu / Summer Eclipse

1957 “Genroku Chūshingura: Ōishi saigo no ichinichi” yori: Koto no tsume / The Last Day of Oishi / Last Day of Samurai

Onnagoroshi abura jigoku / Oil Hell Murder / The Prodigal Son

1958 Hadaka no taishō / The Naked General

1959 Suzukake no sanpomichi / The Path under the Plantanes

1960 Kuroi gashū: Aru sararīman no shōgen / The Lost Alibi / Black Book of Paintings: Testimony of a Salaryman (lit.)

Aoi yajū / The Blue Beast

1961 Wakarete ikiru toki mo / Eternity of Love (lit. Even When We Live Apart)

Neko to katsuobushi: Aru sawashi no monogatari / Cat and Fish Flakes: Story of a Swindler

1962 Musume to watashi / My Daughter and I

1963 Shiro to kuro / Pressure of Guilt (lit. Black and White)

1964 Aku no monshō / Brand of Evil

Les Plus Belles Escroqueries du Monde / The World’s Greatest Swindles (co-director; international co-production released in Japan as Sekai sagi monogatari)

1965 Saigo no shinpan / Last Judgement

Ore ni tsuite koi / You Can If You Try / Follow Me

1968 Saraba Mosukuwa gurentai / Goodbye Moscow / Farewell to the Gang in Moscow (lit.)

Sogeki / Sun Above, Death Below (lit. Sniper)

1969 Haha to musuko no taiwa / Dialogue between Mother and Son (short)

1970 Gekidō no Shōwa shi: Gunbatsu / The Militarist (lit. History of Showa-Era Turbulence: Military Clique)

Gakuensai no yoru: Amai keiken / Night of the School Fete: Sweet Experience

1972 Anata wa kikijōzu? / Are You a Good Listener? (short)

1973 Ōshō / The Chess Master / The King

1975 Kokuso sezu / Not Accusing

Shin hakkenden / New Legend of Eight Samurai (co-director)

1976 Shōnen to sei / Elementary School Students and Sex (short)

1977 Arasuka monogatari / Alaska Story

1978 Tsubasa wa kokoro ni tsukete / Have Wings on Your Heart

1979 Kodomo wa jisatsu o yokoku suru / Warning Signs of Suicide in Children (short)

1981 Toshi wa tottemo… / Even Though We’re Getting Older (short)

1985 Mutchan no uta / Song of Mutsuko

1989 Hana monogatari / War and Flowers

1995 Eijian Burū: Ukishima maru sakon / Asian Blue