OVER 100 YEARS OF JAPANESE CINEMA

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We have long carried a torch for Japanese film here at the BFI. IN PARTNERSHIP WITH Since the first BFI London Film Festival opened with ’s in 1957, we’ve played a vital role in bringing the cinema of this culturally rich nation to UK audiences through our festivals, seasons, theatrical distribution, books and video publishing. In this major season we spotlight filmmakers who have inspired admiration and With special thanks to: fascination around the world. We begin our story with Akira Kurosawa, and over the coming months we’ll present films from the Golden Age, a focus on Yasujiro Ozu, new wave rebels, the visionary creations of , the netherworlds of J-horror, and so much more from archive rarities to contemporary works and cult classics.

This landmark season will take place on BFI Player from 11 May onwards, With the kind support of: with new online collections released each month, and we expect to present it Janus Films/The Criterion Collection, Kadokawa Corporation, at BFI Southbank and cinemas nationwide later this year. Kawakita Memorial Film Institute, Kokusai Hoei Co., Ltd, The Japanese Cinema Book, published by BFI & Bloomsbury to coincide Corporation, Toei Co., Ltd with the season, is out now.

Cover artwork: STORY ©1953/2011 Co., Ltd., OUTRAGE 2010 Courtesy of STUDIOCANAL, AUDITION 1999 © Arrow Films, HARAKIRI ©1962 Shochiku Co., Ltd.

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This retrospective collection on BFI Player helps to confirm Kurosawa’s status as one of the small handful of Japanese directors who truly belong to world cinema, writes Alexander Jacoby If Yasujiro Ozu is often called ‘the most Japanese of Japanese directors’, then one could almost identify Akira Kurosawa as the least Japanese of Japanese directors. His admiration for culture showed in the abiding influence on his work of foreign cinema and literature. Film historian Joseph Anderson commented that ‘without the American cinema, there would be no Kurosawa’, and Kurosawa himself acknowledged his debt to , whose example helped to shape the classical clarity and directness of the Japanese director’s most famous film, Seven . An admirer, too, of European literature, Kurosawa based films on works by Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky and Gorky, as well as the popular American writer Ed McBain. It’s no surprise, then, that Kurosawa was the first Japanese filmmaker to achieve an international reputation, nor that he remains the most popular of Japanese directors in the west. Twenty-two years after his death and over 70 years after scooped the at Venice, he continues to win audiences and exert a profound influence on filmmakers throughout the world. ‘FILMMAKING COMBINES EVERYTHING. IN FILMS, PAINTING, LITERATURE, THEATRE AND MUSIC COME TOGETHER. BUT A FILM IS STILL A FILM’ AKIRA KUROSAWA Image:

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A Pioneering An East-set One for the A Crime-noir: Whodunnit: Western: Heart-strings: Stray Dog Rashomon Seven Samurai (1952. See p10) (1949. See p8) (1950. See p8) (1954. See p9) This life-affirming tale, told in two Often considered Kurosawa’s The film that launched Kurosawa On the back of his Rashomon parts, is about a middle-aged man first masterpiece, this moody (and the popularity of Japanese success, Kurosawa tackled (Kurosawa regular ) crime-noir was partly inspired cinema) internationally was his first samurai film, went three facing the end of his days. by the work of Maigret author a multiple point-of-view story times over budget and created Guaranteed to touch even the . A rookie far ahead of its time. Shot and a 3.5 hour epic that would appeal hardest of hearts, Ikiru follows detective goes undercover edited in just two months, it tells to anyone who loves a western. the man on his mission to find in the dangerous underworld of a rape and murder... yet A village plagued by bandits try meaning, at one point with the of post-war in order help of a stranger in a bar who to retrieve his stolen gun, Kurosawa leaves it up to you to hire a band of samurai to to decide what really happened defend them. It’s about honour takes him ‘out on the town’. but just how far will he go to on that fateful day. and selflessness, deceit and right a wrong? devotion – all beautifully captured in monochrome, including a climactic rain-lashed battle.

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Sanshiro Sugata, Part Two Zoku Sugata Sanshiro Japan 1945. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Denjiro Okochi, , Ryunosuke Tsukigata. 83min. EST. PG After the success of the first Again there is a furious final fight Sanshiro Sugata Sugata Sanshiro Sanshiro Sugata, the government – in the snow this time – but the recognised its stirring potential for interest is now not so much in our Japan 1943. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Denjiro Okochi, Susumu Fujita, Yukiko Todoroki. 79min. EST. PG propaganda and ordered the hero and his emerging conscience production of a second. This time but in the masterful way Kurosawa Kurosawa’s assured debut feature Little by little Sanshiro learns the our wirey, wily judo champ deploys his pictorials. introduced his first hero: a feckless truth about life and in the celebrated Sanshiro takes on a massive, judo champ who discovers social climax on the windswept heath mindless American boxer. responsibility and finds illumination he finds that strength is not in the lotus pond. enough – but that endurance is.

Watch now on 5 @BFI #BFIJapan Ichiban utsukushiku No Regrets for Our Youth Japan 1944. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Takashi Shimura, Soji Kiyokawa, Waga seishun ni kuinashi Ichiro Sugai. 85min. EST. U Japan 1946. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Setsuko Hara, Susumu Fujita, An artful propaganda film that the sake of national emergence Denjiro Okochi. 110min. EST. PG anticipates the social realism – and turns it into a documentary Kurosawa’s first post- stars Even now a sobering, ennobling of Kurosawa’s post-war films, on women factory workers. It is Yasujiro Ozu regular Setsuko Hara experience, the film remains a The Most Beautiful provides a their dedication which is most as Yukie, a privileged daughter of rebuttal to those who say Kurosawa fascinating portrait of female beautiful, but most impressive is a professor who takes a soul- didn’t understand women. volunteer workers in an optics Kurosawa’s grasp of his material, searching journey through rural factory manufacturing lenses for the way he makes us care about Japan and comes to question her binoculars and gunsights. whether a lens is ground properly. values, deciding to join the fight Kurosawa takes an approved against the state of wartime Japan. wartime theme – of personal inclination willing sacrificed for

Watch now on 6 @BFI #BFIJapan One Wonderful Sunday Subarashiki nichiyobi Yoidore Tenshi Japan 1947. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Isao Numasaki, Chieko Nakakita, Japan 1948. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Reisaburo Yamamoto, . 108min. EST. PG Michiyo Kogure. 98min. EST. PG Akira Kurosawa strikes an manage to have a great time The film that inaugurated Mifune’s gangster and Takashi unfamiliar tone for this bitter-sweet despite their adversities. Kurosawa’s long-running Shimura’s alcoholic doctor story of young love set in the The message for struggling collaboration with actor Toshiro (the drunken angel of the title) devastation of post-war Tokyo, Japanese post-war audiences Mifune is also, perhaps, the clash in the desolate slums of reminiscent of Frank Capra’s social is plain to see, which is why the first film fully to display the visual post-war Tokyo in this powerful realist comedies. This is a date film resembles Depression-era flair and dramatic intensity that thriller – downbeat yet true to story told entirely over on evening, in its outlook of tainted would typify his best work. Kurosawa’s humanist outlook, much as Richard Linklater would optimism. Look out for an and full of striking imagery. adopt nearly 50 years later with innovative instance of breaking Before . Yuzo and his the fourth wall in the final act. fiancée Masako spend a Sunday jaunting around Tokyo with only 35 cents to their names, but still

Watch now on 7 @BFI #BFIJapan Rashomon Japan 1950. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, . 88min. EST. 12A Famously, Rashomon – which won But the film, with its ingeniously both the Golden Lion in Venice framed flashbacks, is considerably and the Oscar for Foreign- subtler and richer than most Language Film – introduced subsequent films demonstrating western audiences to Japanese the relativity of ‘truth’; it also cinema in general and to the succeeds as a caustic study of thrilling artistry of Akira Kurosawa human weakness. Fast-paced, in particular. Likewise well-known endlessly inventive (one of the is the fact that its story of rape and flashbacks represents the Stray Dog Nora Inu murder in 12th-century is viewpoint of a dead man) and Japan 1949. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune, related in four conflicting versions, visually superb, this philosophical Takashi Shimura, Isao Kimura. 124min. EST. PG each reflecting the experience – or, action movie also boasts great Both a gripping thriller and a The story of a cop obsessively more troublingly, desire for sympathy performances from a first-rate fascinating documentary exploration hunting the criminal who stole – of one of those present at the team of Kurosawa regulars. of Tokyo in the years of the his gun is rooted in Japanese crime: a bandit (a memorably American Occupation, Stray Dog notions of duty and honour, but bestial Toshiro Mifune), a samurai is arguably Kurosawa’s best also evokes the psychological and his wife, and a woodcutter. film, and indeed, ranks undertones of Dostoyevsky and with his finest work. the stylistic tropes of .

Watch now on 8 @BFI #BFIJapan Seven Samurai Shichinin no Samurai Japan 1954. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshio Inaba, Keiko Tsushima. 207min. EST Genuinely epic in scale and tone, Kurosawa’s hugely influential samurai movie is a towering achievement. When 16th-century farmers whose village is repeatedly attacked by merciless bandits ask an elderly, masterless samurai (Shimura) The Men Who Tread for help, offering nothing but food in return, he hesitantly agrees, and assembles a band on the Tiger’s Tail of warriors to defend and train the villagers... Tora no O o Fumu Otokotachi Boasting terrific performances (with Shimura Japan 1952. Dir Akira Kurosawa. and Mifune, as a peasant masquerading as With Denjiro Okochi, Susumu Fujita, a samurai, particularly memorable), superb Ken’ichi Enomoto (Enoken). 58min. EST. PG camerawork, and expertly mounted battle Made at the very end of WWII, Kurosawa’s sequences, Seven Samurai is undoubtedly lighthearted adaptation was banned one of the greatest action movies ever made. during the Occupation, solely because it had Moreover, in its rich attention to detail, been excluded from a list of films submitted its vivid characterisations and its sorrowing to the American censors. An ironic fate, acknowledgement of life’s injustices, since the film subtly satirises the feudal it recalls the profound masterpieces of Homer codes promoted by the wartime government, and Shakespeare. with the values of the warrior protagonists undermined by the unheroic presence of the porter played by popular comedian Enoken.

Watch now on 9 @BFI #BFIJapan Ikiru Living I Live in Fear Ikimo no Kiroku Japan 1952. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Takashi Shimura, Nobuo Kaneko, Japan 1955. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune, Eiko Miyoshi, Miki Odagiri. 143min. EST. PG Yutaka Sada. 103min. EST. PG Never one to shy away from grand A diagnosis of terminal stomach The atomic bombing of The mood of nuclear paranoia has themes, Kurosawa here tackled cancer forces a bureaucrat to and Nagasaki triggered numerous rarely been so powerfully caught the biggest and simplest of take stock of his life, and seek responses within post-war Japanese as in this eerily reiterative portrait existential issues: the fact of some way of giving it meaning. cinema, but few as original as of obsession. mortality, and the impact that the Built around a superb central Kurosawa’s account of an elderly inevitability of death has on an performance from Takashi man who, terrified at the prospect individual life. Shimura, this is a classic of of nuclear holocaust, strives to humanist cinema. persuade his reluctant family to move to Brazil.

Watch now on 10 @BFI #BFIJapan The Lower Depths Donzoko Throne of Blood Kumonosu-jo Japan 1957. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune, , Japan 1957. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Kyoko Kagawa. 137min. EST. PG Takashi Shimura, . 110min. EST. 12A Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation of Distinguished by its sobriety, A devotee of Western culture, Kurosawa creates a dazzling Maxim Gorky’s novel (previously its pathos, and by the theatrical Kurosawa here transposes cross-cultural artefact, centred filmed by Jean Renoir) sees the brilliance of its presentation, to Japan in its medieval around indelible performances inhabitants of a slum while away the film is also one of the finest period of civil war, to brilliant effect. from a dynamic Toshiro Mifune their time longing for escape examples of ensemble acting Filming in part on the slopes of and a chilling Isuzu Yamada. or dreaming of a better life. in Japanese cinema. Mount Fuji and cleverly fusing The Lower Depths is a brilliant Shakespeare’s narrative with exploration (no less than Rashomon) influences from theatre of the conflict between the and sumi-e ink painting, comfort of illusion and bitter reality.

Watch now on 11 @BFI #BFIJapan Kakushi Toride no San-Akunin Warui Yatsu Hodo Yoko Nemuru Japan 1958. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune, Minoru Chiaki, Japan 1960. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune, Takeshi Kato, . 138min. EST. PG Masayuki Mori. 150min. EST. PG An unusually lightweight film for displays his mastery of the One of Kurosawa’s most gripping A remarkable film that combines visual Kurosawa, but a thoroughly Tohoscope widescreen format, films, this bleak but stylish thriller flair with psychological depth and entertaining one, displaying which he used here for the was a timely indictment of razor-sharp political commentary. what critic Kiyoteru Hanada called first time. It’s no surprise that this corporate and political corruption. ‘the sparkle of an imitation jewel’. action-packed romp appealed The drama is rooted in the political In this story of a princess and her to and helped turmoil of early Japan, retainer transporting clan treasures inspire . but Kurosawa again draws on through enemy territory, Kurosawa Shakespeare, echoing in its story of a man prevaricating over revenge for his father’s death.

Watch now on 12 @BFI #BFIJapan Tsubaki Sanjuro Japan 1961. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune, , Japan 1962. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Tatsuya Nakadai, Yuzo Kayama, Isuzu Yamada, Takashi Shimura, , Daisuke Kato. Takashi Shimura. 95min. EST. PG 110min. EST. 12A Kurosawa’s sequel to Yojimbo Toshiro Mifune’s performance as Akira Kurosawa’s supremely and proceeds to play both off was envisaged as a stand-alone a cynical masterless samurai, entertaining ‘samurai western’ against each other – until events samurai film, but in view of the and the flair of Kurosawa’s action stars Toshiro Mifune at his most spiral into vicious violence and success of the earlier movie sequences. A rare case of mesmerically charismatic. he must finally pick a side. Kurosawa was prevailed on to a sequel that is as entertaining Mifune brings a raw, animal resurrect its main character. as the original. energy to his portrayal of Sanjuro, He crafted another blackly a masterless samurai who wanders humorous period film, which again into a desolate small town divided centres around the energy of between two rival gangs,

Watch now on 13 @BFI #BFIJapan High and Low Tengoku to jigoku Japan 1963. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune, Yutaka Sada, Tatsuya Nakadai. 143min. EST. 12 Based on crime writer Ed McBain’s turns it into something more detective novel King’s Ransom, ambiguous and complex; High and Low is a gripping police an anatomy of the inequalities thriller. Wealthy industrialist Kingo in modern Japanese society. Akahige Gondo (Mifune) faces an agonising High and Low is an intricate film Japan 1965. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Toshiro Mifune, Yuzo Kayama, choice when a ruthless kidnapper, noir, where the intense police . 179min. EST. 15 aiming to snatch his young son, hunt for the kidnapper, led by Kurosawa’s long, episodic, At times sentimental, it nevertheless takes the chauffeur’s boy by mistake the tenacious Inspector Tokuro poignant story of a 19th-century seems to sum up the humanism but still demands the ransom. (Nakadai), is accompanied by doctor working in a clinic for the of Kurosawa’s cinema. Gondo, engaged in a precarious penetrating insight into the poor marks the end of a major scheme to seize control of the kidnapper’s state of mind. phase in his career. It was his shoe company he works for, faces Kurosawa’s virtuoso direction last film starring Toshiro Mifune, ruin if he pays up. Although the provides no easy answers, and his last in black and white, and his film is based on the McBain novel, in short, intense sequences he last before changing economic Kurosawa essentially takes the portrays the businessman, the circumstances compelled him to plot outline – a kidnapping that police and the criminal as equally seek funding either independently goes wrong and the moral dilemma brutal but nonetheless human. or outside of Japan. it poses – and, with his scriptwriters,

Watch now on 14 @BFI #BFIJapan Dodes’Ka-den Dodesukaden Ran Japan 1970. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Yoshitaka Zushi, Kin Sugai, Japan-France 1985. Dir Akira Kurosawa. With Tatsuya Nakadai, Toshiyuki Tonomura. 140min. EST. 12 , Jinpachi Nezu. 162min. EST. 12A Akira Kurosawa’s first colour film is Kurosawa poured himself into This visually spectacular epic Japanese aesthetics from the an eccentric and joyous account of this film, made at a critical point transplants Shakespeare’s King samurai epic and Noh theatre, a group of disparate people living in his life, and the negative reaction Lear from Celtic Britain to feudal Kurosawa crafts an arresting and in a city dump. Approaching a it garnered resulted in a suicide Japan. In its epic scope and singular cinematic (re)vision of similar milieu to that which he attempt. It’s now rightfully regarded expert execution, Ran can be Shakespearean drama. Epic and explored in The Lower Depths (1957), as a classic; Kurosawa’s last poetic seen as a culmination of the great bloody spectacle is underscored Kurosawa’s film finds optimism, paean to post-war optimism. Japanese director’s filmmaking by a sombre mood of loss, regret humour and musicality (the title career; a late triumph which he and mortality, making Ran both refers to a child’s onomatopoeic had planned and refined over enthralling and disturbing. The film mimicry of a tram ride) amid the several years. By fusing the is presented here in a stunning lives of the dispossessed. narrative – about an arrogant King new restoration. who’s betrayed by his resentful children – with non-naturalistic

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