20 Movies for Japanuray

Between Social Media and Marketing agencies, Japanuary is one of these traditions that happen every year, in which people portmanteau months to programme month long sessions into a particular movement – or, in this case, national cinema – into their cinematic diet. Giallo January is another common theme that people visit, and who knows, maybe next year. But for now the two Ben’s got together to run down 20 movies from the super well known to the less well known that you can watch throughout January, and/or, whenever the fancy takes you for something Japanese. Now, without any further ado, I hand things over to the two Ben’s for 20 movies for Japanuary. Editor

1. Seven Samurai (1954) (Ben Chambers)

It is ironic that even with the order of this article being in chronological order, that probably the most famous and most influential Japanese film of all time is listed first. Seven Samurai was not Akira Kurosawa’s breakout film (that honour would go to Rashomon (1950)) but it’s definitely his most famous. I assume many people already know the general plot of the film as it has been replicated so many times, but I will repeat it anyway. A poor village is being attacked by bandits and the villagers pay seven Ronin (masterless samurais) to defend the village against these attacks. 

It has Kurosawa’s usual trope of actors, including Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Daisuke Katō, among others as the seven samurai. And though it is over three hours long, the film goes by very quickly. It is never slow, nor dull. Some of the films it has influenced include Star Wars, The Magnificent Seven (1960), and, apparently, Saving Private Ryan (1998) among many others. It truly deserved to be considered as one of the best films of all time. 

2. Yojimbo (1961) (B.C.)

While Seven Samurai (1954) may be most recognized as an influence on Western. (The Magnificent Seven films obviously and many others), Yojimbo may have influenced them more. An obvious example of this is the shot of Toshiro Mifune, playing the main character, walking toward a group of opponents. Dust is whipping around him, and he slowly walks toward them. This shot and movie influenced later Westerns, such as Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars (1964), which is a direct remake.

Toshiro Mifune stars as a nameless Ronin, wandering around Japan, masterless and poor. He finds a town and is able to manipulate the two rival gangs who vie for his services. Kurosawa and Mifune are able to make these situations funny, the rival gangs are portrayed as inept and stupid and falling for all of the plots and schemes of Mifune’s character. It all leads to a climactic final showdown between Mifune’s nameless Ronin and a group of enemies, just like a spaghetti western. 

3. High and Low (1963) (B.C.)

Most film fans know Akira Kurosawa for his samurai flicks, some of Kurosawa’s most powerful films were non-Samurai films. Two examples are Ikiru (1952) (recently remade as British film, Living) and High and Low. High and Low stars Kurosawa regular, Toshiro Mifune, in a very different role than we are used to seeing him play in Kurosawa films. Instead of a crazed samurai or the comic relief, he plays Kingo Gondo, a shoe company executive. While in the midst of trying to buy out his company and gain control, he gets a phone call that informs him his son has been kidnapped. What follows for the rest of the film is fantastic. Kurosawa is able to tell a tense story where the ending is far from the obvious and cliché. It’s a long thriller but it is entirely worth it. I haven’t seen all of Mifune performances but this is the one where he shows his range and talents. He plays the part of a wealthy man under enormous pressure and stress perfectly. 

On another note, there is a scene toward the end when the kidnapper dances with a woman, and while they dance, they stealthily do a drug deal. This scene and the way they danced was direct inspiration for Quentin Tarantino’s famous dance scene in Pulp Fiction (1994). 

4. Red Angel (1966) (B.C)

I only recently saw it before starting this project and it has stayed with me for that period of time. It is a war film that shows the true horrors of war, specifically from the views of the nurses and doctors who operate on the injured. I prefer non-Hollywood war films because they tend to be more realistic, grounded and traumatic watches. And this is just that, and a great war film. 

This is one of many collaborations between director Yasuzo Masumura and actress Ayako Wakao. Wakao stars as Sakura Nishi, a nurse sent to China to be a part of a field hospital during WWII. If you can survive the first ten minutes of the film, you can survive the whole thing. Without getting into spoilers, the most shocking thing about the first ten minutes is that the depravity exhibited has nothing to do with war and horrors of it, so you are not expecting it.

Masumura heightens the uneasiness by amplifying the sounds of the bone saws cutting through bone and flesh and the screams of its victims. Usually sawing the soldiers is the other main character, Dr. Okabe, played by Shinsuke Ashida – he brings his character’s weariness and lackadaisical attitude toward life. While the first half of the film deals with Sakura Nishi’s involvement with the patients at the hospital, the second half focuses on her and Okabe’s relationship. One last thing I will mention is that it is an intense war film with a female lead. Not something that at the time was done a lot, and Masumura does not direct it as an exploitation film, he stays truthful in terms of what these war nurses might have gone through – every last horrific detail.  REVIEW

5. The Sword of Doom (1966) (Benjamin Jones)

With so many films committing to the tried and tested formula of good Vs evil with justice being served, The Sword of Doom never takes this easy option. It is forever challenging, constantly fluctuating but always riveting. Tatsuya Nakadai delivers a performance that is the embodiment evil. From a stare that could cut glass to the contempt he holds for others (the nonchalant manner that he portrays in those early contests against each of the Utsuki brothers), this is a man that is truly a monster in human form. 

Yet, there is still a consciousness at work. He can assess a situation and determine the threat to his own life, brilliantly portrayed in a scene where Toshiro Mifune’s Toranosuke Shimada fells 10-15 combatants, leaving only the leader and Ryunosuke Tsukue alive. The sudden onset of fear as each of the would be assassins he joined are dispatched, only once readying himself for combat as an absolute last resort. The scene is over within minutes, but contains so much more than any dialogue could have provided. The usual state switching from steel to fear with the slightest changes of expression.

Then we have the ending, which in many ways reflect the original author, Kaizan Nakazato, who died in 1944 with the story incomplete. As our antagonist descends into their own personal hell, we are left wondering if our heroes would be satisfied with his demise, or would they feel cheated and unfulfilled in their quest for revenge? As an audience, anything other than what we got would have been formulaic, spoon fed and completely out of character with the rest of the film (these left turns happen several times throughout).

The Sword of Doom is a masterpiece of cinema and is deserving of its place amongst the greats. REVIEW

6. Outlaw: Gangster VIP (1968) (B.J)

There are films that change the way other films are made going forward. They aren’t always the best in their chosen genre, or even of that year, but they strike a chord and many of what comes after wear its influence on its sleeve. Outlaw: Gangster VIP is one such film.

It has a strong case for being a precursor to Kinji Fukasaku’s epic Battles Without Honour and Humanity series, with its depiction of gritty Yakuza life on the streets amongst the dirt and forgotten dreams. However, that didn’t hit Japanese screens until 5 years after this very film here.

Outlaw: Gangster VIP is somewhat of a detachment in many ways from similar films of the time. Gone is the glitz and glamor of Yakuza Bosses residing in night clubs every night, getting all the girls, only to be thwarted by our hero. This is very much a down and dirty picture, on street level, looking up, always aware, always moving.

Tetsuya Watari is your classic anti-hero, someone down on his luck but keeping it together, because that’s what he does. Fast talking, no nonsense guy with a point to prove and just one problem, he is tired of the Yakuza life, but he knows no other way. The brooding stare, the chaotic carnage of a street brawl, all weapons drawn and heart in mouth, it’s in these moments that the film really sets itself apart. The wide eyed fear of battle is all too clear, etched in the faces of those on the periphery, waiting for their moment to strike, hoping on hope that they do not fail. 

Whilst this never reaches the heights of what would come later, without it I’m not so sure those films would have happened. REVIEW

7. Blind Woman’s Curse (1970) (B.J)

You never know when the actions of our past will come back to haunt us. We may have had all the honourable intentions, but we cannot take back what we have done, even in a kill or be killed world, because the regret lives with you forever. Blind Woman’s Curse hits with both barrels from this juncture. An idea of change, to make amends for past grievances, even if the players do not immediately reveal themselves.

Directed by Arrow Video favourite Teruo Ishii (Horrors of Malformed Men & Inferno of Torture) and starring the iconic Meiko Kaji, here she shows a lighter side, more akin to what we see of her in the likes of Wandering Ginza Butterfly, but the steely eyed stare that would serve her well in the career defining films of Lady Snowblood and Female Prisoner Scorpion, shows early embers starting to burn deep here.

Whilst Meiko Kaji’s name is front and centre on the poster, she is noticeably absent for large chunks of the film, instead we are given over to an ensemble that more than fill the gap as we are treated to an escalating provocation as a gang is drawn into a war they did not want. So often with these films things escalate into violence at a moments notice on the slightest of infringements, but whilst time is taken to get to our inevitable showdowns, the resistance to these actions are at odds with the actions of the past, all the while allowing the exasperation reaches an intolerable level.

Blind Woman’s Curse is a classic. Often overlooked in favour of Meiko Kaji’s other films, this is so much more than what many of those vehicles offer. A playfulness gives way to a fraught tension as words give way to actions, because this is a violent world in which they live. However, everyone of the 85 minute run time is worth your patience because your reward is spectacular. REVIEW

8. Yakuza Deka (1970) (B.J)

It’s always a shame that it takes an actor’s or a director’s passing for many of us to go back and remind ourselves as to why we fell in love with them in the first time around. It’s particularly tragic when said actor/director is as iconic as the country they hailed from. Today I am, of course, referring to Shin’ichi “Sonny” Chiba. 

As for the film itself, Yakuza Deka has a hyper kinetic pace that is unrelenting, giving the whole film this feeling of joie de vivre. Sonny Chiba is out there, living life to the fullest, jumping over buildings, getting into fights, pleasing the ladies and taking out the bad guys. And that’s it, for 85 minutes it is just Sonny Chiba having the time of his life, and it is as infectious as cooties.

The plot is super basic, the action is chaotic but Chiba-San oozes cool as he delivers punches and quips in equal measure. It also has its moments of the absurd, as his boss would turn up throughout the film in various disguises. 

It’s films like this that remind us of just how good Sonny Chiba was. Even with a nuts and bolts character like on display here, my eyes were transfixed the entire time as we ran from set piece to gun fight to punch up. I could watch this again tomorrow and still be as entertained as I have been tonight.

Sonny Chiba, my liege, sleep well good sir, you have earned your rest.

9. Cure (1997) (B.J.)

Who are you? An innocuous question that can have a multitude of answers. It can be everything from the role you have within society to the peaks and valleys of our emotional journey, or even what makes me who I am? 

Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 1997 bleak-a-thon is filled to the brim with such questions, leaving it to the audience to find their own answers. Oozing existential dread, the cold and unforgiving environment all the characters find themselves just adds to the oppression they each feel, either by societal expectations or the desire of the self to fit in. This is not the Japan of the tourist brochures, this is the anxiety beneath the surface, just waiting for the mask to slip.

Comparisons to Se7en are easy to make, each having characters tied to a labour, a burden or a promise of hope for the future. However, the frustration felt with Cure is, on the whole, I’m not convinced that Kurosawa-San has answers to the myriad of questions themselves, instead wallowing in ambiguity his story leaves behind. Was this supernatural? Was this psychological? Or were we hoodwinked from the very beginning? The answer to all of these questions is “yes”, which is both equally ingenious and frustrating, but adds to the allure of the world in which these characters reside, it’s just left to you, the viewer, to interpret them as you see fit.

Either a sly stab at society and the expectations of restraint (the detective being the “outsider” because of his anger issues, but the only one being true to himself emotionally) or a supernatural “why-did-he-do-it” crime thriller that leaves more questions than answers (and a subplot with the wife that raises questions around how if we take our memories away, are we still the same person, therefore was it even his wife at the end at all), which ever way you look at it, Kiyoshi Kurosawa has the last laugh in reversing the question to the audience and asking them to ask themselves “Who am I”? REVIEW

10. Ring (1998) (B.J)

“You do know this films has subtitles, right?” the clerk stated. It’s 2000, I’m in Blockbuster and I’m trying to rent The Ring. “I hope so” I reply “my Japanese isn’t very good”. Whilst many people’s views on subtitles have not changed in the subsequent years (just look at Bong Joon-ho’s comments at the Golden Globes), this hasn’t stopped films like Ring from becoming a cultural touch point.

20 years later the biggest question is “does it hold up”? After all its central premise involves a (mostly) dead technology. Will it translate to later generations that have grown up in a world dominated by on demand streaming services? Whilst I can’t answer the 2nd part, the first is a definitive “YES”.

Ring earns each and every moment of fear and dread. It easily deserves the reputation it has received over the years and whilst the lank haired ghost has become a cliché synonymous with Japanese Horror (or J-Horror, a it was widely known, a moniker that has persevered over the years), there are reasons why these things get simulated to tedium and become iconic, it’s because they are just that good and Ring can comfortably take its place amongst the great Horror icons.

One last note, why are we calling it “Ringu”? This isn’t a word. The film is Ring or The Ring, it was never “Ringu”. I appreciate that people want to differentiate between this and the Gore Verbinski remake from 2002, but come on, do we have to stoop to trying to make English words sound Japanese? Isn’t it time that we called it out as the bullshit it actually is? REVIEW