In a little peek behind the curtain, I usually like to leave it until the concluding paragraphs to reveal the essence of my opinion of a film or indeed a collection. I’m not going to do that here. Instead, I am completely jumping the gun to say that over the course of this handful of scrappy films on this Toshiaki Toyoda boxset that third window films have put together, chronicling the man’s career from 2005 to 2021, I became a firm fan. In fact, to go further, one of the included titles instantly became one of my favourite short films. Through harsh or indeed wrongful imprisonment, Toyoda hasn’t had the career he deserved, however, in my humble opinion his skill as an impressive stylist and storyteller should really have him talked about in the terms that have become reserved for the likes of Takashi Miike, Sion Sono and company.

Hanging Garden was the first title I pressed play on, and without burying the lead it was an elegant exercise that reminded me why I fell in love with Japanese cinema. On paper, it sounds like any number of A24 movies or the never-ending stream of indie films about the dissolution of the American family unit. In Toshiaki Toyoda’s hands, it is something else entirely. Based on a novel by Mitsuyo Kakuta, the basic set-up follows the Kyobashi family – Mother, Eriko (Kyoko Koizumi), Father, Takashi (Itsuji Itao), Daughter, Mana (Anne Suzuki), Son, Ko (Masahiro Hirota) and the eventual arrival of grandmother, Satoko (Michiyo Yasuda) – whose only house rule is to not keep secrets from each other when asked a question directly. From that germ, the film blossoms to reveal a family of questionably promiscuous souls with an ever-curious relationship with sex.

After the camera gyrates around a beautifully ornate light shade we are introduced to the family through a choice conversation, in which the teenage children ask their mother the location where they were conceived. From what would be an awkward conversation in any household, the film becomes an episodic hopscotch jumping one from family member to another as they go about their daily lives. The daughter mostly skips out on school to have sex with whoever, really, at the local love hotel, the father makes no attempts to hide the numerous affairs he is carrying out simultaneously with one of his conquests (Mina (J-Pop star, Sonim) becoming a home tutor for his son, who comes very close to having a successful visit to the love hotel with his dad’s mistress. A scene that introduces the grandmother as a force of nature, fighting Mina and then picking a hotel that people literally only use for sex to have an afternoon nap – on a rotating circular bed no-less. The mother, Eriko, is aware of all of this happening as part of her valiant attempt to be transparent as a means to course correct for her mother who she perceives to have done a bad job. The family may be living “their best life”, but the human cost has a catastrophic effect on Eriko’s mental health with her falling to pieces in the third act, a sequence complete with Peter Strickland like kineticism and a liberal dose of blood rain for added symbolism.

Made in 2005, Toshiaki Toyoda imbues Hanging Garden with the brand of transgressive energy and powerful filmmaking that saw Japanese cinema make an indelible impact on world cinema and made stars out of Miike and Sono. For those of us who discovered Japanese cinema during that era, Hanging Garden has long been an unavailable title from that era and for it not only to finally see release in the UK but also for it to live up to expectations is the first of many stories within this boxset. Another is that Toyoda uses his work as a tool for social or political discourse with a curiosity rarely seen outside of the V-Cinema boom. Here he questions the sanctity of familial roles in a society that allows no deviation whatsoever. Furthermore, this perverse family saga possesses a visual style that has just as much of an impact as the subject matter. Offsetting the perverse and salacious with iconography that you’d expect from the most wholesome of material – think along the lines of David Lynch with Blue Velvet – plus he really knows how to move a camera to get the most out of any scene.

Moving onto the second title, Monsters Club, and this couldn’t have been a wilder jump in story, style and execution.

Advice given to many aspiring directors is to get out there in the world and make something, don’t wait for anyone to ask you, just do it. A little over 70 minutes, 2011’s Monster Club has that very same DIY energy. Shot in the snowy Japanese north, it sees Eita (Ryoichi Kakiuchi) utterly isolated in a cabin in the woods engaging his most nihilistic and destructive whims by building bombs and sending them to people of power back in Tokyo. As part of his isolation, he receives visits from monstrous creatures – well, not so much “visits”, more that he is stalked by these entities. As events unfurl further, it is revealed that Eita is one of the two surviving members of his family and these visits are from their ghosts – specifically his brothers. All in all, turning these visits between bombs into something of a twist on Dickens Christmas carol archetype.

A slow, difficult film, Monster’s Club sees Toyoda adopt a more deliberate pace calling back to grander and older traditions of Japanese cinema and Noh theatre (more on that later). And, it is in that that we see an incredible gift for staging monologues, one which is pounced upon by regular Toyoda collaborator Yôsuke Kubozuka. There can be no denying, this feels like the director scratching an itch – wider audience appeal be damned. As such it’s hard to talk about this one without invoking easy-out clauses like “for completists only” – yet here I am saying it. What elevates this beyond ‘theatre’ on the big screen is the choice of location and the expert camera framing, especially with the spirits skulking around. Monster’s Club is rife with images that linger and a Kubozuka performance that is but one in an ongoing and beautiful working relationship.

Day of Destruction kicks off a trilogy of films based around Mt. Resurrection-Wolf, blending together a heady concoction of Japanese tradition, pandemic frustration, Noh theatre and punk rock. This 2020 film is not easy-going, in fact, it sashays into more experimental waters with non-linearity and surrealism its tools – only post-viewing does any degree of clarity come into focus. Opening with a flashback, we are met by another Toyoda regular, Kiyohiko Shibukawa, who guards a mine in which a beast has been found, a beast who spreads an epidemic. Paid off, he lets in someone from the city. Yeah, you see where he is going with this, it’s intentional unsubtle. To the modern-day, we are introduced to a world of religion, demons hiding under the guise of humans and the bleeding red infection in the cityscape. Yeah, this is a COVID movie and between this and Go Seppuku Yourselves, Toshiaki Toyoda is expressing his fatigue as best he can.

All of this is underscored by a furious punk rock score, something which will be explained further in part two tomorrow, in the case of Day of Destruction, however, the man who is harbouring the demon is often on the street screaming along with the fast-paced punk score. In his current iteration as a director, Toyoda is something of a master when it comes to using music to establish a mood. There are many points through the spry 60 minutes where events transition into a series of incredibly slow burn long-takes that incorporate Japanese traditions, smoke machines and a mashup of punk rock and taiko drumming to create scenes unlike any other. Of course, in describing these moments, they do take away from the flow of the narrative with it taking some time to re-acclimatise to the narrative flow. That being said, as a stylised exercise in creating tone there is absolutely nothing like it in mainstream cinema with these shots landing in the hot spot between the finest visual art and music video.

I have more to say and I’ll be saving that for tomorrow along with the other inclusions in this set (Wolf’s Calling, I’m Flash and Go Seppuku Yourselves). All I’ll say at this halfway point is Toshiaki Toyoda is something of a discovery for this long-term fan of Japanese cinema. Even within the broad and at times undefinable parameters of their national cinema., these three films are the work of a wildly idiosyncratic director and as many other write-ups have affirmed, he is something of a lost cult director ready for a whole new international audience to obsess over. Count me among them.

PART II OF TOSHIAKI TOYODA BOXSET REVIEW TOMORROW.

POP SCREEN For More Movie Chat