Japan has one of the oldest and largest film industries in the world. Throughout its more than a hundred years of history, Japanese filmmakers have created stories that changed the course of cinema itself. Kurosawa Akira, Ozu Yasujiro, Mizoguchi Kenji, Sakane Tazuko, Honda Ishiro, Miyazaki Hayao, Satoshi Kon, Takashi Miike, Nishikawa Miwa, Koreeda Hirokazu are just some names of people who have developed the cinematic art in Japan and gathered admirers all over the world.
The Early Days of Japanese Cinema
The history of Japanese cinema started in 1896 when Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope arrived in Kobe. The following year also saw the arrival of the Lumiere brothers’ Cinematographe and the Vitascope, which ignited a series of public screenings. According to Yomota Inuhiko, author of What’s Japanese Cinema? A History,
Such newfangled imported devices quickly became such a hot topic among a Japanese population obsessed with new technologies that by April 1897 an introductory text, The Technology of Automated Photography (Jido shashinjutsu), was published in Osaka.
The writer Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, though only a boy of twelve when the first screening took place in Tokyo, would later recall an early film screening at the Kinkikan Theater in Kanda: “It was a whole variety of different things โ simple photographs of real things and trick movies, all played in a loop in which the ends of a single roll of film were connected together so that the same footage was projected repeatedly.”
Similar to the rest of the world, early Japanese cinema was heavily influenced by theatre. In 1899, Shibata Tsunekichi filmed what is considered the oldest Japanese film in history: Momijigari (Viewing Scarlet Maple Leaves), starring two of the most famous Kabuki theatre actors of the time. That production marked the start of the Japanese film industry. Actually, earlier films can be considered only recordings of traditional Kabuki theatre, which featured male actors playing female roles and a very theatrical production design. However, interest in this new art form led to the progressive growth and expansion of cinema around Japan: in 1903, the Asakusa Denkikan, the very first cinema parlour, opened its doors in Tokyo. In 1908, the Yoshizawa Shลten established itself as Japan’s first film studio.
The real stars back then were the narrators or “benshi“. According to the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), “benshi, derived from katsudล benshi or ‘movie talker,’ were the captivating narrators of Japan’s silent film era. With over 7,000 benshi at their peak, these artists not only introduced films but also provided live narration and portrayed characters, filling theaters and enthralling audiences.“
Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, pioneering Japanese filmmakers defended film as an independent art, one that could tell a story without relying on theatre or narrators. Thanks to the work of Makino Shozo, Shimazu Yasujiro, and Henry Kotani, among others, Japanese cinema began developing its own tales, told through a series of new directing and editing techniques.
The expansion of cinematic art during these two decades led to the 1930s, an extraordinary period for Japanese cinema. With the advent of sound cinema, Japanese filmmakers found their own unique creative styles. Visually, Japanese films explored detail-oriented compositions, long shots, and camera movement (or lack thereof). To this day, people still talk about Kurosawa’s intricate narratives and intense character development or Ozu’s humanistic stories โ both emerging during that period.
The Golden Age: Ozu Yasujiro’s Late Spring (1949)
In very general terms, we can say that the golden age of Japanese cinema stretches from 1930 to 1965. Right in the middle of that period, we have Ozu Yasujiro’s extraordinary Late Spring, which was originally released on September 19, 1949.
Based on Hirotsu Kazuo’s book Father and Daughter, Late Spring tells the story of Noriko (Hara Setsuko), a young woman who takes care of her widowed father, Professor Shukichi (Ryu Chishu). Now that she’s slowly approaching her late twenties, her aunt (Sugimura Haruko) decides that itโs about time she got married.
The Late Spring, as we know it, isn’t the Late Spring Ozu originally envisioned. From 1945 to 1952, Japan was occupied by the US Army. During this period, Japanese cinema was under extreme censorship. Several films were burned or destroyed, others never saw the light of day, and every single script that was produced had to be approved by the censor board.
That means that when Noda Kogo and Ozu Yasujiro wrote a script based on Father and Daughter, that script was also altered and rewritten because of the demands from the censors. However, Ozu held on to what would become Late Spring and found ways to subvert the American censorship.
Late Spring is peppered with Japanese traditions, allowing Japanese nationalism to bubble underneath every shot. As we see our main characters chatting at their traditional Japanese abode, and as they go to Noh performances, tea ceremonies, and Zen gardens, Ozu brings to his Japanese audience a bit of what the censorship was trying to get rid of: their own beloved culture.
Contrasting the symbols of their heritage with the egregious Coca-Cola sign by the beach, Late Spring quietly asserts the beauty of local culture over the forced Westernisation imposed by the occupation.
The subtlety of Late Spring definitely doesnโt stop there, however.
The film is a poetic, delicate tale about family and love, the reshaping of relationships, and the process of growing up and learning to let go.
The relationship between Noriko and her father is a precious example of the purity and selflessness of familial love. Even though we’re talking about the late 40s, the bond between the two lacks the patriarchal pressure that you often see in that period. Daughter and father are portrayed as equals, with their relationship based on mutual respect, care, and heartfelt gratitude.
Noriko, happy with her life as it is, refuses her auntโs cries for marriage. After all, sheโs comfortable at her family home, caring for her father. A marriage would destroy the peaceful everyday life sheโs familiar with and leave her father alone. After all, Noriko lived in an age in which married women belonged to their husband’s family.
Considerably outspoken for a young woman in the 1940s, Noriko asserts her opinions openly to whomever it is โ and marriage is a no-no to her.
But interestingly enough, Noriko’s refusal to get married isn’t necessarily a sign of a modern woman. Not at all. Noriko is, in fact, fairly conservative: she doesn’t approve of her uncle, her father or her friend remarrying, for instance. Itโs the cast of characters around her that is much more progressive, especially if you compare her to her cousin. A fairly contemporary female character, Norikoโs cousin is a divorcee who works and lives a comfortable life on her own. At the same time, she’s open to another marriage and you can see that her idea of a romantic relationship is much more about the experience of trying to find happiness with another person.
Her father, who understands Norikoโs reason for refusing her auntโs ideas, comes up with a very gentle, very loving way to persuade her. After all, he wants her to live her own life and not stay stuck with him forever. For her father, marriage is an opportunity for Noriko to experience different kinds of relationships. It might also open a door to a different kind of happiness that she’s never experienced before.
Beyond familial love and modernity, the film is a touching story of how both children and parents need to come to terms with growing up. Our lives take different shapes as we leave the nest, we let go of who we once were to embrace the different personalities that come with adulthood โ we become spouses, employees, confidants. Norikoโs journey reminds us of the things we naturally lose as we become older but provides us with the hope that other kinds of joy might be waiting for us in the future.
Ozu’s marvellous yet incredibly simple style allows the camera to stand still as the characters within it move, giving depth and a tad of theatricality to his scenes. Add his signature tatami shots to that, and Late Spring paints a beautiful, heartwarming picture of Noriko’s family life and invites us to be part of her universe.
To top it off, Setsuko Hara’s expressive performance is flawless. One scene that Iโll always remember is the one in which Noriko and her father go to the theatre. This seven-minute-long sequence without any dialogue whatsoever depends 100% on Hara’s expressions, as she goes from joy to anger to sorrow. A thing of absolute beauty.
Late Spring is a stunning piece of cinema and is the first one in the so-called “Noriko” trilogy. The “Noriko” trilogy refers to three films, all starring a protagonist called Noriko, played by the great Setsuko Hara. Late Spring is followed by Early Summer (1951) and Ozu’s most famous feature, Tokyo Story (1953). They are all unrelated, however, so you can watch them (and you definitely should watch all of them) in any sequence.
You can watch Late Spring on:
The Comeback: Koreeda Hirokazu’s After Life (1998)
From the late 1960s, Japan saw a decrease in the number of cinema theatres around the country due to the advent of television. Japanese filmmakers of that period didn’t see the success of their predecessors. However, in the 1990s, the multiplex was introduced in Japan. Cinema was, once again, in vogue, and Japanese cinema returned to its former glory with the work of Kitano Takeshi, Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Takashi Miike, Koreeda Hirokazu, and Miyazaki Hayao.
In 1998, Koreeda Hirokazu released his second feature, After Life. At the 1998 San Sebastiรกn International Film Festival, the film won the FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) prize “for its universal theme, its empathy for nostalgia and its homage to cinema as transcending life“.
After Life is a unique film: not a slice-of-life, not a drama, not a ghost story, not a documentary โ but a hybrid of them all. For almost two hours, After Life takes us to a sort of social service centre in between life and death, where people who have just died go and spend a week before moving on. There, they have to choose one memory, which the employees of the centre will re-enact and film. That way, when they move on to the afterlife, they’ll forget their entire lives, except for the memory that they chose.
Gentle and profoundly moving, After Life is a thought-provoking and extremely introspective meditation on life, death, memory, and cinema.
In the press kit for After Life, Hirokazu explained that, as a child, he witnessed his grandfather develop Alzheimer’s. It was the experience of seeing his grandfather slowly lose his memories that led to the idea behind After Life. He explains:
My memories of my bewildered grandfather inspired me to base this film on memories of real people and to use many of those people in my cast. When we were developing the script, we asked more than 500 people to recount the one memory they would choose to take with them to heaven. I was intrigued by how often people chose upsetting experiences. The first half of the film uses actors working from scripts, actors recounting their own experiences, and really people telling true stories. Of course, as they tell real stories for the camera people inevitably fictionalize aspects of them, consciously or not, whether because of pride or misunderstanding.
For instance, during the scene in which the old woman’s memory is recreated, she realizes that she got certain things wrong. She begins to understand her experience in a different way. At moments, she is troubled by itโฆ I was interested in recording her shifting emotions as she came to terms with her memory. I saw that human emotions are the sparks that fly when “truth” and “fiction” collide. In this film, I wanted to explore the consequences of such collision by investigating the uncertain area between “objective record” and “recollection.”
Although the memories in After Life are presented as real experiences that are later reconstructed as film, you can’t really distinguish the stories characters tell as “truth” and the recreations as “fiction”. They intertwine with great complexity. Our memories are not fixed or static. They are dynamic, reflecting selves that are constantly changing. So the act of remembering, of looking back at the past, is by no means redundant or negative. Rather, it challenges us to evolve and mature.
The recreation of memories allow the dead to come to terms with the past, affirming and accepting their lives in the process. But the task of re-creating also gives Mochizuki and the others who have failed to choose memories a chance to re-evaluate their own lives. It offers respite to those who couldn’t find meaning in their past.
Cinematography in After Life gives the film the seriousness of a documentary, as we watch the dead being interviewed one by one. As they recall their existence, you witness humanity in its entirety. You see eyes sparkle with happy memories. You see avoidance in the face of memories that should be forgotten. You see the struggle as they try to find meaning in their existence or come to terms with the fact that their life wasn’t exactly what they expected it to be. All of these are portrayed with sincerity and heart, without melodrama. That’s life: a mix of what actually is and what we wanted it to be.
Peppered with the right amount of mundane humour, the film is calm and progresses without the rush of the living. After all, there’s nowhere else to go from here. After the first half, composed mostly of interviews, the second half almost feels like an homage to the act of filmmaking itself and how the camera can immortalise our memories. There’s care and beauty in the process of recreating these moments, as the crew pours their dedication into respecting the dead’s vision and as the dead find a bit of peace and catharsis in the experience.
The muted colours of this in-between universe become brighter in the sets and recordings of these memories, but the film is bathed in sobriety. In his minimalist yet compelling compositions, Koreeda plays with light and shadows and we’re guided through not only the dead’s stories but the stories of our two main workers, Mochizuki (Arata Iura in his very first film role) and Shiori (Erika Oda). Their performances, full of personality and clear emotions bubbling underneath, give the film a compelling hook that grounds the entire film.
After Life makes us think about our own lives and memories. It raises a million questions โ but answers none of them, encouraging us to devise our own answers as we live. Most importantly, you might find yourself at the end of the film wondering whether your life, as you remember it, really played out that way. But, regardless of accuracy, After Life reminds you that your memories are yours and yours only โ and they make you who you are.
You can watch After Life on:
Contemporary Japanese Cinema: Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s Evil Does Not Exist (2023-2024)
The last ten years have been full of small and huge victories for Japanese cinema. With Shoplifters (2018, dir. Hirokazu Koreeda), Drive My Car (2021, dir. Hamaguchi Ryusuke), and Godzilla Minus One (2023, dir Takashi Yamazaki), Japanese cinema continued to evolve and shine bright on the international stage.
One of the most recent releases to attract attention worldwide is Hamaguchi Ryusuke’s Evil Does Not Exist, a film that sneaks into your subconscious and, like After Life, raises questions that we are supposed to answer.
Evil Does Not Exist takes place in a beautiful countryside village, where a father and his daughter live. Their peaceful everyday life is threatened by a new “glamping” project that might have serious consequences for the environment that surrounds them.
Evil Does Not Exist is fascinating, almost hypnotic. The film starts with a sense of peace and quiet, lulling us into this seemingly tranquil place where people live in harmony with nature. The inhabitants of the little village have struck a balance between giving and receiving, taking from nature only what they really need and willingly learning about the plants and animals that live alongside them. The first 10 minutes are almost completely deprived of dialogue, allowing for poetic wide shots that not only portray nature in its full beauty but also effectively illustrate the relationship between humans and the earth.
Ishibashi Eiko’s score, which inspired the creation of the film, is stunning but slightly disconcerting. Sad and joyful. Calm and tense. It sets a mysterious tone to the film as if the peace that we see at first is only an illusion. Or maybe it’s just telling us that peace isn’t such a simple, black-and-white concept. The score is profoundly poignant, guiding us through different emotions as a work of art in its own right but also complementing and contrasting the visuals that Hamaguchi offers us.
Interestingly enough, Hamaguchi has mentioned in several interviews that he doesn’t really like having sound as a tool that allows filmmakers to toy with the audience’s emotions. That’s why he decided to abruptly interrupt the score throughout the film โ to create a separation between audio and visual. Personally, while watching the film, I felt that those abrupt interruptions served as a warning that something unexpected was about to come. Much of the film holds us in that state, not completely allowing us to relax but not delivering any shocking scares either.
Hamaguchi’s script and directing are marvellously effective, as Evil Does Not Exist offers a tangible environment and an authentic constellation of characters. Its disquieting realism starts with the cast, who are all non-professional actors delivering their lines with incredible finesse and believability.
The complete opposite of Ozu, Hamaguchi’s camera moves a lot. At times, the camera seems to illustrate the point of view of the environment as it looks at us, tiny humans living our tiny lives. But at others, the camera feels like another person following these people around, trying to understand who they are and what their lives are like. Either way, the camera here is an extra character in the story, as alive as the characters it captures. And that’s a vital element giving the film an immersive quality as it leads down a path of naturalistic observation.
In addition to that, the colour palette is a thing of beauty. The village and the lives that unravel in it are bathed in blues, greens, browns, and oranges, painting a visually stunning depiction of the area. The dissonance comes from the arrival of Takahashi (Ryuji Kosaka), the representative of the company that wants to establish the glamping site in the area. His character is often seen wearing colours that establish a visual contrast with the rest of the characters.
So, as you mix composition, movement, colour, and score, Evil Does Not Exist is a captivating feature that proves the ability that film has to evoke emotion, whatever that emotion might be, through rhythm and beauty.
I’ve seen the film being called an “eco-parable”, but I don’t think that’s what it is. It’s a mysterious, philosophical, and haunting take on the natural cycles of life โ human or otherwise. It raises several questions but doesn’t offer any definitive answers or explanations. Better yet, it never preaches a lesson, either defending nature or encouraging reckless human consumption. It’s more of a perspective on the balances and imbalances of life. At the end of the day, the film makes you wonder what concepts such as “evil” and “peace” actually mean. As beings are born and die, as beings grow, get hurt, and learn from their impulses, what actually is evil? As we’re all animals finding ways to survive, where does “evil” fit in this picture?
Justin Chang wrote an excellent review of the film for The New Yorker in which he says,
We know that evil does not exist in nature, something to which the movie subtly alludes: a wounded deer cannot be blamed if it goes berserk and attacks a human being, any more than a wayward ember can be held accountable for starting a blaze. Hamaguchi reminds us of our foolishness in assuming that we operate, as human beings, on a higher plane, that our ability to show love and compassion makes us any betterโor indeed, any worseโthan Mother Nature herself, with her supreme absence of pity. To be at one with nature, the movie suggests, requires not only skill and dedication but an essential degree of humility.
Evil Does Not Exist deserves (and needs) to be rewatched several times so that we can truly appreciate its engrossing pondering on existence.
You can watch Evil Does Not Exist on:
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