All the World's a Stage

W's Tragedy (1984) - Sawai Shizuka (played by Hiroko Yakushimaru, Sailor Suit and Machine Gun), is a 20-year old aspiring stage actress, not afraid to sleep with an older actor who is in business in the hopes of getting the role of Mako, a heirless of the wealthy Watsuji family, who is accused of murdering the family's partriach/her grandfather. But the role goes to her classmate and she as an apprentice and prompter girl behind the curtain. Disappointed but still determined, Shizuka confides in Akio (Masanori Sera), her suiter and former actor who has given up the profession.

During the production tour, the star actress Yoshiko (Sho Hatori), who plays Mako's mother in the play finds herself in a pickle - the producer of the production dies of a heart attack during sex with Yoshiko, and confides in Shizuka, who happens to be stopping by her hotelroom door. It would be a big scandal for the star and it will surely end her career. But maybe Shizuka can say that the dead man was with her. It would be less of a scandal with her youth and innocence, the press will be more forgiving. In exchange, Yoshiko can help her career.

After the media conference about the death and Shizuka taking the blame, in exchange for the role of Mako, Akio wants an explanation. Is Shizuka that ambitious to get the role of a lifetime, and be willing to sacrifice her reputation and self dignity? Shizuka has no explanation for him but begs him to attend her big performance in Tokyo. The real life starts mimicking the stage production.

80's J-pop idol, Yakushimaru shines as a likeable, ambitious aspiring acccress who would kill for a role. Her deer in the headlight expression with her small mouth and big hairstyle, leg warmers and pastel colored wardrobe are all quintessential 80s Japan. The smooth dolly movement and muzak playing in the background add to that artificial 80s aestehtic. But W's Tragedy is a fun film built around the charm of Yakushimaru as she carries the film.

Japan Cuts 2026 Preview

North America’s largest festival of contemporary Japanese film returns for its 19th year this summer at Japan Society! Take a closer look at over 30 curated films from across Japan featuring major award-winners, indie darlings, up-and-coming filmmakers, restorations, documentaries, short films, anime and more. JAPAN CUTS will present lauded actress Hirose Suzu with the CUT ABOVE Award for Outstanding Achievement in Film and host the New York Premiere of A Pale View of Hills starring Hirose as our Centerpiece Film, and the festival will conclude with legendary director Koreeda Hirokazu appearing in-person for the North American Premiere of Sheep in the Box, as the Closing Film. The festival runs July 8 through 18.

And these are the films I was able to sample:

Burn - Nagahisa With expressionistic visuals that combine lo-fi aesthetics and 3D animations, Burn tells the story about Ju-Ju, a teen runaway from a religious zealot household where she and her little sister get regular whipping from her parents. Ju-Ju joins a colorful misfits group headed by seemingly benevolent leader Kami in the famous Toyoko Square in Kabukicho, Shinjuku. She befriends Mitsuba, a girl with a limp from a childhood accident, who uses her disability to lure men in for money. Soon Ju-Ju learns the rope in prostitution from Mitsuba, in the hopes of earning enough money to save her sister from parental abuse. But she slowly learns that her new-found family is not all unicorns and rainbows. She learns that the world is a sinister and endless destructive cycle that she can't escape from. Ju-Ju has only one option - burn it all down.

Burn features perhaps the most sinister foreshadowing in the presence of a pink dildo in the first half, later used as a murder weapon. Saccharine, yet sad, Nagahisa burrows into the narcissistic and fatalistic journey of an outcast teenage girl.

A Pale View of Hills - Ishikawa *Center Piece, featuring Cut Above Award recipient Hirose Suzu Niki (Aiko Camilla), a half-Japanese journalist in England is visiting her mom (Yoshida Yoh) in the countryside. Mom is selling the house that Niki and her sister Keiko grew up in. It's the 80s and everything 'Oriental' is in vogue and she is asked to write about her family origins in Nagasaki. So starts A Pale View of Hills, an understated, complex, handsome adaptation of famed English Author Ishiguro Kazuo (Howard's End, Never Let Me Go)'s debut novel.

Mostly told in flashback, the story centers around Niki's mother Etsuko (Hirose Suzu) in Nagasaki in post-war Japan. The year is 1952. As the country quickly recovered from the atomic bomb devastation and war defeat, the trauma and guilt are deeply felt in everyone. As a young woman expecting a child, Etsuko befriends Sachiko (Nikaido Fumi), a flamboyant woman with her daughter Mariko, yearning to move to America with her GI boyfriend. Mariko, who witnessed the aftermath of the atomic bomb blast and is deeply traumatized, has severe behavioral issues. The film addresses generational conflicts, survivor's guilt, and deep seeded traumas through an unreliable narrator. As with many Ishiguro's books, the emotional revelation in A Pale View comes slowly and subtly, like ripples in a pond. Through her mother's story, Niki is able to understand her sister's suicide and women's choices in the modern world.

Hirose, donning a bobbed curly hairstyle, has a striking resemblance here to Hara Setsuko, a darling of classic Japanese cinema, who starred in countless Ozu films.

Gosh!! - Odagiri Odagiri Joe's freewheeling comedy packed with familiar faces in Japanese cinema - among them, Odagiri himself as a K-9 unit police Dog who seems to be appearing in a middle aged womanizer in a dog suit to his human partner. There's a Bollywood style song and dance number, an elite K-9 handler police woman who faints like a goat when startled, surreal tacoyaki (fried octopus ball) festival, crooked red doors in the middle of the sea that transports you to another dimension, an old white haired ‘super volunteer’ who meddles in missing persons cases, gangsters in a swinging jazz club and a little old man fairy.

Odagiri shows his penchant for slapstick physical comedy here. Playful but directionless, Gosh!! plays out like a loosely connected string of comedy skits that doesn't really land hearty laughs.

Our Little Sister - Kore-eda *Featuring Cut Above Award recipient Hirose Suzu The movie starts. The three Koda sisters gather in a mountain town for their dad's funeral. They hadn't seen him in more than 15 years. He had an affair with other women and their mother ran away long ago. It was the eldest, Sachi (Haruka Ayase)'s job to take charge of their old style home in picturesque seaside Kamakura and raise her siblings. They find out they have a wide eyed, 15 yr old little step-sister, Suzu (Suzu Hirose) who'd been taking care of their father on his deathbed. She doesn't get along with her step-mother (he was married 3 times). Sachi decides to invite Suzu to live with them. Suzu accepts the offer and they say their goodbye at the train station until their next encounter. The little girl runs after the leaving train... waving madly at the step-sisters, total strangers she just met... like a puppy dog in a shelter who just got some attention...

I break down. It's only been twenty minutes into the movie and I am sobbing like a little girl. Fucking Koreeda. He got me real good. Our Little Sister is such an old fashioned movie - a small town where everybody knows each other, sibling rivalry, life's little complications, family traditions.... But it's done in such a gentle, loving way, you can't deny its honest-to-god innate goodness in ordinary people Kore-eda's portraying. It's an achingly beautiful movie.

Rex: A Dinosaur's Story - Kadokawa Seldom seen outside Japan, this Jurassic Park meets E.T. story was a massive hit domestically, until it was pulled out of theaters amid scandal involving its director, Kadokawa Haruki and his cocaine smuggling business. It was released in 1993, just a few months after Spielberg's Jurassic Park debuted.

This Children's film tells an unlikely friendship of a baby T. Rex and a young girl named Chie (Adachi Yumi). Akira, a paleontologist father of Chie, discovers a frozen dinosaur egg inside a crystal pyramide, after following a Jomon period pictograph into an ice cave, with the help of an Ainu (indigenous people in northern Japan) in Hokkaido. Chie is reunited with her emotionally distant mother who happens to be an embryologist in New York, flies over to help in hatching the egg. She abandoned Chie over her career. Just like dinosaurs abandoning their offsprings after they are born. Chie becomes the baby dinosaur's surrogate mother after the egg hatches- wink-wink, nudge-nudge. But the sinister corporation is trying to capitalize on the discovery by putting Chie and Rex in commercials and selling merchandise, against their will. Rex is mistreated and caged like a circus animal. So it is Chie and the local munchkins to break Rex out, with snowmobiles and air balloons!

Created by the special effects legend Carlo Rambaldi (King Kong, Alien, Possession, E.T.), Rex is a wide-eyed adorable lizard-puppy, a live-action pokemon character with wagging tales, rather than a killing machine with razor sharp teeth. Jolly fun!

Bubble Gum vs Plutonium

The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979) - Hasegawa Kido (Kenji Sawada) is a high school science teacher, known to his pupils as bubble gum, because of his habit of constantly chewing and blowing bubbles. He is regarded as an eccentric, but harmless man. But Kido has only one thing in mind - to build an atomic bomb. In order to achieve his goal, he physically trains himself, and steals a gun, in order to break into a nuclear power plant facility to steal an isotope to extract enough plutonium for the bomb.

While Kido is planning this, he meets inspector Yamashita (Bunta Sugawara, Battles without Honor and Humanity series), a ridiculously straight-up G-man with a buzzcut, when an unhinged WWII veteran, armed with a machine gun and grenades, hijacks Kido's school bus full of students, demanding to talk to the emperor. After the ordeal, which results in Kido and Yamashita saving the day and the gunman dead, Kido takes Yamashita as a worthy future opponent.

The actual break-in to the nuclear powerplant and ensuing making the bombs in a makeshift lab in Kido's tiny apartment, has a slapstick comedy element to it.


The film is also extremely procedural - showing Kido's bomb making almost step-by-step, as if in an instructional video. After successfully making two bombs - one with just enough plutonium to be detectable, so the authorities would take him seriously, and the other full working bomb with the timer, Kido starts making demands in a series of calls, using a voice scrambler. But his demands are silly - to have a baseball game aired on TV in its entirety instead of cutting the broadcast off at 9pm (which was a standard), and to get the Rolling Stones perform in Japan. His frustration at the society is well defined, but not what he wants. Throw in a beautiful radio personality, Zero (Kimiko Sawai), who figures out who Kido really is, but instead of giving him up to the authorities, she takes his case as a big exclusive scoop. Even if it means she gets involved romantically with him, and knowing Kido is dying of radiation poisoning. The cat and mouse chase ensues between Kido and Yamashita.

The Man Who Stole the Sun balances on the tight rope between not-so-serious and serious, full on satire and serious inquiry into the nation's psyche - the miraculous post-war economic development and consumerism, the generational gap- exemplified by the long-haired, aloof, rebel without a cause Kido and the overly stereotypical G-man, the unbending public servant, Yamashita. And of course, underlying of it all - the nation's ironic dependence on its nuclear energy and it being the source of existential threat (Fukushima anyone?)

As the two and a half hour movie unfolds, things get more and more outrageous - the massive car chase, shootouts, helicopters, daring stunts. Hasegawa's film has the same manic energy and chaotic nature of Shinji Somai's 80s output.

Getting Lost in Strangers' Company

Two Seasons, Two Strangers (2025) - Miyake Hokkaido born writer/director Miyake Sho has been steadily making films about people living in the margins of contemporary Japanese society and their delicate human connections since the 2010s. His shorts and television work garnered him praises as one of the most promising filmmakers, yet his independent filmmaking status didn’t quite make him a breakout star in Japanese cinema landscape, even though his astute and intimate observations in films, like, And Your Bird Can Sing and All the Long Nights are just as beautiful and resonant as the works of Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Kore-eda Hirokazu.

In his forties and working with like-minded young producers, Miyake signals the emergence of a new generation of Japanese filmmakers, working away from the traditional studio system, who are not afraid of being different and more daring, both in themes and structure in their work. And his new film, Two Seasons, Two Strangers shows just that.

Adapting from short manga stories (A View of the Seaside and Mr. Ben and His Igloo) by cult cartoonist Tsuge Yoshiharu, who passed away this year, Two Seasons, Two Strangers is a strange and wonderful diptych about a screenwriter (played by Korean actress Shim Eunkyung, who starred in several Japanese films previously - The Journalist, which she won the best actress, a first for non-Japanese actor to do so, Blue Hour and others) and her stories, as she travels through Japan. As she writes in her note book in Korean, we get to see the film about two shy young people (Kawai Yumi of Desert of Namibia and Takada Mansaku) on their summer vacation, meeting on the beach and their brief friendship. The young man does most of the talking and reveals his background, while the pensive young woman just listens. She is traveling with a group of other disaffected young people whom she doesn’t seem to connect with, but comes down to hang out with a chatty young stranger on the beach. Their youthful intimacy and connections in their loneliness are palpable in the sub-tropical setting. It culminates in them swimming in the rough ocean together on a rainy day.

Then the story pivots to the writer taking the train to a snowy countryside on a whim. She can't find lodging since she didn't book anything. Over the mountain, she finds an isolated quaint inn, run by a grunt who doesn't reveal anything about his private life, such as, why he is alone running the inn, which is traditionally done as a family business. On his part, after hearing that she is a screenwriter for movies and TV shows, he suggests she write about his inn, hoping for more business. Sleeping in the same room with the host with an irori (traditional Japanese square sunken hearth in the middle of the room for heat and cooking), this strange yet intimate arrangement brings out unexpected friendship.

Getting bored at being snowed in, The innkeeper suggests checking out a large ornamental carp pond his neighbor owns (turns out it belongs to his ex-wife’s new family) in the middle of the night. Then he proceeds to steal a carp despite the protest from the writer. But in fact, this is the most fun she has had in a long time. The cops are called, but the charges are waived after the sympathetic cops who know the family history overlooks the misdemeanor.

The contrast in character ages, the setting, and asymmetry of it all are all the charms of Two Seasons, Two Strangers. Miyake goes on sketching out the human connections among strangers in a gentle, playful, abstract way, blurring both fiction and real life/creator and its creations. Certainly one of the highlights of the early 2026 releases. Two Seasons, Two Strangers opens at New York's Metrograph 4/24. Limited nationwide expansion to follow.

Liminal Space Horror

Exit 8 (2025) - Kawamura Based on a video game of the same name, Genki Kawamura's Exit 8 could have been a primer 90s-early 2000s for Kiyoshi Kurosawa. It's got everything that resonated at the time - everyday salaryman liminal space horror - taking place mainly in fluorescent lit subway station corridors where a character can't find an exit. The repetition, a metaphor for a rat race trapped in the moebius strip - purgatory or hell of modern existence, is very well realized in the creepy, antiseptic, impersonal setting that permeates dread.

There are rules to follow - you will need to reach Exit 8 by going through a series of identical corridors and when you notice something is different than previous time, you must turn back, otherwise you are fated to repeat from the beginning. That means, counting every billboard on the wall, every locked utility door, vents, etc.

It begins with an unnamed man (Kazunari Ninomiya) is seen talking to his ex who might be pregnant with his child, in a crowded subway during rush hour. He also witnesses a salaryman screaming at a young woman who has a crying baby. No one does anything including him. After he gets out of the subway car, he finds Exit 8 sign, but the empty corridors don't lead you to the exit. It is endless, identical corridors with white tiles.

He sees a 'walking man' (Yamato Kochi) with a briefcase passing him by at every turn. The walking man sometimes stops to look at his phone and is completely unresponsive. Then strange things start to happen. The ads on the wall change, the walking man's creepy smile, a lost boy, the ceiling dripping blood...

Exit 8 has a potential to have millions of ways to explore the existential dread and be the creepiest, most effective modern horror film. But instead, Kawamura settles on the Spielbergian narrative. There are some effective creepy moments in the film. But I miss the late 90s, early 2000 J-horror haydays.

The Big Empty

Air Doll (2009) - Kore-eda Hirokazu Kore-eda's Air Doll appears to be tackling the modern society's illness - urban loneliness and soullessness, the themes explored by by other prominent Japanese auteurs of its time, namely, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Sion Sono and Shinji Aoyama, with Korean actress Bae Doona (Linda, Linda, Linda, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Host). The result is a mixed bag.

Adapted from a manga, about a blow-up sex doll, Air Doll is an odd choice for Kore-eda in his mid-career, because he had always been regarded as a Ozu's heir apparent with his gentle, life affirming, if not death obsessed films. It concerns a middle-aged man living alone with his sex doll (Bae), named after his ex-girlfriend Nozomi, as a companion. He talks to her and bathes her and has sex with her. While he is out working as a waiter at a restaurant, Nozomi comes to life and walks around the town. She even gets a job at a video rental store. People around her are unbothered by her demeanor or she has seam lines around her body. With her big eyes and blank expression, Bae approaches the role with pure wonder and innocence of a new born child.

Nozomi's accented Japanese narration serves well as an inanimate object which came to life and just gained a heart. Walking around and meeting people, observing and experiencing human conditions, she learns that there are others out there that compliment you and complete you to have a full life, that people need one another. She has an accident at the job and punctures her arm and deflates and her colleague Junichi (Arata) puts a plastic tape on her arm and blows air back into her navel. The romance begins. He says she and he are not unlike. He feels empty inside as well. He says many feel that way. She then experiences heartbreak, realizing that she is someone else's mere substitution.

She even tracks down her maker (Joe Odagiri). He philosophically explains that human life is both sad and beautiful. But when all is said and done, we are either burnable (humans) or unburnable (sex dolls, because of environmental restrictions) garbage. Yes, once it gets dark, it never lets up.

The film is closer to Spielberg's A.I- Dark yet saccharine. There are secondary stories of other characters we get only glimpses of, and don't quite resonate as it should. Air Doll is not quite the right fit for genteel filmmaker.

Elevated Pinku Movie

Love Hotel (1985) - Sômai Sômai Shinji , known for his idiosyncratic, delicate coming-of-age films, such as Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (1981), P.P. Rider (1983), Typhoon Club (1985) and Moving (1989), recently had his work re-evaluated and subsequently restored, then released in physical media and in theaters, thanks largely to a recent retrospective of his work, Rites of Passage: The films of Shinji Sômai at Japan Society here in New York. With plenty of admirers in contemporary Japanese directors (Hamaguchi Ryusuke and Kurosawa Kiyoshi among them), Sômai is now regarded as the unsung hero of 1980's Japanese cinema.

Cinema Guild, which has released the 4K restored version of Typhoon Club on disc, and Moving in theaters, is set to release the restored version of Sômai's foray into pinku genre, Love Hotel- the only Roman Porno film he ever directed for Nikkatsu Studio. And the film, besides the obvious sex scenes and nudity that are required in pinku genre, retains all the Sômai signatures and that's what makes Love Hotel rise beyond its genre trappings.

Love Hotel tells a story of two broken people and their fateful encounter. Muraki (Terada Midori), a small-time publisher owing money to yakuza loan sharks, finds his wife having sex with one of the yakuza men, while others look on, when he comes back to his squalid office. And by the looks of it, she is enjoying it. He decides to end it all.

Muraki goes to the eponymous hotel room of the title written in green neon light on the wall. With dark glasses on, he waits for a prostitute he hired from the escort service. Unsuspecting Nami (Hayami Noriko) shows up for some fun. Muraki attacks Nami, violently ripping her clothes off with a knife with an intention to kill her and then off himself as well. But it's the expression on her face- agony and extacy, that changes his mind.

Two years later, Muraki is a cab driver and Nami works at a fashion designer agency. Still reeling from his destitution and guilt, he wants to reconnect with Nami, after he spots her on the street. She on the other hand, while keeping her past life secret, is carrying out unhappy affairs with a married man (her boss).

Muraki gives Nami, who doesn’t recognize him, a ride to the Yokohama pier. She is going there to commit suicide. But he prevents her attempt at the pier and confesses his past transgression. At first, paranoid Nami suspects Muraki of blackmailing her about her past. But soon she sees his sincerity that there is no ulterior motive in his actions and learns to trust him. As they grow closer, she feels understood and loved. Now they try to finish what they started, at the same love hotel where they first met.

Sômai elevates the typical pinku melodrama premise into a heartfelt tale of two sad, lost souls in need of salvation in each other’s company. His signature long takes are there, so are his always moving crane shots. Also present are neon and rain soaked cramped tokyo interiors and lonely, empty liminal urban spaces at night. Accompanied by sultry pop ballads, with strong, natural performances by both Hayami and Terada, Love Hotel sits comfortably along the echelon of Sômai's impressive filmography.

Love Hotel opens 4/4 at Metrograph, NYC.