A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors. Alexander Jacoby

of criminal life. An Obsession (Tsumetai chi, 1997), another crime thriller, reworked Akira Kurosawa’s Stray Dog (Nora inu, 1949) in its story of a police detective whose stolen gun is used in a series of murders. This film’s setting in an alternative present-day Tokyo, peopled by executioners in anti-radiation suits, foreshadowed the apocalyptic tone of Aoyama’s later work.

      In the late nineties, Aoyama also worked in genres other than the crime film. Embalming (EM Enbāmingu, 1999) was a silly horror movie pastiche, notable mainly for a slyly self-mocking performance from director Seijun Suzuki.Shady Grove (1999), loosely inspired by a Sōseki Natsume short story, was a melancholy romantic comedy about a young woman trying to come to terms with rejection. Around this time, Aoyama also made a documentary, To the Alley (Roji e: Nakagami Kenji no nokoshita firumu, 2000): in part an examination of the plight of the burakumin underclass, this was more centrally an investigation of the role of cinema itself in preserving history.

      Aoyama gained an international reputation with Eureka (2000), about the gradual recovery of three survivors from the trauma of a bus hijack. Over three hours long, virtually plotless, and shot in sepia-tinted monochrome, this extraordinary, haunting film took its director’s style to a new extreme; its slow, sinuous camera movements, sometimes following the characters, sometimes moving independently, conveyed the sense of a world indifferent to individual suffering. Even closer to abstraction was Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani (Eri eri rama sabakutani, 2005), a Werner Herzog-like vision of apocalypse set in a dystopian future where an infectious disease is inducing mass suicides. Though lacking the narrative control of Eureka, it contained passages of breathtaking visual beauty. Desert Moon (Tsuki no sabaku, 2001) was a more socially critical film, focusing on a selfish businessman whose obsession with work threatens to destroy his marriage. While thematically intriguing, it was somewhat ponderous in execution.

      Aoyama’s films have often focused on the tension between free will and determinism. He has seemed sometimes to view human actions as wholly governed by external factors: in Embalming, for instance, the human brain can be mechanically reset like a computer. Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani, albeit more ambiguously, traced suicidal actions to the influence of a virus, and even Eureka, though more psychological in emphasis, saw violence as a kind of infection, the trauma of the original hijack leading one victim to commit murder in turn. Sad Vacation (Saddo vakeishon, 2007), about a man scarred by his mother’s desertion, also examined the way in which past events determine human behavior, a theme given a metacinematic dimension by the presence of characters from Aoyama’s own earlier work. Nevertheless, Aoyama’s recent films have generally been therapeutic in theme, charting a process of recovery. Often a change of environment permits a cure: if Eureka portrayed a countryside contaminated by urban phenomena such as crime, Desert Moon found tentative hope in the protagonists’ rejection of urban for rural life, while the suicidal heroine of Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani is cured in a remote field. In these films, the affection between individuals was also seen as grounds for hope, and it may be that Aoyama is moving towards a genuine humanism.

      The tension between freedom and determinism is reflected in Aoyama’s technique, which allows his collaborators a certain latitude to improvise: thus, he apparently often permits his regular cameraman, Masaki Tamura, to make his own choices about where and how to move the camera. This improvisional aspect relates also to Aoyama’s interest in the spontaneity of music (which cures the disease victims in Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani). Significantly, in addition to fiction features, he has directed concert films, and collaborated with students at the Film School of Tokyo on an epic documentary about music critic Akira Aida, who introduced free jazz to Japan in the 1970s. The variety and eccentricity of his work make it difficult to predict future developments, but Aoyama will likely remain an original and suggestive filmmaker.

      1996 Helpless

      Chinpira / Two Punks

      1997 Wild Life: Jump into the Dark / Wild Life

      Tsumetai chi / An Obsession (lit. Cold Blood)

      1998 Kaosu no fuchi / June 12, 1998: The Edge of Chaos

      1999 Shady Grove

      EM Embāmingu / Embalming

      2000 Eureka

      Roji e: Nakagami Kenji no nokoshita firumu / To the Alley (lit. To the Alley: The Film Left by Kenji Nakagami)

      2001 Tsuki no sabaku / Desert Moon

      2002 Sude ni oita kanojo no subete ni tsuite wa kataranu tameni / So as Not to Say Everything about Her Already Aged Self (video)

      Shiritsu tantei Hama Maiku: Namae no nai mori / A Forest with No Name

      2003 Deka matsuri / Cop Festival (co-director)

      Ajimā no uta: Uehara Tomoko tenjō no utagoe / Song of Ajima: Tomoko Uehara, Voice of Heaven

      Nokishita no narazumono mitai ni / Like a Desperado under the Eaves (short)

      Shūsei tabi nikki / Days in the Shade (short)

      2004 Reikusaido mādā kēsu / Lakeside Murder Case

      2005 Eri eri rama sabakutani / Eli, Eli, Lama Sabachthani / My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?

      2006 Kōrogi / Crickets

      AA

      2007 Saddo vakeishon / Sad Vacation

      CHIBA Yasuki

      (June 24, 1910–September 18, 1985)

      千葉泰樹

      Though remembered largely for his inventive postwar shomin-geki, Chiba specialized initially in period films before achieving commercial success with such popular romances as Hideko the Cheerleader (Hideko no ōendanchō, 1940), a vehicle for the teenage Hideko Takamine. Among his wartime films, Women’s Brick Factory (Renga jokō, 1940; released 1946), a story about female factory workers, was banned for its proletarian sentiments, while The White Mural (Shiroi hekiga, 1942), shot on location in Okinawa, was a humanist account of a doctor from the mainland treating blackwater fever among the indigenous population.

      Chiba’s reputation for love stories led him to be assigned after the war to A Certain Night’s Kiss (Aru yo no seppun, 1946), in which the Japanese cinema’s much-anticipated first kissing scene was infamously obscured by an umbrella. However, Chiba’s work in the fifties displayed a new individuality, combining personal drama with social commentary. In Sunflower Girl (Himawari musume, 1953) a woman’s affection for her boss causes conflict with her more class-conscious coworkers, while in Death Fire (Onibi, 1956) a gas company employee demands sexual favors from a poor woman in lieu of payment. Chiba was also admired for his creative use of period settings: The Happy Pilgrimage (Yajikita dōchūki, 1958) was an offbeat jidai-geki about a pair of samurai who embark on a pilgrimage to Ise in order to escape their wives. More often, however, Chiba set his films in the recent past. Downtown (Shitamachi, 1957), based on a novel by Mikio Naruse’s favorite writer, Fumiko Hayashi, conveyed the despondent mentality of the Occupation era through its depiction of a doomed romance. Crazy Guy (Okashina yatsu, 1956) recounted the life story of a rakugo performer from the twenties to the Occupation, and was remarkable for its sudden shifts from comedy to tragedy; like Downtown, it ended with an unexpected fatal accident. Chiba’s most significant work is usually considered to be the Large Size (Ōban, 1957–58) series, described by Donald Richie as “a Balzac-like chronicle of [the] various falls and rises” of an ambitious young man in the early Showa period.

      In the sixties, Chiba worked on such international co-productions as A Night in Hong Kong (Honkon no yoru, 1961) and A Star of Hong Kong (Honkon no hoshi, 1962), both sentimental stories of love affairs between Japanese men and Chinese women. With Different Sons (Futari no musuko, 1961) and The Daphne (Chinchōge, 1966), he directed melodramatic family sagas depicting difficult relationships between parents and children. Although several of his films secured foreign distribution at the time, Chiba is now neglected even in Japan. The breadth of his subject matter and his high reputation in his day suggest that he merits reappraisal.

      1930 Surōnin shōbai ōrai / Trade and Traffic of a Humble Ronin