A Critical Handbook of Japanese Film Directors. Alexander Jacoby

again explored the extremes of sexual behavior in M (2006); described by Jasper Sharp as “a Belle de Jour for the internet age,” it charted the experiences of a housewife who begins to work as a prostitute after receiving an email from a dating website.

      Beside these troubling and emotionally complex films, The Silent Big Man (Kikansha-sensei, 2004) was an unexpectedly chaste, academic work, set safely in the past, and prettily photographed against the scenic backdrops of the Inland Sea. Recalling Keisuke Kinoshita in its story of a mute teacher assigned to an island school, it lacked Kinoshita’s skill for melodrama, and though Hiroki’s dry style restrained its sentimentality somewhat, he seemed ill suited to the material. Happily, with It’s Only Talk (Yawarakai seikatsu, 2005), a subtly compelling chronicle of the life of an unemployed thirty-something woman suffering from manic depression, Hiroki returned to his more fruitful preoccupation with the problems of contemporary urban life. Here his use of locations in Tokyo’s down-at-heel Kamata district was especially well judged, anchoring the drama in a near-documentary record of a specific place. Love on Sunday (Koi suru nichiyōbi, 2006), meanwhile, revisited the territory of the director’s earliest mainstream features, exploring adolescent emotions as it charted a teenage girl’s last 24 hours in her country home. In his recent work, Hiroki has proved himself one of the modern Japanese cinema’s most intelligent students of character, as well as one of the most precise analysts of Tokyo’s twenty-first-century zeitgeist and Japan’s twenty-first-century malaise.

      1982 Seigyaku! Onna o abaku / Sexual Abuse! Exposed Woman / Urban Style

      1983 Kimata Saburō-kun no koto: Bokura no jidai / Our Generation

      Bokura no kisetsu / Our Season

      1984 Nishikawa Serina: Nozokibeya no onna / Serina Nishikawa: A Woman Peeps into the Room

      Hakuchū joshi kōsei o okasu / Raping a High School Girl in Broad Daylight

      Chikan to sukāto / Pervert and Skirt

      Sensei, watashi no karada ni hi o tsukenaide / Teacher, Don’t Turn Me On

      Mitsu ni nureru onna / Woman with Wet Juice

      1985 Yarinko Chie: Ichijiku shinsatsudai / Chie the Tart: Couch of Figs

      Bokura no shunkan / Our Moment

      1986 Hakui chōkyō / Training in a White Coat

      Kindan: Ikenie no onna / Forbidden: Sacrificed Woman

      SM kyōshitsu: Shikkin / SM Classroom: Toilet in the Wrong Place

      Tōsatsu mania: Furaidē no onna / Secret Filming Mania: Friday’s Woman

      Hatsujō musume: Guriguri asobi / Girl in Heat: Rubbing Play

      Romanko kurabu: Ecchi ga ippai / Club Romanko: Highly Sexed

      1987 Kobayashi Hitomi no honshō / The True Self of Hitomi Kobayashi

      1988 Kikuchi Eri: Kyonyūzeme / Eri Kikuchi: Huge Breasts

      Seijuku onna / Holy Mature Woman

      1989 Dōtei monogatari 4: Boku mo sukī ni tsuretette / Story of a Male Virgin: Take Me Skiing Too

      1990 Sawako no koi: Jōzuna uso no ren’ai kōza / A Love Affair with Sawako (lit. Sawako’s Love: Lecture on Convincing Lies in Love)

      1991 Ji go ro: Āban naito sutōrī / Gigolo: Urban Night Story

      1993 Maōgai: Sadisuchikku shitī / Sadistic City (video)

      1994 Muma / Evil Dream

      800 Two Lap Runners

      1995 Kimi to itsu made mo / Forever with You

      Gerende ga tokeru hodo koi shitai / I Want to Make Love Until the Ski Slopes Melt

      1996 “Monogatari kara ashibyōshi” yori: Midori / Midori

      1999 Tenshi no misuterareta yoru / The Night the Angel Turned Away

      2000 Futei no kisetsu / I Am an S and M Writer (lit. Season of Adultery)

      Tōkyō gomi onna / Tokyo Trash Baby

      2001 Bikyaku meiro / Labyrinth of Leg Fetishism

      2002 Rihatsu tenshu no kanashimi / The Barber’s Sadness

      2003 Deka matsuri / Cop Festival (co-director)

      Vaiburēta / Vibrator

      2004 Kikansha-sensei / The Silent Big Man (lit. Mr. Locomotive)

      Gārufurendo / Girlfriend: Someone Please Stop the World

      L’Amant

      2005 Female (co-director)

      Yawarakai seikatsu / It’s Only Talk

      2006 Koi suru nichiyōbi / Love on Sunday

      Yokan / Premonition (short)

      M

      2007 Koi suru nichiyōbi: Watashi: Koi shita / Love on Sunday: I Did Love

      HONDA Ishirō

      (May 7, 1911–February 28, 1993)

      本多猪四郎

      The most famous director of Japanese monster movies or kaijū-eiga, Honda served as assistant at Toho to several directors, most notably Kajirō Yamamoto on Horse (Uma, 1941), Kato’s Falcon Fighters (Katō hayabusa sentōtai, 1944), and numerous comedies starring the clown Enoken (Ken’ichi Enomoto). After war service, he assisted Akira Kurosawa on Stray Dog (1949) before returning to Toho to become a director in his own right, working at first on documentaries. His fiction debut, The Blue Pearl (Aoi shinju, 1951), already revealed an interest in special effects as Honda used an underwater camera to record scenes of women diving for pearls. Eagle of the Pacific (Taiheiyō no washi, 1953) was a spectacular war film, but the course of Honda’s career was fixed by Godzilla (Gojira, 1954), a famous science fiction movie about an attack on Tokyo by a giant lizard, which achieved international distribution in a cut, dubbed version incorporating new footage starring Raymond Burr.

      Honda continued to specialize in science fiction for the rest of his career, realizing numerous sequels to Godzilla, including some in which the monster encountered such figures from Western fantasy as Frankenstein and King Kong. Among his other notable monsters was the eponymous giant moth of Mothra (Mosura, 1961). These films retain a considerable sociological fascination: Godzilla’s rampages expressed Japanese anxieties about natural disasters and recalled the wartime devastation of the nation’s cities. Radiation was also a preoccupation: Godzilla was originally woken by nuclear tests, while, in The Mysterians (Chikyū bōeigun, 1957) about an invasion from space, the aliens have suffered genetic damage through nuclear war. Admittedly, these concerns were expressed in the scripts rather than through any directorial subtleties: Honda’s style was generally anonymous and pedestrian. His audiences were doubtless more interested in spectacle than in mise-en-scène, and his technique was likely restricted by the need to showcase Eiji Tsuburaya’s special effects. As evidence, one may note that Matango (1963), which used effects sparingly and was mainly a claustrophobic study of tensions among the marooned survivors of a shipwreck, was rather efficiently directed. Even so, Honda is remembered more because his name happens to be attached to some famous titles than because of any personal distinction. After retiring from direction, he collaborated again with his old friend and colleague Akira Kurosawa, working as an assistant and second-unit director on Kagemusha (1980), Ran (1985), Dreams (Yume, 1990), and Madadayo (Mādadayo, 1993).

      1949 Kyōdō kumiai no hanashi / A Story of a Co-Op

      1950 Iseshima / Ise Island

      1951 Aoi shinju / The Blue Pearl

      1952 Nangoku no hada / Skin of the South

      Minato e kita otoko / The Man Who Came to Port

      1953 Zoku shishunki / Adolescence 2

      Taiheiyō no washi / Eagle