As I posted here yesterday, this year’s New York Asian Film Festival features an impressive lineup of Japanese films - many of which will be screened for the first time in the US. Ryo Iwamatsu’s Then Summer Came will be screened for the first time anywhere, so I figured it’s as good a time as any to write about it. We first heard about this one last summer around this time when it was going by its working title “Soshite Natsu ga Kita” which actually does mean “Then Summer Came”. The Japanese title was then changed to “Tamio no Shiawase” which means “Happiness of Tamio”. The film is Iwamatsu’s first as a director since 1993’s “Ohaka to Rikon”. He’s more widely known as an actor, with roles in films like “In the Pool” and “Adrift in Tokyo”, but his work as a playwright and director has earned him a lot of respect within the industry.

The story revolves around a father named Nobuo (Yoshio Harada) and his son Tamio (Joe Odagiri). Both of them are kind of irresponsible - stuck in the trappings of their past, with neither seeming to be able to shed their respective roles as father and son. With Tamio’s marriage to his girlfriend (Kumiko Aso) rapidly approaching, both men are overwhelmed by everyone telling them what to do. The pair go to extraordinary and occasionally ridiculous lengths to make sure the wedding is memorable.

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Shingo Matsubara’s The Taste of Fish (Tsukiji Uogashi Sandaime) comes out this Saturday after already having premiered at Cannes back on May 15th, and with a sequel already in the works it looks like it will become a franchise of yearly films if it’s even moderately successful. It all seems a bit odd to me, mostly because I can’t picture Takao Osawa ever being known as “that fish dude” in the way Kiyoshi Atsumi became synonymous with Torajiro in the Tora-san series, but I guess time will tell.

The story is based on a 21-part manga series originally published in Big Comic. Osawa plays Shuntaro Akagi, a successful businessman who works in the human resources department of a general trading company. His life is going well both financially and personally, and marriage to his girlfriend Asuka (Rena Tanaka) may be on the horizon. One day Shuntaro’s superiors put him in charge of a large-scale corporate restructuring, and the list of people being axed includes an old boss who taught him the ropes. Shuntaro is extremely conflicted, but his attention is diverted when he has to help out at “Dragon Fish”, the fish trading company normally run by Asuka’s now-ailing father. Shuntaro is initially overwhelmed by both the characters he meets at Tsukiji Fish Market and the traditions that have been passed down through the generations of people that work there, but over time his sense of taste becomes more of an asset than his business savvy ever was and he starts to enjoy the quirkiness of his new job much more than the cutthroat nature of his old one.

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I realize tearjerkers have been popular lately in Japan, but making another adaptation of Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no Haka) may just be the tipping point. For those who haven’t seen the 1988 Studio Ghibli anime by Isao Takahata, believe me when I tell you that it’s one of the most depressingly sad movies I’ve ever seen in my life. And it’s not that it’s not an amazing film - it is. It’s just that after seeing the original I’m not sure I’d put myself through that again. The fact that a theatrical version has been made just 2+ years after NTV broadcast a live-action adaptation of its own makes me wonder if Japanese moviegoers are just gluttons for emotional punishment.

The story, based on a semi-autobiographical novel written by Akiyuki Nosaka, is about a teenage boy named Seita (Reo Yoshitake) and his 5-year-old sister Setsuko (Rina Hatakeyama). They get separated from their mother (Seiko Matsuda) during an air raid and later find out that she’s been mortally wounded. With their father off fighting in the war as a naval officer Seita and Setsuko are taken in by a distant aunt (Keiko Matsuzaka) and her family. She’s kind at first, but when rationing causes food to become scarce her attitude toward them grows cold. Unable to bear her anymore, the two kids go out on their own and fend for themselves while living in a nearby cave. Setsuko gets increasingly ill due to malnutrition and Seita is forced to steal food from a farm and rob empty houses during air raids.

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Even though The Machine Girl will be released on DVD here in the US tomorrow, it won’t be released in Japan until August 2nd. So in preparation for that date Spotted Productions has posted a new trailer on YouTube. It seems a little less stylized than the original and the new music has a 70s vibe. Here it is, followed by the old one after the break:

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When it comes to recent Japanese period dramas, there’s probably not a surer thing than adapting a Shuhei Fujisawa novel. Yoji Yamada’s samurai trilogy - The Twilight Samurai, The Hidden Blade, and Love and Honor were all based on Fujisawa’s work and now Tetsuo Shinohara (Heaven’s Bookstore, Riding the Metro) is trying his hand at adapting the short story Yamazakura. In the movie Rena Tanaka (Drugstore Girl, Gegege no Kitaro) plays Noe Isomura, a woman in the midst of her second marriage. After her first husband died, she had the choice of several possible candidates for an arranged marriage. She finally settled on Shouzaemon Isomura (Tetsuya Chiba), choosing him over a man named Tezuka (Noriyuki Higashiyama) because Tezuka already had a child. Unfortunately Isomura is kind of a pompous jerk who’s completely obsessed with the samurai lifestyle and amassing wealth. Noe is soon trapped in a miserable home life that her own fairly arbitrary decision caused.

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