I saw this film in the cinema and was really captivated by the story.
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I didn’t recognize the name but upon checking the Wiki, I do remember Sailor Jupiter…
Not a bad film at all!
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サンダカン八番娼館 望郷 / Sandakan No. 8 - 1974, Kei Kumai
A journalist interviews an old woman who was forced into prostitution, just like many other Japanese women working in Asia outside of Japan during the first half of the 20th century. She worked in a Malaysian brothel called Sandakan 8.
Based on a non-fiction novel by Tomoko Yamazaki, it uncovers a little bit of (conveniently forgotten, maybe) history, another stain on Japan’s past. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the state turned a blind eye towards the selling into effectively slavery of girls from poor families. They’d be smuggled out to other countries in the Pacific, first to work as maids in brothels then when old enough as prostitutes. And thus I learned the Japanese name for them was Karayuki-san / 唐行きさん . Those who made it through (and not all did, as painfully shown in the last scenes of the film) and returned home were shunned by their kin and community.
The film itself may have a bit of theatre-like acting at times, but nonetheless it’s a poignant and compassionate telling of one such woman’s life, told in flashbacks. Both actresses portraying Osaki (one young, the other old) do a good job, the ageing Kinuyo Tanaka being the standout.
(not going to give it a score, non-fiction even dramatized isn’t easily slotted in)
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Changing the formatting a bit, it makes more sense to not force people to click to expand details for the summary/blurb 
ミッシング / Missing
2024, Keisuke Yoshida
A little girl vanishes while walking, leaving her family devastated. Three months pass without clues and the family makes contact with a local TV station for interviews, in an effort to retain the public attention on the case and perhaps receive some helpful tips from the audience.
But as the TV head honchos chase sensationalism and social media users unleash the hate, the already bad situation snowballs downhill.
and the by now usual rant :)
It’s a made-for-TV film and while it’s clear it did not have big budget, it’s well put together with good script and direction (aside for a couple of missteps) and generally good acting.
The ending may leave some wanting, but I thought it worked very well.
The leading lady Satomi Ishihara is excellent, putting in a strong, raw performance as the despairing mother Saori, ridden by (unjustfied) guilt. She carries the whole film, practically.
The father may seem to us unaturally distant and restrained (although there are enough side moments to show him caring in his own way), but I have a feeling his behaviour is appropriate for the Japanese culture.
Broacast media’s handling of the case may seem too on the nose, but it’s likely closer to the truth than we’d like it to be. Social media reactions… well, no surprises there - if anything, it’s perhaps too “by the books”.
The one thing that didn’t quite work for me was the character of Saori’s brother, a little exaggerated in his introversion and social awkwardness but again, it’s probably something that works for a Japanese audience.
7.5-8/10
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Watched 光 recently. Found it okay, nothing special with the plot but the theme was interesting: blindness and losing sight as an adult (also the picture chosen for the movie totally spoils the end, what were they thinking)
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I’ve seen a couple others from Naomi Kawase, but not this one. Sounds like, yeah… she’s a master of “decent/good-not-great” 
:
Which is perfectly fine… I’m a-gonna look this one up. Thank you!
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Hehe nice, happy that I can still stumble upon movies that you haven’t seen yet 
Do you have any stats from IMDB? Number of movies watched total? Number of Japanese movies watched?
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Weeeell… Funny you should ask
I have been keeping track of watched, owned and wishlisted films in a spreadsheet, but a couple of days ago I (finally?) signed up with Letterboxd.
I screwed up the import of all watched… naturally! 
so I spent all otherwise Satori time fixing that 
Just for the current year, and everything else appears to have been watched in a single day 31 Dec 2023 
and I doubt I’ll have the will (and energy) to sort down further than that, though.
But I did put together a list for Japanese films - 141 watched since Oct last.
The ones I liked most have ratings, I may add for the rest too or maybe not. Going forward I’ll try to rate all new entries.
As for all I’ve watched regardless of language, at least since I started keeping track properly - looks like I am now at 2791, but the real number is probably well over 3000 as I’m missing some good 15-16 years before the spreadsheet
EDIT-
Ugh, one big problem I see with Letterboxd is that it now took me just 3 clicks to get from yesterday’s film in my diary to a stranger’s lists of Japanese films and I see there a WHOLE LOT of titles I hadn’t even heard of before and now I am very interested… Oh, dear me noooo!
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Ah cool! I’m glad I asked! Impressive numbers (especially for all movies). I’m at around 40 Japanese movies.
Never heard of Letterboxd before, seems to be doing the job nicely, even though the name is not very telling.
Haha that’s the best kind of problems!
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Well I’m at 0 books read vs your 5 (or more now?) and all the manga, so I think you win 
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I think you are having as much fun as I’m having, so I’d say we are both winning
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I like to watch Japanese movies with English subtitles to help to practice my Japanese but I don’t have access to very many. I get to go to Japan about once a year though and I always watch Japanese films on the plane. One of my favorites is a comedy starring Sadao Abe who is a well known comedian. He kind of reminds me of Jim Carrey. In English it is called “The Apology King” and is about a man who starts a company that apologizes for people. Hijinks ensue. Another one of his films is “Maiko Haaaan!” about a man who dreams of playing strip baseball with a Maiko. A recent film that has gotten a lot of attention is “Shoplifters” about a family that lives off the grid in a big city. Oh and if you are a Kurosawa fan I highly recommend “Ikiru”, (to live). It may be his greatest film and many film critics have it in their ten best lists. Without giving too much away it is about a man’s search for the meaning of life. He finds a pretty good answer too.
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Oh yes! This one got popular around here too!
I don’t know any of the other ones that you mention, I’m intrigued, especially for the last one, thanks!
Yes Ikiru is a great film and if you have only seen Kurosawa’s samurai epics ( which are great!). You will be very surprised by it. It may seem a bit slow moving but it is very profound. We all know that we will die someday but we put it out of mind. In Ikiru a man must face his impending death and decide what to do with the limited time he has left. Definitely watch it if you can.
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It looks like I’ve reached an interesing, if annoying, stage where I recognize a decent amount of vocab so that I can try to make out the rest of unknowns in a sentence (if it’s a relatively short one) in my head using the English translation for reference.
The trouble is, by the time I am done with one sentence, they’ve already said another three that I missed and the action has moved on so I have to rewind way more often than I’d like
It’s at last scheduled to be my Japanese viewing for today
Watched it once a long time ago, so far back that I don’t really remember it… I now have the 4k UHD and it’ll be due a rewatch soon enough.
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Aaand… I’ve watched it! Shoplifters, that is
万引き家族 / Shoplifters
2018, Hirokazu Kore-eda
In a not so glamorous corner of Tokyo, a makeshift family of 6 (5+1) make do with whatever they can, including the titular shoplifting.
Thoughts below, but in a nutshell, I’ll quote a random Internet dude who’s apparently much better than I at “short and to the point”:
And my musings
Kore-eda asks, and perhaps successfully answers, “What makes a family?”.
The father, mother, children, aunt and grandmother here don’t have blood ties, instead it’s their loyalty to the “family unit” that binds them through both good and bad.
With the two ‘parents’ stuck on part-time jobs they all live in poverty, but not in squalor or neglect. The two ‘children’ were rescued (if it’s not too strong a term) from such conditions - they are now loved and loving.
Moreover, somehow they all still find good reasons to enjoy this kind of life, even in the face of tragedy. Just maybe not in the face of the law…
And the film could have ended there at around 90mins, and it would have been a very nice outing, maybe all done “by the numbers” and still with plenty of the usual Kore-eda magic.
But, also in his usual fashion, he then proceeds to slap us with another 30mins of harsh reality, wanting maybe to point out that real life is not quite exactly what Hollywood sells us.
And I’d wager that this uncomfortable final part is 1) what prevented it from taking home an Oscar and 2) what earned the film a Palme d’Or at Cannes… and some other 48 awards in total.
The cinematography is the standard Kore-eda fare, that is to say almost perfect - While watching it I noted about a dozen timestamps suitable for a snap to include here, and as I’m writing this I still haven’t decided which I’ll use.
The acting is good all around, even from the young ones. Sakura Ando in particular puts out one her best performances, I had seen her in three others but she does knock it out of the park here. Don’t expect fireworks from her or anyone else though, as the acting is low-key throughout, natural and believable.
And speaking of ‘natural’: there’s a single “romance” scene here, which in its entirety - initiation, (hidden) act, immediate aftermath plus attempted followup, and then the conclusion - is (for me) one of the best done in recent memory.
9.5/10
(Yes, that’s likely too high a score for anyone else who’s watched it, but this Kore-eda dude has a certain way of speaking directly to me, I can’t help fall in love with his work )
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Haha well said random Internet dude.
I enjoyed your review too!
Have you watched Monster yet from Kore-eda? It’s on my list but haven’t gotten to it yet
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Thank you!
Monster was my introduction to Kore-eda, oh and to Sakura Ando as well
Looking back now, I don’t think I appreciated it in full at the time, a rewatch at some point might be more rewarding, now that I understand him a little better.
What made me fall in love with his work was a combination of Maborosi and After Life, one after the other in that order. The way I see them… well: the first is a meditation on death by the living, the second one also meditation, but on life by the dead… and thus he became my favourite (living and still in activity) director
I’m now at 11 watched from Kore-eda (only one misstep - Hana), with 4 more to go plus the TV show. At one per month should last me until early 2025, no need to rush it
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The 2000s are next…
ベロニカは死ぬことにした / Veronika Decides to Die
2005, Kei Horie
Depressed with the emptiness in her life, Towa attempts suicide.
She wakes up in a strange sanatorium, with only 7 days to live. Surrounded by strange staff and nutty patients, she tries to find meaning in the little time she has left and experience things she didn’t allow herself before.
my take
Going in I knew this wasn’t going to be particularly good, but… how could I say no to more Yoko Maki?!?
While it does have some basic common ground with Kore-eda’s After Life, in the “7 days left” and the purgatory/limbo realm, it doesn’t get anywhere near that one in terms of quality and message.
I don’t think it’s the fault of the filmmaker but rather of the source material - mind you, I haven’t read the novel, one other by the same author was quite enough for me
It’s quite weird, with waaay over the top acting theater-like (Western not Kabuki) by design, and often incoherent in stitching together largely unrelated sequences.
Quite a few things don’t make sense in a Japanese setting (like too much unrestrained public display of emotion), I wonder if it would have been a better film had they attempted to “localize” the story?
There’s also a (semi) NSFW masturbation scene that for me at least had quite the opposite effect vs the intention, did not like it at all and felt it cheapened Yoko Maki - not necessarily her character, though.
Language-wise, it felt like one of the easier to get into, with often slow, clear and not overly-complicated speech.
6/10 for the film, but otherwise the lady is still 10/10 for yours truly
(The Ravine of Goodbye remains her best effort by far)
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Right, well… since we were talking about a certain director…
萌の朱雀 / Suzaku
1997, Naomi Kawase
Moments in the life of a family (husband and wife, daughter, nephew and husband’s ageing mother) in a remote Japanese village, tucked in the mountains… and the family’s eventual dissolution.
my take
Shot in a documentary-like fashion, yet a work of fiction.
The themes revolve around change (progress? hmmm…) and the dissolving of a traditional way of life, but it covers these ideas by taking the usual Japanese slowness to soaring new heights
There’s very little dialogue, the director preferring instead to focus on what is not said / directly expressed by the characters, neither in the face of tragedy nor in that of unrequited love within an awkward triangle.
That’s not at all bad in itself, but it can feel a little too… silent and motionless, at times. It surely felt considerably longer than it actually was (I watched half last night, half this afternoon) 
Having said that…
It can be fascinating at times in its quietness, and the cinematography does have moments of beauty.
… and perhaps with better image quality it could have been appreciated more - there are some scenes in the dark where it felt we were meant to see facial expressions but it’s all a murky mess on this transfer, poor even by DVD standards at least when upscaled on a 4k screen.
This is now my third Naomi Kawase film.
Like with the previous ones, there are aspects to enjoy, it’s just that there are also aspects that drag them down, never quite reaching “great”.
Another 7/10, then.
(But it doesn’t feel fair, however. Must we really slap a rating on it?)
… and yet… although I can’t really explain it, I feel this urge to check out more of hers, for those tiny traces of fairy dust
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