Recent viewings, recent reads, and my fascination with Japanese culture

Recently I’ve been watching the Zatoichi films. Have you heard of Zatoichi, the blind masseur/swordsman? The original series consists of 26 films featuring Shintaro Katsu (or Katsu Shintaro if you prefer the Japanese order), from 1962 to 1989. Fun stuff. All available on the Criterion Channel (hmm, this looks like an ad, I should be paid). 

I’ve seen 8 films so far (in the wrong order), and my favourites are Zatoichi Goes to the Fire Festival, Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold, and Zatoichi Challenged. Watch those if you don’t intend to go through all 26 films. And if you’ve ever wondered what happens when we mix chanbara/ chambara (a Japanese genre) and wuxia (a Chinese genre), wonder no more: you can watch Zatoichi and the One-Armed Swordsman, with Jimmy Wang Yu as Wang Kang from the One-Armed Swordsman series. 

There’s also Zatoichi Meets Yojimbo (yes, Toshiro Mifune). 

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I also saw Kokuho (2025), which I thought was quite good. The main character is Kikuo, the son of a murdered yakuza boss, who becomes an apprentice to a kabuki actor and performs as onnagata (playing female roles), and the film is about the hard work he has to do and the high price he has to pay to become a national treasure (kokuho). 

The only problem—which is about me rather than the film—is that I don’t know kabuki (a classical form of Japanese theatre) and therefore don’t know whether someone is acting well or badly, whether a dance movement is good, when and how an actor outperforms another (which is rather important here), and so on. Nevertheless, it’s an interesting portrayal of an artist willing to sacrifice everything for art.

But perhaps it’s a good thing that I know nothing about kabuki—Ryo Yoshizawa, the lead actor, trained for about a year and a half to do the role—I might have got annoyed the way I do when watching Hollywood actors do Shakespeare (I’m looking at you, Frances McDormand). 

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After English-language cinema (obvious reasons), Japanese cinema is the one I know the best. So many great films. So many great directors. 

If I am to make a list of 10 favourite Japanese films, my list would look different tomorrow. How do you choose? The 50s and 60s are especially wonderful: lots of masterpieces by Mizoguchi, Kurosawa, and Ozu, but also Kwaidan, Gate of Hell, Harakiri, Woman of the Dunes, The Mad Fox, The Insect Woman, the Zatoichi films, the films of Naruse, and so on. Contemporary Japanese cinema I know less well, but Kokuho is good, Kore-eda is good. 

Last year, I also discovered anime (if you’re prejudiced against it, so was I, but there’s anime and there’s anime). My favourite is Satoshi Kon. 

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You know sometimes you watch a film and think it has to be a film and wouldn’t work in any other medium? I’m talking about films which blur the line between reality and fantasy, which convey through images something ineffable, which try to reach something beyond the intellect, such as Persona, Cries and Whispers, 8 ½, The Exterminating Angel, Perfect Blue, Paprika, etc.

I just read a collection of Akutagawa’s stories and thought “Shadows” should instead have been a film—as a short story, it’s clumsy and awkward. It’s the only story in the collection that I think doesn’t quite work, though I like that concept for a film. 

(Not going into details as I don’t want to spoil the ending). 

 

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After quitting on Barbara Pym, I read a collection of 22 short stories by Akutagawa, translated by Richard Melhurst, which I bought in Jakarta (yes, I'm showing off). One of my favourite short story writers (“Hell Screen” especially), but for some reason I’ve never been able to write about him. 

This book is quite different from the collection of 18 stories translated by Jay Rubin and published by Penguin. Some of the stories, like “The Liquor Worm”, “The Devil and Tobacco”, or “The Dogs and the Flute”, were probably based on, or inspired by, fairytales. The stories that surprised me most were “The Ball”, “Autumn”, “The Flatcar”, and “Genkaku Cottage”, which felt Chekhovian. Very different from the strange, intense image I’ve always had of Akutagawa, these stories also have the subtlety and sensitivity one finds in Chekhov. 

Such a versatile writer. 

I didn’t reread “Hell Screen”, “Rashomon” and “In a Grove” (which formed Kurosawa’s Rashomon), and “The Nose”. Among the new stories, my favourites are possibly “Genkaku Cottage” (about the people around the dying Genkaku, especially his wife Otori, his mistress Oyoshi, and his nurse Kono), “Autumn” (about two sisters who love the same man), “Du Zichun” (about a man who wants to become a wizard), “An Odd Tale” (about a woman who has a husband in the war), and “Otomi” (about a young woman and a cat). 

Akutagawa might be my favourite Japanese writer, or at least my favourite modern Japanese writer.