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Vitro NasuIconoclastic Incubator
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Yayoi 
Yayoi Kusama with one of her Infinity Net paintings in New York, c. 1961
Tokyo B
Yayoi Kusama at Tokyo Bay 1993
Both photos (via Red List)
Yayoi Kusama banned journalists from her studio.
Dolls trailer (Directed by Takeshi Kitano, Poland gave this the best film award – costume design by Yoji Yamamoto)
Name these girls – Happy Hinamatsuri ablum
The custom of displaying dolls began during the Heian period. Formerly, people believed the dolls possessed the power to contain bad spirits. Hinamatsuri traces its origins to an ancient Japanese custom called hina-nagashi (雛流し, lit. “doll floating”), in which straw hina dolls are set afloat on a boat and sent down a river to the sea, supposedly taking troubles or bad spirits with them.(via wiki)
Meet Jesse 
Captive Girls (previous post)
Yumeji (Kenji Sawada as Yumeji, artist/illustrator)
Branded to Kill (Shishido Joe tried plastic surgery on his cheeks to get more work as an actor)
See the trailer (Branded to Kill – youtube)
Seijun Suzuki dies aged 93 -
Seijun Suzuki who inspired Tarantino and Jarmusch dies at 93
Film-maker who paired pop art visuals and yakuza hitmen in Tokyo Drifter leaves behind a singular, surreal body of work that gained international acclaim
Seijun Suzuki 
Naomi Kawase
Sweet Bean (Nytimes) - A delicacy unites a vendor and an old woman.
Cannes festival.
Kiki, for whom After the Storm is her fifth Koreeda film, described the director as among one of the most observant she has seen in her 55-year career.
Koreeda’s new film, After the Storm.
Still Walking 
Still Walking – Hirokazu Kore eda (previous post)
Autumn Moon directed by Clara Law
Full film ofAutumn Moon by Clara Law here (Youtube)
Mystery Train - Jim Jarmusch
Nagatoshi in Cold Fever.
Irezumi 
(Directed by Yasuzo Masumura)
“This painting shows your future,” Seikichi said, pointing to the woman under the cherry tree — the very image of the young girl, “All these men will ruin their lives for you.”— “The Tattooer” by Junichiro Tanizaki
Manji 
(Ayako Wakao, Funakoshi, Kyoto Kishida)
Manji directed by Masumura.
The Key to Junichiro Tanizaki
(See a trailer of Berlin Affair, and Makioka Sisters and film still of the Key – previous post)
O-Yu Sama 
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Baron Raimund von Stillfried, also known as Baron Raimund von Stillfried-Rathenitz, was an Austrian photographer.
(See more photos )here.
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Japan times book review of Baron Raimund von sillfried – a pioneer photographer.
Baron Raimund von Stillfried, a 19th-century pioneer of photography in Yokohama, was the first in Japan to recognize the new medium’s potential as a global marketing tool. Adept at producing theatrical souvenir photos, Stillfried also took the first ever photograph of Emperor Meiji and shocked Vienna when he imported Japanese teenage girls to the city to work in a mock teahouse.
Portrait of Emperor Meiji 
by Von Stillfried
More about Enigmatic Emperor by Donald Keene here.
Baron Raimund von Stillfried, Furniture Shop, hand-coloured albumen silver photograph, c. 1875,
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Kenji Mizoguchi and actresses on the set of his film “Street of Shame (Akasen Chitai)
Kenji Mizoguchi (溝口 健二 Mizoguchi Kenji, May 16, 1898 – August 24, 1956)
10 Essential Films- Kenji Mizoguchi
Some must-see titles from the long career of one of the great masters of Japanese cinema, famed for his exquisite travelling shots and fierce critiques of his country’s patriarchal inequality.
Sansho Dayu
Based on an ancient legend, as recounted by celebrated author Mori Ōgai (in his short story of the same name, written in 1915), and adapted by Mizoguchi, Sanshō Dayū [Sanshō the Steward, aka Sanshō the Bailiff] is both distinctively Japanese and as deeply affecting as a Greek tragedy. Described in its opening title as “one of the oldest and most tragic in Japan’s history”, Mizoguchi depicts an unforgettably sad story of social injustice, family love, and personal sacrifice – all conveyed with exquisite tone and purity of emotion. Master of Cinema
Oharu 
Tanak Kinuyo as Oharu.. she was his muse.
Ayako Wakao 
with Michio Kogure..from Sisters of Gion.
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Yamada Isuzu in Sisters of gion, (Mizoguchi)
Osaka elegy, (Mizoguchi)
Okada as Judge 
from Water Magician/Taki no Shiraito’
Water magician
Donald Richie writes that this was the first of Mizoguchi’s “woman’s pictures.” By this, he is referring to the many movies that Mizoguchi made which featured female lead roles and heroines.
Mori Ogai (previous post)
Tatsumi Hijikata 
Kamaitachi #40 (Hijikata Tatsumi), 1965 by Eikoh Hosoe
Tatsumi Hijikata His wiki shows a photo of Hijikata and Sada Abe (In the Realm of Senses by Nagisa Oshima was loosely based on Sada Abe)
Hijikata undertook his first Ankoku Butoh performance, Kinjiki, in 1959, using a novel by Yukio Mishima as the raw input material for an abrupt, sexually-inflected act of choreographic violence which stunned its audience. At around that time, Hijikata met three figures who would be crucial collaborators for his future work: Yukio Mishima, Eikoh Hosoe, and Donald Richie In 1962,
Yukio Mishima and Hijikata in Barakei – 1961 photographed by Eiko Hosoe.
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Title: Shinjuku Turmoil
Hijikata posed for Shomei Tomatsu 1970 (master photographer)
Keiya Ouchida, Hosotan, film de 1972. Chorégraphie de Tatsumi Hijikata.
Courtesy Cinémathèque de la danse © Collection Cinémathèque de la danse
Eiko Hosoe photographed Kauzo Ohno
Kazuo Ohno – previous post
Photo by Mario Ambrosius
Kojin Karatani Love and Empathy for the Oppressed Remembering Tsushima Yuko.
It is not well known in Japan that Yūko Tsushima was a strong candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She wrote a wide variety of works that were entirely worthy of the award, and she was active internationally. If only she had lived a little longer, she would probably have won. Also, I walked with her a number of times in demonstrations against nuclear power in front of the Diet. It is sad to think that I can’t do that any more.
Asahi Shimbun, February 23, 2016
(Translated by Geraldine Harcourt)
Kojin Kartani - and Natsume Soseki (previous post)
Tsushima Yuko (wiki) (30 March 1947 – 18 February 2016), known by her pen name Yūko Tsushima (津島 佑子 Tsushima Yūko), was a Japanese fiction writer, essayist and critic.[1] She was the daughter of famed novelist Osamu Dazai, who committed suicide when she was one year old
Takako Matsui and Tadanobu Asano
Villon’s Wife is based on the 1947 semi-autographical short work of the same name Villon’s Wife by Dazai Osamu. The title was inspired by 15th century French poet Francois Villon.
Dazai Osamu (1909-1948) was born about halfway between Kawabata Yasunari (1899-1972) and Mishima Yukio (1925-1970) and Abe Kobo (1924-1993), and, in that generation following the Pacific War, when Japan was occupied by Americans, his celebrity came in between, too. Kawabata was an established writer while Mishima and Abe were building their early reputations (Mishima to establish his much younger), and Dazai was, for a time, the most distinguished writer in town–so an important 20th century Japanese novelist–making him Mishima’s early competition. And Mishima saw him as representing all that he most despised in post-war Japanese fiction, hated to be compared to him.
A number of his most popular works, such as Shayō and No longer human (Ningen Shikkaku), are considered modern-day classics in Japan. With a semi-autobiographical style and transparency into his personal life, Dazai’s stories have intrigued the minds of many readers. His books also bring about awareness to a number of important topics such as human nature, mental illness, social relationships, and postwar Japan.
“It’s very easy to show emotions in drama: the actors cry or laugh and this conveys sad or happy feelings to the audience. But this is mere explanation. Can we really portray a man’s personality and dignity by appealing to emotions? I want to make people feel what life is like without delineating dramatic ups and downs.” –Yasujirō Ozu
See teapots from his films
See Ozu paraphenelia from Brutus.. (his gourmet notebook is charming.. with maps to the restaurants)
Both Aki Kaurismaki and Hou Hsiao-Hsien called Ozu the mathematician.
Aki on Ozu (youtube)
Hou on Ozu (youtube)
Setsuko Hara – wiki (June 17, 1920 – September 5, 2015)
Ozu was born on Dec 12, 1903.. he passed away on his birthday Dec 12 1963.
We were deeply saddened to learn today of the passing of the great Setsuko Hara, star and soul of so many of the masterpiece creations of Yasujiro Ozu—among her many other memorable roles during the golden age of Japanese cinema. To pay tribute, we present again a beautiful piece on the legendary Ozu-Hara collaboration, by another great—Donald Richie
In retrospect, the reason for her decision seems evident. Our Noriko, for so many years troubled by the demands of society on one hand and the needs of the self on the other, finally decided. She would do what she wanted. And she did. All attempts to lure her out over the years have been rebuffed. When a documentary was made on Ozu, she refused to appear, just as, when he died, she did not attend his funeral. Setsuko Hara was her own person at last.
“Like Garbo, Hara came to represent an ideal of womanliness, nobility and generosity,” David Thomson wrote in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film. And like Garbo, she held her public at a distance.
“Every Japanese actor can play the role of a soldier, and every Japanese actress can play the role of a prostitute to some extent,” Ozu said of her. “However, it is rare to find an actress who can play the role of a daughter from a good family.”
Ms. Hara, who never married and leaves no immediate family members, made more than 100 films. She worked with the director Mikio Naruse on several movies and with Ozu on “Early Summer” (1951), “Tokyo Twilight” (1957) and “Late Autumn” (1960).
She teamed up with Mr. Kurosawa for a second time in 1951 in “The Idiot,” based on the Dostoyevsky novel. She was cast as the love interest of the title character and of a roguish aristocrat played by Toshiro Mifune. The film was not well received. Her last film before her retirement was Hiroshi Inagaki’s “Chushingura,” a retelling of the classic tale of the 47 ronin, a band of 18th-century samurai bent on avenging their slain leader. When she went into seclusion, Japanese filmgoers mourned. To them, Ms. Hara was more than an actress; she was, in some way, the soul of Japan itself. The novelist Shusaku Endo once wrote, of seeing a Hara film, “We would sigh or let out a great breath from the depths of our hearts, for what we felt was precisely this: Can it be possible that there is such a woman in this world?”
Akiyuki Nosaka dies at 85.
After surviving the U.S. air raids on Kobe toward the end of World War II, Nosaka dealt with the war in many of his works.
(He was against war.)
Punching Nagisa Oshima at the award ceremony..
Nagisa Oshima (previous post)
The Pornographers – Akiyuki Nosaka
There is a peculiar balancing act at work in any book where the main characters are essentially criminals. Nosaka gets away with it all by making Subuyan a figure of comedy who never completely twigs to how pathetic he really is.
Nosaka is another example of a criminally undertranslated Japanese author. His best-known work in the West is not even his, per se, but the Studio Ghibli animated adaptation of his story Grave of the Fireflies.
Grave of the Fireflies
Shusaku Endo
Photo by Mario A
His books reflect many of his childhood experiences, including the stigma of being an outsider, the experience of being a foreigner, the life of a hospital patient, and the struggle with TB. However, his books mainly deal with the moral fabric of life. His Catholic faith can be seen at some level in all of his books and it is often a central feature. Most of his characters struggle with complex moral dilemmas, and their choices often produce mixed or tragic results. His work may often be compared to that of Graham Greene.
Silence 
Martin Scorsese and Shusaku Endo’s ‘Silence’
Shusaku Endo – born on 27 March 1923 in Tokyo – moved with his family to Dailan in Manchuria while still very young. He stayed there until the age of 10 when his mother took him back to Japan after divorcing his father. After returning to Japan to live in Kobe with his mother and an aunt, those early years in Manchuria may have created in Endo a sense of alienation from mainstream Japanese culture that profoundly affected him. The defining moment of his life, however, was his baptism as a Catholic in 1934. His struggles to reconcile himself with a faith that was and still is very much a minority in Japan, his experiences as an outsider and with hospitalization for pleurisy and tuberculosis – all of these deeply impacted his sensibilities and thematic preoccupations as a novelist.
Tadanobu Asano replaced Ken Watanabe. He played the interpreter for the priests in “Silence”.
Sea and Poison
Kei Kumai
Wonderful Fool
Shusaku Endo was an extremely funny man, a satirist who made a fortune presenting long-running humorous Japanese TV shows and was something of a household name.
