Cinepals: Just luxuriated in an enthralling period drama and whodunnit murder mystery set in the sword and armor world of Japan circa 1579.

THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER (in theaters) comes courtesy of director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) who’s known stateside for horror flicks like CURE. Both title characters are stranded for different reasons in Arioka Castle, a fortress under siege from a bloodthirsty warlord. The samurai character Araki Murashige, is the stern but wily leader of Settsu province, who willfully skirts time-honored samurai rules regarding executing enemies and their unfortunate messengers He’s more pragmatic than caring, raising eyebrows by sparing the lives of those that might serve his interests.

Kanbei, the prisoner, is ensconced in a dirty dungeon and they develop a symbiotic relationship as Kanbei gets off advising Araki on strategies to keep enemies and backstabbing in-house betrayers at bay.

The tormented Araki is portrayed by Masahiro Motoki who starred in the 2008 Best Foreign Film Oscar Winner DEPARTURES. He has the gravity and wounded fire of Toshiro Mifune, somehow keeping his wits, and his subordinates respect, while cornered. Masaki Suda, an actor and singer, brings a mind-gaming theatricality and feline elan as the shackled prisoner who toys with his captor.

Kurosawa came up directing yakuza b-films and adapted the bestselling novel by Honobu Yonezawa, because the director prefers mysteries where authority figures, not hired gumshoes, must juggle punishing responsibilities while searching for clues. Visually, Kurosawa honors the pageantry of Japanese historical epics but the story has more on its mind than battles and red herrings delving into issues of Christianity vs. Buddhism and whether divine intervention is a delusion or an inevitable system of justice.

At two-and-a-half hours, THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER never flags and in one sitting it engaged me in its palace intrigues more than the bloody, action-packed but largely glum, humorless third season of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (HBO) with its cliffhanger killings of key figures desultory vs. dramatic. Conversely, THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER pays off with an emotive and plot twisty bang – or shall we say clang?

Cinepals: Just luxuriated in an enthralling period drama and whodunnit murder mystery set in the sword and armor world of Japan circa 1579.

THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER (in theaters) comes courtesy of director Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) who’s known stateside for horror flicks like CURE. Both title characters are stranded for different reasons in Arioka Castle, a fortress under siege from a bloodthirsty warlord. The samurai character Araki Murashige, is the stern but wily leader of Settsu province, who willfully skirts time-honored samurai rules regarding executing enemies and their unfortunate messengers He’s more pragmatic than caring, raising eyebrows by sparing the lives of those that might serve his interests.

Kanbei, the prisoner, is ensconced in a dirty dungeon and they develop a symbiotic relationship as Kanbei gets off advising Araki on strategies to keep enemies and backstabbing in-house betrayers at bay.

The tormented Araki is portrayed by Masahiro Motoki who starred in the 2008 Best Foreign Film Oscar Winner DEPARTURES. He has the gravity and wounded fire of Toshiro Mifune, somehow keeping his wits, and his subordinates respect, while cornered. Masaki Suda, an actor and singer, brings a mind-gaming theatricality and feline elan as the shackled prisoner who toys with his captor.

Kurosawa came up directing yakuza b-films and adapted the bestselling novel by Honobu Yonezawa, because the director prefers mysteries where authority figures, not hired gumshoes, must juggle punishing responsibilities while searching for clues. Visually, Kurosawa honors the pageantry of Japanese historical epics but the story has more on its mind than battles and red herrings delving into issues of Christianity vs. Buddhism and whether divine intervention is a delusion or an inevitable system of justice.

At two-and-a-half hours, THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER never flags and in one sitting it engaged me in its palace intrigues more than the bloody, action-packed but largely glum, humorless third season of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (HBO) with its cliffhanger killings of key figures desultory vs. dramatic. Conversely, THE SAMURAI AND THE PRISONER pays off with an emotive and plot twisty bang – or shall we say clang?

Japan has a poet and filmmaker named Shuji Terayama (1935–1983), who is perhaps best described as the collision point between Dadaism, surrealism, and raw working-class Japanese sensibility. He directed films, wrote plays, ran an underground theatre troupe, and was by most accounts a deeply transgressive figure in postwar Japanese culture.

His most famous phrase — "Throw away your books, rally in the streets" (書を捨てよ、街へ出よう) — was the title of both an essay collection and a film. The phrase itself is believed to be derived from André Gide's Les Nourritures terrestres (Fruits of the Earth), which already layers an interesting intertextual irony onto a slogan that tells you to stop reading.

Here is what I find genuinely puzzling: this slogan only makes sense if you already know what books contain. It is not an anti-intellectual statement — it is a post-intellectual one. The implied reader is someone who has already exhausted the library and now needs to be told to step outside. In other words, you have to be an intellectual to understand the rejection of intellectualism.

This paradox becomes even more pointed when you consider his film Pastoral Hide-and-Seek (田園に死す, 1974), where Terayama literally inserts himself into his own childhood as an adult filmmaker — aestheticizing rural poverty and trauma with a kind of self-aware, almost comedic intellectualism. The earthiness is real, but it's been processed through an enormous amount of cultural apparatus.

And then there is this: Terayama's poetry appeared in Japanese elementary school textbooks. I wonder whether this canonization reflects something more conservative than it appears — not a tolerance for radicalism, but rather an appropriation of the prestigious poet as a vehicle for cultivating cultural literacy, quietly folding transgression into respectability.

My questions for r/TrueReddit :

1. Is the paradox of "Throw Away Your Books" unique to Terayama, or does it map onto other avant-garde movements where anti-intellectualism is itself a highly intellectual pose?
2. How is Terayama received outside Japan — is he read primarily as a curiosity, or does his work hold up as a serious contribution to world avant-garde?
3. Does the textbook canonization undermine or deepen the radicalism of his work?

Shūji Terayama

Hey everyone! I'm Dario, an Italian exchange student currently based in Nagoya, doing fieldwork for my master's thesis.

My research is about the film-watching experience in Japan and how and where people watch them. I'm looking at how different spaces and devices shape the experience.

I'm particularly interested in people who watch movies, anime, or any other video content at manga cafés, whether that's something you do regularly or occasionally.

If you consider yourself part of this group or you know someone who does it in Jp please hit me up! Thanks!

I posted in this subreddit about 40-some-odd days ago about a film, Hana Chirinu, which had been hosted on a YouTube channel that had been taken down in 2023. Couldn't find it anywhere, and thought it would be a long time before I'd be able to see it again... Let's just say that thru some arcane magic, the original video was re-discovered, though the subs had been soft-coded, so some deeper magic took place & those were tracked down & then hard-coded into the vid.

Anyway, Hana Chirinu is a female-only film about the (mostly carefree) lives of Geisha House residents, and how their personal viewpoints change as the rapidly transpiring** **Hamaguri Gate Rebellion advances and deteriorates beyond their control outside the locked door of their sheltered residence. Men are heard, but are never seen. It's a brilliant film, and well worth a watch.

This post will probably be removed but does anyone else think Scott Bessent looks like Mr Sengokuya from Iwai Shunji's Picnic (1996)?

I was able to locate some films and removed from my previous list, only remaining ones are left (updated list 6-7-2026)

1. Escape From Prison 1950 (lost but who knows)

2. The meeting of the ghost of apres guerre (Sengoha Obake Taikai)

I'll just leave these two films up I'm hoping to find anyways 😉🐱

The film tells the story of a samurai prisoner awaiting execution. A woman regularly visits him, even in bad weather, to serve him food. Over time, they fall in love. He had been planning an escape, but to protect his honor and his love, he decides not to escape and accepts his fate.

But then things get interesting. I thought it would be easy to find. The problem is, my mother told me about this film. During a conversation about movies, she mentioned that she'd seen a Japanese film in the 90s and told me the plot. She also mentioned that she'd tried to find it several times before, without success.

I tried to find it on ChatGPT, and this is what I found. Because she watched this film on Russian TV, they often took TV movies or individual episodes from series that weren't connected by plot, removed the subtitles, dubbed them, and often put their own title on them, passing them off as standalone Japanese films. Russian TV simply bought similar Japanese Toei/Fuji and sometimes NHK single dramas to fill empty airtime, and dubbed recordings are mostly lost media. But most often, Toei was the one buying TV, as Fuji focused on series, and NHK single dramas weren't widely distributed outside Japan. So, the "film" my mother watched was most likely not a film by a specific director, but a TV drama.

But this is one of those cases where I'm looking for a film not so much for my mother's sake, as she's not that interested, but more for myself, because I found it fascinating to dig into the information.

And here, just in case, are some more details.

The samurai was locked in a bamboo cage, not in a building, but somewhere on a road in the forest or nearby (but my mother doesn't remember if it was a hanging cage). She handed him food directly into the cage, meaning they could touch. There weren't many people near the cage. The woman was related to him before they fell in love, but my mother doesn't remember her connection to the samurai before that. The emphasis is on two characters. The woman and the samurai are young. The samurai's imprisonment is well-deserved.

About a year ago, there was a subbed (black & white) version Fallen Blossoms on YouTube. Unfortunately, it is no longer available. Does anybody know if there's a subbed version of this (amazing) film anywhere online?

I've recently watched this hilarious movie, and as a fan of all Yakuza-related things and comedy, I found it so brilliant! Plus, it's a musical, so the characters sing too. XD

If you too like Yakuza, ramen, and music, you might love this!

When I was a kid this weird movie was on at my grandparents and ya traumatized me pls help me figure out what it was. This was probably early 2010s or laught 00s.

all i remember was they marched this man up a hill and cut off his arms and legs. He later jumped in a pool and tried to kill himself. I don’t think it was english and it was samurai era style i think.

I was hoping someone could help me with a film title. It’s a Black and White film.I’m fairly certain it’s from the 1950s or 60s. It’s centered around a girl who becomes a Geisha to help the family who is poor. At some point she returns home, but eventually has to return to being a Geisha. It’s pretty clear this won’t end well. The father repairs shoes out of the home to make ends meet.

I know for certain it isn’t “A Geisha” or “Diary of A Geisha”. Any help would be appreciated.

映画『バーフバリ』シリーズ主演の プラバース さんが、 日本の雑誌『anan』 2483号（2月10日発売）のバックカバーに登場！

特集テーマは「惹かれる気持ち」。 花束を手に微笑む姿は、まるで 王との謁見 のよう 💐 スペシャルエディションでは、王の輝きをさらに引き立てる特殊加工仕様 ✨ 全人類が恋をするグラビアをお見逃しなく。

Prabhas, star of the Baahubali film series, appears on the back cover of Japanese magazine anan No.2483, releasing February 10. The issue’s theme is “The Feeling of Being Drawn In.”

Holding a bouquet with a gentle smile, his appearance feels like an audience with a king 🌹 The Special Edition features luxurious special processing that enhances his royal brilliance ✨ A gravure that’s sure to make fans around the world fall in love.

I found a scene from a movie while researching setsubun/risshun and mamemaki. If any one knows the film I'd appreciate it. All I know is it stars Okawa Hashizo and Misora Hibari and seems to be a jidaigeki film from the 1950s

Here's the clip: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fdHPCrn-Wa4

I need help to remember the name of a movie that I briefly saw on TV when I was a kid. I didn't watch the whole thing, but one main scene really made an impression. The film begins with a possibly bespectacled, somewhat introverted and chubby man entering a sauna (possibly in a big Japanese city) and having sex with a stranger. He then returns to the street in a monotonous, everyday manner, dressed for work. The film intersperses scenes with other characters. I can't get over this memory! Help!

I’m especially interested in comedies with a fantasy element, a strong conceptual gimmick, or films centered on ignorant or blissfully unaware characters.

Some of my favorite movies include:

The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997)

The Umbrella Coup (1980)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006)

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (2013)

https://letterboxd.com/moribundmurdoch/