The artistic links between France and Japan run (perhaps surprisingly) deep. The French Impressionists were obsessed with Japanese woodblock prints, for example. In the 1950s, while French filmmakers and audiences embraced Japanese cinema, with Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950) and Kinugasa Teinosuke’s Gate of Hell (1954) featured at the Cannes Film Festival; while Alain Resnais’ seminal…
Wim Wenders’ (Paris, Texas) new film Perfect Days is a gently paced minimalist drama from the revered German filmmaker. Set in Japan, it reveals his great appreciation for Japan, its culture and traditions. A German/Japanese co-production Perfect Days was nominated for an Oscar, becoming the first Japanese-language film not directed by a Japanese filmmaker to…
Japanese novelist Kotaro Isaka hit on a great formula with his last book, Bullet Train. That was a fast paced, violent and weird battle between a group of idiosyncratic assassins on a train. Bullet Train was influenced by more than a little manga, plenty of early Tarantino and a whole lot of swagger. And while…
At 80 pages, Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada (translated by David Boyd) is more a novella than a novel. But Oyamada manages to pack a punch into this brevity. The three connected stories that make up the novel explore issues of parenthood and responsibility from a Japanese perspective. In the first part of…
Mieko Kawakami is probably best known for her second novel in translation – Breasts and Eggs. Her third novel to be translated in to English All the Lovers in the Night (also translated by Sam Bett and David Boyd) is a deep character piece. The book focusses on a woman who has difficulty forming relationships,…
From little things, big things grow. Director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi transforms a short story by Haruki Murakami into a 3-hour paean to love, loss and healing with Drive My Car. The film is a transcendent exploration of almost unbearable pathos, but with a shining light at the end. Another Murakami short story provided the source material…
Natsuko Imamura’s novel The Woman in the Purple Skirt (translated from the Japanese by Lucy North), is a short, disquieting novel of obsession and loneliness. While the story is ostensibly about the eponymous woman, who never otherwise has a name, it is narrated by another woman who calls herself “the woman in the yellow cardigan”….
