Pale Flower first published by EyeforFilm Mid-ranking yakuza Muraki (Ryo Ikebe) has just been released from a prison stint for murder, and as he looks over the streets of Tokyo for the first time in three years, he muses in voice-over about how nothing ever really changes and how people are little more than half-dead, stupid animals,…
Assassination first published by EyeforFilm In 1853, four American warships arrive in Japan demanding that, after three centuries of peaceful seclusion, she now open herself up to foreign trade. The Shogunate’s pragmatic supporters, based in Edo, have given in to America’s gunboat diplomacy without first consulting the Divine Emperor and begun eradicating anyone opposed to…
First published by Film International In Japan, Christianity is a minority religion of only marginal significance to the nation’s culture, and accordingly Japanese films that focus on Christianity tend to do so as a means to an end. While Suzuki Norifumi’s nunsploitation shocker School of the Holy Beast (Seiju gakuen, 1974), for example, freely adopted the trappings…