Shinji Somai

[Calvin]

Shinji Sōmai (1948-2001)



Filmography

The Terrible Couple / Tonda Kappuru (1980) - Japanese DVD (no English subtitles)
Sailor Suit and Machine Gun / Sera-fuku to Kikanju (1981) - Arrow Blu-Ray
P.P. Rider / Shonben Raida (1983) - Japanese DVD (no English subtitles)
The Catch / Gyoei no Mure (1983) - Japanese Blu-Ray (no English subtitles)
Typhoon Club / Taifu Kurabu (1985) - Japanese Blu-Ray (with English subtitles)
Love Hotel / Rabu Hoteru (1985) - Japanese Blu-Ray (no English subtitles)
Lost Chapter of Snow - Passion / Yuki no Dansho - Jonetsu (1985) - Japanese Blu-Ray (no English subtitles)
Luminous Women / Hikaru Onna (1987) - Japanese Blu-Ray (no English subtitles)
Tokyo Heaven / Tokyo Joku Irasshaimase (1990) - Japanese Blu-Ray (no English subtitles)
Moving / Ohikkoshi (1993) - Japanese DVD (no English subtitles)
The Friends / Natsu no Niwa - The Friends (1994) - Japanese DVD (no English subtitles)
Wait and See / Ah, Haru (1998) - Japanese DVD (no English subtitles)
Kaza-Hana (2001) - Japanese DVD (no English subtitles)

Japanese Masterpiece Recitation Travelogue: "Gassan" (Broadcast 2001)

English-language resources:

Aaron Gerow on Shinji Somai and the Long Take
BFI: Where to Begin with Shinji Somai
Jasper Sharp on why Somai has been overlooked
EIFF Director Chris Fugiwara on Shinji Somai
The Forgotten: Grave of the Fireflies

[Michael Kerpan]

Some comments and screen shots for Ohikkoshi :
http://rozmon.blogspot.com/2007/12/watc ... -2007.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Some comments and screen shots for Sailor Suit and Machine Gun: http://rozmon.blogspot.com/2007/02/watc ... -2007.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I found Typhoon Club interesting but a bit off-putting (especially the end). I really liked Wait and See (Ah, Spring!) -- even if it didn't win lots of critical raves.

[Calvin]

Thanks for the comments. I'm definitely going to try and make Ohikkoshi now and maybe Typhoon Club and Yuki no Dansho - Jonetsu. His work seems interesting though and it's a shame that I (probably) will only get to see a couple of them. Are there any DVDs out with English subs?

[Michael Kerpan]

Are there any DVDs out with English subs?

The only ones I know of were a HK DVD (Panorama) of Wait and See and a HK (not Panorama) DVD of Sailor Suit and Machine Gun. Both were adequate releases.

[mostly asia]

Are there any DVDs out with English subs?

The only ones I know of were a HK DVD (Panorama) of Wait and See and a HK (not Panorama) DVD of Sailor Suit and Machine Gun. Both were adequate releases.

Kaza-Hana (2001) with Asano Tadanobu is in my collection and has english subs!!!
http://www.amazon.co.jp/%E9%A2%A8%E8%8A ... 671&sr=1-1" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Michael Kerpan]

I forgot about Kaza-Hana -- alas, it is long out of print -- and one can not buy it from Amazon Japan Marketplace sellers unless one has a Japanese address. (I failed to order this prior to it's going out of print).

I have also seen The Catch -- albeit only on unsubbed DVD. Sort of Hemingwayesque -- _2_ Men and the Sea.

[mostly asia]

I forgot about Kaza-Hana -- alas, it is long out of print -- and one can not buy it from Amazon Japan Marketplace sellers unless one has a Japanese address. (I failed to order this prior to it's going out of print).

I have also seen The Catch -- albeit only on unsubbed DVD. Sort of Hemingwayesque -- _2_ Men and the Sea.

yeah you are right!.....
get my copy from yeasaia some years ago.... :-)

[FerdinandGriffon]

I've only seen Love-Hotel, but loved it. A very ambiguous but moving love story, with a slight pinku element and a lot of incredible, neon-lit long takes.

[feihong]

Moving / Ohikkoshi (1993) is a very beautiful and sad film. There are english subs out there on the interwebs. For myself I think Typhoon Club is pretty awesome. The death at the end is very absurd, and I do get the feeling that Somai doesn't really like that character very much. It is lovely how the development of feelings proves as violent and unpredictable as the weather for every character. That alone moves the film far out of the shadow of its American antecedent.

[Michael Kerpan]

The very end of Typhoon Club cast a pall over all that went before -- I would have liked it a lot more with a different ending (not even in substance necessarily, just in handling).

Ohikkoshi really is almost like a live action film by Takahata. (The film is finally resolved in the credits -- just as in Only Yesterday). It does have sadness, but, in the end, I think it is basically (if perhaps "imperfectly") happy.

[feihong]

Ohikkoshi really is almost like a live action film by Takahata. (The film is finally resolved in the credits -- just as in Only Yesterday). It does have sadness, but, in the end, I think it is basically (if perhaps "imperfectly") happy.

That's a great way to describe Ohikkoshi!

You and I had completely different viewing experiences on both films. To me Typhoon Club was full of dread from the outset. The girls nearly drown the boy who was swimming before they arrived at the pool, out of...lust? Hysteria? The long takes seem to be all about dragging us through the protracted pain of adolescents as they whip themselves into frenzies of excitement over their smallest awakenings. The attempted rape scene builds from awkward to extremely disturbing over the course of just a few shots.

Spoiler

And the boy's death urge seemed to me to grow out of the way as the other children expanded their parameters into horniness, he retreated into repression and resentment. My impression was that Somai regarded the boy as sort of a tool by the end of the story, and giving the boy such a goofy death--immediately glossed over by the way the other kids move forward towards their futures--was Somai's way of dismissing the kid's reactionary repression.

Ohikkoshi seemed to me achingly sad at the end. The girl watching her parents drift away into the river was an image from which Somai couldn't properly retreat--I guess I feel here the way you did at the end of Typhoon Club.

Spoiler

The girl's resolve to grow up felt half-hearted to me--the warmth of her relationships with her parents was irrevocably ruined at the end. She was on her own, at an extremely young and vulnerable age, and--maybe a weakness on the film's part--she had no one else to relate to. I felt like she was heading into an awful, lonely future.

I like both films a great deal. It's a shame Somai is such a neglected director. But something tells me Criterion isn't about to release a blu-ray edition of Typhoon Club.

[Michael Kerpan]

Feihong -- totally disagree on Ohikkoshi. It has an ending as happy as one is ever going to find in messy and not totally satisfactory "real life". Our young heroine develops self-reliance, learns she can still love both her parents (despite the divorce), realizes she need not feel ashamed of her family status, and gets to move on to the next phase of her life. While the credits finale puts icing on the cake, the whole tone of the film points in a positive direction after our heroine wakes up on the morning after the festival. Nothing at all suggests she is going to lead a lonely and miserable life.

[feihong]

Like I said, different viewing experiences. For me, the image of the parents leaving the girl behind was too strong for Somai to return. The pain in the image was way too overpowering to me. Sure the girl will go on living. But will she move on? I have doubts. The abandonment of the girl loomed as the dominant subject of the film for me, and it made the ending flash-forwards and vows to pick herself up and be self-reliant seem disingenuous. Kind of the way you felt that the harsh image at the end of Typhoon Club disrupted your suspension of disbelief. I mean, it's a totally personal reaction for me. Part of it is that I get very skeptical when people in the movies or on TV vow to get themselves together and advance to the next stage of their life (this is awfully common in Japanese film and television, and it always raises my hackles), and another part is that I don't know one person who isn't at least charred by their parents divorce. People don't just deal with it and move on; they're always dealing with it. Maybe the girl won't be lonely and miserable all the time, but she'll have doubt and melancholy as constant companions, from an age where lots of kids have a lighter load to bear. It's hard for me not to look at the parents as insensitive and irresponsible, and it's hard for me not to view the film as being very similar to one of those "cruel story of bushido" films that chart the pain and wrong caused to an ostensibly righteous protagonist by the tyrannical whim of power or fate. I know that's a personal bias, but the film's ending feels a cop-out for me as a result. The film is great up until then, though.

[Michael Kerpan]

Feihong --

I think you are ignoring/missing an awful lot.

The heroine is NOT "left behind" by her parents. I have no idea where you are getting this from. The parents get divorced, and the girl learns how to adjust to this.

Yes -- one can have personal reactions to films -- but these really have to be based on what actually goes on in the film. ;~}

[Michael Kerpan]

Somai factoid -- copies of Ohikkoshi are priced _starting_ at 17,000 yen ($212) on Amazon Japan Marketplace.

Any chance this thread can migrate over into Film Makers -- now that Somai is getting a fancy schmancy, very belated, high-profile retrospective? ;~}

[feihong]

Feihong --
The heroine is NOT "left behind" by her parents. I have no idea where you are getting this from. The parents get divorced, and the girl learns how to adjust to this.

In her dream, Renko's parents leave her behind in Lake Biwa. They recede into the distance while she remains alone, floating in the water by herself. That image was stronger for me than the film's urgent insistence afterwards that the girl had adjusted in a healthy way to her parents divorce. I'm not ignoring the fact that there is a happy ending tacked onto this film, but I'm saying that that ending is disingenuous to me, in light of the much more powerful imagery and mood that precedes it. It doesn't ruin the movie for me, but I felt that the film disengaged from its situation before the credits started to roll, and at that point it no longer felt authentic any longer.

As far as being abandoned by her parents in more of a real-world sense, well, I think that happens, too--as a subtext of the events the film covers. The action of the film constantly underlines the ways in which the parents have re-oriented themselves away from their life as a family, and how the girl is incapable of communicating her distress to them. The only life she has known is in that family, and suddenly it's as if no one wants to play that game anymore, except for her. So she talks to her parents as if they were still part of the same family; she reaches out for sympathy in what essentially becomes a dead language. Her parents do leave her that way. Certainly they still care about her, as their child, but they don't care for the family they had together, and the girl does. And there is no one to share her grief. She can't bring the family back together, but more than that, her deep need to remember and cherish the family she was born into is shared by nobody. So she is left alone.

Also, I find the film's argument--that Renko will adjust to her parents separation through a change in her attitude, a little acceptance from her friends and some plucky perseverance--not overwhelmingly convincing. No one I know whose parents were divorced has ever adjusted cleanly to it, announced it to everyone they knew, and then progressed unencumbered to some Arcadian new stage of their life. Rather, divorce is something people who experienced it as a child live with everyday--a state of mind that informs their decisions, opinions and outlook. So when I see the ending portions of the film I see the girl's smile and think about the melancholy pain behind it. I don't think she gets to be free of this--the film seems to me to be focused on one long, profound trauma for Renko--and the fact that the film's ending aims to cleave resolutely upbeat means to me that it forsakes the subtle mood it has held onto up until then. It's as if the filmmakers stop seeing Renko's genuine experience and opt to have people leaving the theater feeling better about themselves. Up until that point the film seems poised between the frustration and hurt in the girl's inner world and her amusing and precocious behavior in the outer world. But the ending closes off Renko's inner world in a way that rather tritely suggests: "well, she'll get over it. She's got a whole life ahead of her. She'll put her energy into being a happy, upbeat child, and we can close the book on this particular chapter of her story." But I don't think kids "get over" their parents divorces so swiftly and with such tidy precision. So my personal reaction to the film is to feel as if the coda to the film lacks credibility and compromises the delicate mood the rest of the film has held with such grace. That reaction is based on my experience of the events that occurred in the film, the images arranged within the picture, the pervasive mood the picture creates. My own perspective on the idea of divorce and its effects on young people definitely colors my reading of the film, but it doesn't substitute events and ideas that weren't in the picture for ones that were, thank you. And I don't see that influence of my personal experience to be substantially different from all the various assumptions audience members in Japan brought to the movie about the idea of divorce and its impact on children and on their society.

What's with the hostility, Kerpan? I don't get it.

[Michael Kerpan]

Feihong --

We will have to agree to disagree on this. No one else that _I_ know has had such a "negative" view of the outcome of the film. And with, all due respect, while I cannot contradict your claim that no people you know have ever "adjusted cleanly" to the divorce of parents, I would suggest that not all such children (obviously not counting those you know) grow up as irreparably damaged as you seem to think they must.

What this film shows is that good people get divorced, and that this upsets their children -- but that children can adjust. To be sure, the process is compressed by the film, but otherwise this seems to be a perfectly reasonable outlook (to me). In any event, the film does not take a wrong turn at the ending -- the ending is the whole point of the film (which is, after all, called "Moving"). We see the heroine respond to the divorce with denial, then rage, then (fruitless) scheming, then deep grief, then acceptance. Of course, the stages are more spread out in real life, but Somai is making a movie -- and not a mini-series.

I suspect that Somai was trying to provide what he felt was a corrective to Japanese "conventional wisdom" on this subject. The well-made but rather dumb Junkers Come Here, made a couple of years later, is far more conventional (a girl is upset at the divorce of her parents and, by magic, makes that divorce unhappen). As I take it, you are saying that Somai's basic premise in Ohikkoshi is simply wrong. That is your right, but I simply don't agree.

Since when is strong disagreement on this list "hostility"?

BTW, you are very much mis-reading (mis-remembering) the dream:

Spoiler

at the end of it, the current version of the heroine comforts and consoles her younger self

.

[feihong]

Well, agreeing to disagree is what I've been advocating this whole time.

I'm not saying every child of divorce is palpably scarred by the experience; but every single one I know lives their life after that divorce from a different perspective than they did before. The confidence of the child, and later the adult, is usually shaken in a profound way; one that a person doesn't recover from just by pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and magically developing self-reliance. It's an effect which lasts, which persists, and I wish the movie had the courage to suggest such an effect--and to suggest that such a feeling was okay, and nothing to feel ashamed of. As a teacher and as a friend to many people whose parents are divorced, my own encounters support my view without any exception I can think of. And that experience makes me wary of the film's tidy ending--to say nothing of the way the film seems to shift in tone in order to accommodate this ending. I don't think Somai's basic premise in the film is wrong, simply because I don't feel that the premise of the film matches that of its conclusion. The film's imagery and mood reflect the girl's inner turmoil--and the picture is full of setting suns and blood-red skies that emphasize the way her family life is dying away in her--the ending posits the idea that as long as the girl clicks her heels and faces towards the future, undaunted, that all those emotions which the film has drawn in such astute detail can be pushed offstage and a strong, confident personality will come surging through. I don't think that grief and loss generally "give up the ghost" with such small protest, and I don't think that the premise of the film I had been watching up until then supports that--what I would call specious--concept.

"Yes -- one can have personal reactions to films -- but these really have to be based on what actually goes on in the film. ;~}"

As to the hostility, here is some I perceived as such. It's not the disagreement I object to at all--I'm happy to debate with you, and to continue to exchange ideas. But the tone I hear in statements like these is contentious, and it seems rude to me, in that it feels patronizing. It sounds as if you think I am your goofball of a student, jumping to erroneous conclusions, and you are "setting me straight." As opposed to the idea that I might perhaps be your compeer, with a different but valid reading of the way the film worked. Plus you keep insisting I've misremembered the film, but you've not yet offered any definitive evidence of this happening. I didn't previously discuss the ending of the dream sequence, only the image that ended the drama of the film for me--which finishes before the dream itself comes to a close.

To speak of that, though: Renko's older self consoling her younger self was to me as disingenuous as the rest of the film's concluding passages. I certainly experienced some cathartic release when Renko woke up and things seem to be looking up for her, because after a film I saw as being shot through with pain and inarticulate suffering, I certainly wanted to cheer for something at the end. But by the time the picture was over I felt lots of misgivings about how Somai had finished it. Up until that point, I felt the film had been very sensitive to the girl's feelings and experiences, and very well-observed, and so I don't dislike the film. But I was let down by its conclusion, in a way I was not let down by Typhoon Club--which is ultimately the point I was trying to make weeks ago--that our interpretations of these movies are completely opposite.

[Michael Kerpan]

Feihong --

I think I will have to let you have the last word on this debate. I just hope that many others here will some day have the chance to see this movie.

[Calvin]

Jasper Sharp on why Somai has been overlooked
EIFF Director Chris Fugiwara on Shinji Somai

[Calvin]

I have managed to see a couple of Somai's films now and I'm impressed by what I've seen. The 14-minute opening take (that travels several years) of Lost Chapter of Snow - Passion perhaps best demonstrates his fluid style but the scene in Typhoon Club where the kids are in a hall, fooling around on the stage is also quite memorable as the camera slowly creeps forwards towards them - as if the camera itself is hunting them, just like the storm taking place outside and within them. The ending of that one did slightly baffle me, however.

[Calvin]

As part of the Cinema of Childhood season, Moving is screening at a selection of cinemas across the UK in the coming months:

National Media Museum, Bradford (March 29)
Watershed, Bristol (April 1)
Cube, Bristol (April 21)
BFI Southbank (May 5 and 10)
Filmhouse Edinburgh (May 10 and 14)
Cambridge Arts Picturehouse (June 14)
Eden Court Inverness (June 14 and 16)
Cornerhouse Manchester (June 15)
Chapter Arts Cardiff (June 22 and 24)
Dundee Contemporary Arts (June 29)
Theatr Clwyd Cymru (July 29)

[Michael Kerpan]

Luky Brits -- I doubt Moving will make it over to this side of the ocean. ;-{

(A great film -- even if not subbed).

[roujin]

Did this podcast on Somai here. Covered Sailor Suit, Typhoon Club and Moving.

Which I could redo it as I've seen 8 of his films at this point (versus the 4 at the time when I recorded this).

Oh well.

[Michael Kerpan]

Natsu no niwa / Friends / Summer Garden (actual translation) -- 1994. A lovely follow up to his 1993 Ohikkoshi / Moving. This one is focused on the relationship between three young boys and an elderly semi-recluse who lives in their town. Watching Ohikkoshi, I felt like I was watching a live-action Ghibli (mostly Takahata style) film. This one seals the deal in showing Somai's link to Ghibli films -- as his young protagonists sing Sampo, the opening song from Totoro on a couple of occasions.