The premier venue for the exhibition of Japanese cinema for more than 50 yrs | Screening classics & contemporary premieres in NYC. Organizers of JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New…
Hiroshi Shimizu - Part II: The Postwar and Independent Years
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Official Series Trailer for Japan Society and MoMI's "Hiroshi Shimizu"
“I can’t shoot films like Shimizu.”—Yasujiro Ozu
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North American Premiere of Takashi Miike's "Lumberjack the Monster" with Escape from Tribeca
Screening May 6, 2024; Presented with Tribeca Festival’s Escape from Tribeca program in celebration of Lumberjack the Monster’s upcoming Netflix release.
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Announcing 27-film Retrospective "Hiroshi Shimizu" with MoMI
"Ozu and I create films through hard work, but Shimizu is a genius."
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FX’s Shōgun - Q&A with cast and creators at Japan Society
Japan Society and FX were honored to present a very special members-only screening of the FX Original Series Shōgun – featuring cast and producers in person on February 25 at Japan Society in New York City.
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Hiroyuki Sanada and the cast and crew of 'Shōgun' on Nightline [filmed at Japan Society]
Hiroyuki Sanada in the Japan Society auditorium for Nightline! Featuring the cast and crew of Shōgun, take a look at Tuesday night's segment, filmed at Japan Society, on FX's most expensive production ever here.
Lists
Hiroshi Shimizu - Part II: The Postwar and Independent Years 11 films
Hiroshi Shimizu - Part II runs May 16-June 1 at Japan Society Co-organized with Museum of the Moving Image, the…
Kinema Essentials 2024 3 films
Taking its name from a term dating back to the early days of the moving image—associated with the burgeoning rise…
Directors Company x2 2 films
April 19—20, 2024 A pioneering 1980s independent production outfit led by Kazuhiko Hasegawa (The Man Who Stole The Sun) and…
Rites of Passage: The Films of Shinji Somai | 2023 7 films
Widely lauded in his native Japan, director Shinji Somai (1948-2001) remains largely unrecognized in the West. A pioneering filmmaker during…
Family Portrait: Japanese Family In Flux 10 films
February 15—24, 2024 The latest ACA Cinema Project series Family Portrait: Japanese Family in Flux examines the shifting dynamics and…
'The Radical Cinema of Kijū Yoshida' at Japan Society | 2023 2 films
Japan Society is pleased to present the final night of Film at Lincoln Center's The Radical Cinema of Kijū Yoshida…
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Hiroshi Shimizu, Part I: The Shochiku Years
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Museum of the Moving Image 16 films
First Look 2024
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Museum of the Moving Image 37 films
JAPANESE HORROR
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Film Forum 24 films
36th #TIFFJP Ozu Yasujiro Films
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Tokyo International Film Festival 33 films
36th #TIFFJP Japanese Classics section
Korean Cinema's Golden Decade: The 1960s
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Film at Lincoln Center 23 films
Recent reviews
The surprise arrival of dancer Hanae’s effervescent sister Chiyomi (Machiko Kyo) from provincial Kanazawa to her sister’s impoverished shitamachi (downtown Tokyo) apartment sparks new vitality in her home as the raucous country girl stirs up trouble, delighting in the new wonders of city life as well as its vices. Chiyo’s sensual charm and beauty seduce the men around her as her insatiable thirst for life draws in even Hanae’s quiet husband Yamano—sparking discord within the household. Adapted from Kafu Nagai’s…
Imported 35mm Print. Introduced by Jo Osawa, Curator / Head of Film Collections at the National Film Archive of Japan.
Toshiko, a poor Tokyo mother hoping to remarry, takes her three children, each from different fathers—a little girl born après guerre (as her uncle puts it), middle child Kaneo and the eldest, Fusao—on a countryside excursion. Hoping to offload them onto relatives, Toshiko briskly separates her children as if they were not even her own, but she can’t seem to…
International Premiere; Imported 35mm Print. Introduced by Jo Osawa, Curator / Head of Film Collections at the National Film Archive of Japan.
Lost for over 70 years, Tomorrow There Will Be Fine Weather was rediscovered in 2022 by the National Film Archive of Japan—marking the first time it had screened since 1948. Shimizu’s second postwar film, released the same year as Children of the Beehive, recalls his earlier Mr. Thank You (1936) as he frames the narrative in a familiar…
Imported 35mm Print; Screening followed by Opening Night Reception. The most celebrated of Hiroshi Shimizu’s postwar output, Children of the Beehive is a momentous work depicting the shattered state of Reconstruction-era Japan. A nameless soldier repatriated to his occupied country undertakes a cross-country odyssey as he brings a ragtag band of orphans to the Introspection Tower, the reformatory school of his youth (and namesake of Shimizu’s earlier 1941 feature). Coursing a wayward path through the backwaters of Japan, along coastlines,…
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"While children factor into many of the director's works, two sets of films from each movement in his career stand out. From his time at Shochiku are the films "Children in the Wind," "Four Seasons of Children: Spring/Summer," and "Four Seasons of Children: Autumn/Winter," which relay two years in the life of brothers Zenta (Masao Hayama) and Sanpei (Bakudan-kozo). Similar to Ozu's great films about brothers ("I Was Born But. . ." and "Good Morning"), Shimizu creates a whole world…
Sampei's a good kid. Zenta too.
Kinta's okay.
The popular conception of neorealism is that it was a movement born of bombs, as though the industrial genocides of the 1940s had exploded all the innocent, swashbuckling fantasies of another era. Poetry was dead.
So it’s a bit of surprise to realize that neorealism started with those supposed harbingers of innocence, the children of Oliveira’s Aniki Bobo and Shimizu’s Four Seasons of Children (and, fine fine, Children in the Wind). But it makes sense that neorealism starts with kids, not…
“It's weird if a woman has a moustache.”
“I don't care as long as it looks strong.”
Hiroshi Shimizu - Part II runs May 16-June 1 at Japan Society
Co-organized with Museum of the Moving Image, the National Film Archive of Japan, and the Japan Foundation, New York
Born the same year as his close friend Yasujiro Ozu, Hiroshi Shimizu (1903-1966) remains one of the forgotten masters of Japanese cinema, praised by contemporaries including Sadao Yamanaka and Kenji Mizoguchi but neglected despite his radical spirit and versatile talent. With over 160 films directed over a 35-year-career that spanned the silent era into the golden age of Japanese cinema, Shimizu is distinguished by his unconventional approach to plotting—one loosely sketched and carefree—and a roaming camera that drifts through the open airs of provincial Japan. Shimizu’s world is suffused with an innate naturalism—one populated by pastorals and country passages—and a lyrical humanism that observes the journeys of children, working women, outcasts and travelers alike.
The second half of a two-part retrospective on the major filmmaker (the first part The Shochiku Years will be presented at MoMI starting May 4), The Postwar and Independent Years tracks Shimizu’s career after leaving Shochiku, embarking on a new path into self-financed films, independent productions, and contract work at Shintoho and Daiei studios. Shimizu’s postwar filmography encapsulates the everyday tragedies of life, the delicate sentiments of love and loss in the wake of the war, and the pains that befall common people—from the hardships of motherhood to the ostracization of disability. Capturing Japan in a changing of eras, these films illustrate a nation trying to pull itself together, weaving themes of collective struggle and hope while focusing on the lives of the dispossessed.
Bookmarked by his self-produced Beehive trilogy—a poetic trilogy that chronicles the lives of war orphans and starred orphans raised by Shimizu himself after the war at his Beehive orphanage (named for the excited “buzz” of children that emanated from the home)—The Postwar and Independent Years features rare screenings of the director’s late-career period. Shimizu’s postwar films have seldom screened internationally, despite being achievements on equal footing with his prewar years. As part of the series, Japan Society has commissioned new English subtitles for five films—some never-before seen in English-speaking countries before. Previously the organizers of the first U.S. Shimizu retrospective in 1991, Japan Society is proud to co-present the largest ever focus on Shimizu in North America.
Hiroshi Shimizu - Part I: The Shochiku Years runs May 4–19, 2024 at Museum of the Moving Image