Japan Society Pays Tribute to Legendary Filmmaker
Obayashi ’80s: The Onomichi Trilogy & Kadokawa Years
Friday, February 7 through Friday, February 14, 2025
Japan Society – 333 E. 47th Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues)
Admission: $16 | $12 Japan Society Members
Japan Society presents a tribute to Japanese director and screenwriter Nobuhiko Obayashi, whose career spanned 60 years and multiple genres. Curated by Japan Society Film Programmer Alexander Fee, Obayashi ’80s: The Onomichi Trilogy & Kadokawa Years comprises six films screened across five days.
About the Film Series
The teenage symphonies of Nobuhiko Obayashi (1938-2020) are wound in a melancholy nostalgia for a period indelibly lost to time—that inexpressible gap between adolescence and adulthood. Braiding visually expressive fantasias with striking formal experimentation and pop-art boldness, Obayashi’s idiosyncratic cinematic language produced some of Japan’s most beloved seishun eiga (youth films) in the 1980s. Captivating generations of filmgoers with his earnest portraits of young love and vanished worldviews, Obayashi’s films were further bolstered by film studio Kadokawa’s innovative tactics of popularizing dreamy pop idols such as Hiroko Yakushimaru and Tomoyo Harada.
With a career overshadowed abroad by the oddball eccentricity of his electric 1977 debut House, the 1980s would prove to be the high-water mark of Obayashi’s popularity, epitomized by his endearing Onomichi trilogy—set in the filmmaker’s hometown of Onomichi, the site of Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story. Framed in 35mm viewfinders, against wildly ingenious chroma-key composites and characterized by his unflagging optimism for the youth of Japan, Obayashi’s youth passages are caught up in the ages of transition, demonstrably attuned to the extraordinary nature of ordinary adolescence.
To purchase tickets, please visit Japan Society’s website.
Schedule
Friday, February 7
I Are You, You Am Me (Exchange Students)
7:00 p.m. | 112 min.
A playful mélange of amateur small-gauge, black-and-white, and color photography, Obayashi’s first entry in his hometown trilogy spins into a gender-swap youth film when two classmates switch bodies after a steep fall.School in the Crosshairs
9:15 p.m. | 90 min.
A psychotronic fantasy forged into a young girl’s destiny to defend the planet, School in the Crosshairs is a cosmic overload of extraterrestrial fascists, preternatural powers, and Obayashi’s uniquely adroit filmmaking abilities.
Saturday, February 8
The Little Girl Who Conquered Time
5:00 p.m. | 104 min.
Schoolgirl Kazuko begins to experience time leaps backwards and forward in time, disorienting her as she yearns to stay in the present. Obayashi’s second Onomichi film is a genuine expression of the transcendence of love—one cast across the stars for a young girl who lives in tomorrow.Lonely Heart (Miss Lonely)
8:00 p.m. | 112 min.
The final installment in Obayashi’s Onomichi trilogy is celebrating its 40th anniversary. It is a virtuosic ode to first love and the intrinsic emotions that arise with it as a young boy falls in love and encounters a mysterious girl in the viewfinder of his analog camera.
Sunday, February 9
The Island Closest to Heaven
5:00 p.m. | 103 min.
Fulfilling her late father’s dream to take her to “the island closest to heaven,” bookish teen Mari ventures solo to a paradise-laden archipelago in search of the mythic locale.School in the Crosshairs
7:15 p.m.
Thursday, February 13
His Motorbike, Her Island
7:00 p.m. | 96 min.
A nostalgia-filled reminiscence, Obayashi’s monochromatic dream playfully worships the biker culture of yesteryear, delivering a sentimental and liberating take on young love.I Are You, You Am Me (Exchange Students)
9:15 p.m. | 112 min.
Friday, February 14
The Little Girl Who Conquered Time
7:00 p.m. | 104 min.His Motorbike, Her Island
9:15 p.m. | 96 min.
About Nobuhiko Obayashi
Born in Onomichi, Hiroshima Prefecture, in 1938, Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 60-year film career began with avant-garde experimental shorts in the 1960s. Throughout the 1970, he directed highly stylized and whimsical television commercials, which allowed him to experiment with different techniques and to develop his creative flair. His mainstream films, as featured in Japan Society’s series, focused on the innocence of youth, young love, loss, and nostalgia. In his later works, Obayashi weaved social commentary, such as anti-war themes, into his storytelling.
Obayashi died of lung cancer in April 2020 at the age of 82.
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