Japan Society is presenting the first North American retrospective on Japan’s foremost cineaste of the 1980s with the 2023 Globus Film Series Rites of Passage: The Films of Shinji Somai. Beginning Friday, April 28 with the sold-out world premiere of the 4K restoration of Typhoon Club this series spotlights director Shinji Somai, who is widely lauded in his native Japan but remains largely unrecognized in the West.

Series highlights include pop idol Hiroko Yakushimaru’s breakthrough Sailor Suit and Machine Gun—with screenings of both the theatrical and 1982 (kanpeki-ban) complete version; the North American Premiere of the 4K Luminous Woman restoration; and imported, archival prints of both Somai’s epic maritime tragedy The Catch and the pop-inflected Tokyo Heaven.

“A major figure in Japanese cinema, Shinji Somai’s recognition and influence are rarely discussed outside of Japan,” said Alexander Fee, Japan Society’s Film Programmer, “this series offers a special chance to rediscover one of Japan’s greatest filmmakers, whose formative works established a unique approach to filmmaking that continues to inspire the current generation today.”

Read Criterion Collection’s look at this series here.

*Sailor Suit and Machine Gun* ©1981 Kadokawa Corp.

About Shinji Somai

A pioneering filmmaker during what is oftentimes referred to as the “lost decade” of Japanese cinema, Somai came to prominence during the 1980s—a time when the nation’s film industry found itself in flux, perturbed by the collapse of the Japanese studio system in the previous decade. This transitional period would lead to the rise and development of independent productions, leaving Somai to serve as a crucial bridge into the post-studio era. Characterized by his demanding work ethic and innovative use of long takes, Somai forged a unique identity, working predominantly within the genre trappings of seishun eiga (youth films) and directing some of the era's most original and enduring works, five of which comprise Kinema Junpo's critics list for the best Japanese films of all time.

Somai’s acclaimed oeuvre encompasses an eclectic mix of generic and stylistic conventions, ranging from Kadokawa pop idol vehicles to Nikkatsu’s Roman Porno to independent art dramas—all underpinned by the filmmaker’s potent evocation of adolescence. Documenting the tempestuous rigors of youth, Somai’s output would remain a persistent influence on filmmakers to come—from Shunji Iwai and Shinji Aoyama to Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Ryusuke Hamaguchi. Somai’s frequent depictions of bodies of water—including torrential downpours and typhoons—parallel the emotional turbulence and volatility of youth, externalizing the alienating depths of growing up in an increasingly chaotic world.

Screening Schedule

Friday, April 28

Typhoon Club with Opening Night Party at 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1985 | 115 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
With Youki Kudoh, Yuichi Mikami, Yuka Onishi

World Premiere of 4K Restoration. Shinji Somai’s beloved cult film Typhoon Club is widely heralded as the director’s seminal feature, considered to be one of the greatest Japanese films ever made. Offering a caustic immersion into the lives of disaffected junior high students on the cusp of adulthood, Typhoon Club features a lively cast of young talent—including idol Youki Kudoh (The Crazy Family, Mystery Train)—facing existential intrigues, budding sexuality, and rising social tensions in the days leading up to a typhoon’s arrival. Stranded in their schoolhouse as the storm settles in, the group undergoes an awakening as they dispel all—insecurities, fear, and desire—under the swell of the tempest. A Cinema Guild release.

Please note: This screening and Opening Night Party are SOLD OUT. Recently acquired by Cinema Guild, future release plans for Typhoon Club along with Somai’s 1983 postmodern road movie P.P. Rider are in the works, so if you can’t attend the April 28 show, you’ll have a chance to see it soon! Plus, there are nine screenings of six other Somai films in this Globus Film Series that you won’t want to miss!

Saturday, April 29

P.P. Rider at 2:00 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1983 | 118 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
With Tatsuya Fuji, Michiko Kawai, Masatoshi Nagase

Based on a story by Leonard Schrader (The Man Who Stole the Sun), P.P. Rider follows three friends—Jojo, Jishu, and Bruce—who, after witnessing the kidnapping of their class bully, try to rescue their tormentor from the grip of his yakuza captors. Aside from the occasional detour, the trio trail their kidnapped classmate across the country, running into a cast of seedy characters along the way—including a pair of layabout cops and a wiry, washed-up gangster played by Tatsuya Fuji (In the Realm of the Senses). Playful and referential, Somai’s farcical seishun eiga employs a variety of stylistic techniques and gags to offer an escapist summer fantasy of carefree misadventures in turn broaching a darker undercurrent despite its tongue-in-cheek demeanor. A Cinema Guild release.

Love Hotel at 5:00 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1985 | 88 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
With Minori Terada, Noriko Hayami

Echoes of the past reverberate when an ex-call girl and a debtor meet two years after the desperate and fateful night that first brought them together. An existential study of two lonely and tortured souls, Somai’s torrid pinku eiga follows the pair as they kindle a newfound friendship amid the chaos of their broken and dispirited lives. Somai, who started his career as an assistant director at Nikkatsu in the '70s, would not direct a feature for the studio until Love Hotel. Love Hotel is a melancholic entry into the studio’s legendary Roman Porno catalogue, set against the backdrop of a shimmering neon cityscape and soundtracked by Momoe Yamaguchi’s heartrending crooning.

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (1982 Complete Version) at 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1981/1982 | 130 min. (Complete), 112 min. (Theatrical) | Japanese with English subtitles
With Hiroko Yakushimaru, Tsunehiko Watase, Akira Emoto

Based on the popular youth novel by Jiro Akagawa, Sailor Suit and Machine Gun focuses on the life of schoolgirl Izumi Hoshi (Kadokawa idol Hiroko Yakushimaru) who inherits the reins of a dying yakuza clan and is thrown headfirst into a gangster feud. Vying for respect in an adult world, Izumi takes charge and challenges the violent drug cartel that threatens her clan. Between Somai’s skillful direction, a hit theme song and Yakushimaru herself—dressed in her iconic sailor fuku—Sailor Suit and Machine Gun had all the makings of a smash hit, emerging as a cultural phenomenon that catapulted Yakushimaru to widespread popularity and perfectly captured the zeitgeist of '80s Japan.

Friday, May 5

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (Theatrical Version) at 6:00 p.m.

Luminous Woman at 8:30 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1987 | 118 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
With Keiji Muto, Monday Michiru, Narumi Yasuda

Monday Michiru will introduce the film!

North American Premiere of 4K Restoration. A burly hulk of a man (pro-wrestler Keiji Muto) makes his way from Hokkaido to the decrepit trash heaps of outer Tokyo, searching for his beloved in what is perhaps Somai’s strangest feature. When he finds himself pulled into the gladiator pits of a Tokyo nightclub, the mountain man agrees to fight in exchange for information on his lost love. Operating within a bizarre carnivalesque realm of tightrope acts, acrobatic jesters and opera, Somai’s magenta-tinged Luminous Woman inhabits a dreamlike Tokyo underworld populated by tragic figures bearing forgotten hopes and dreams.

Friday, May 12

The Catch at 7:00 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1983 | 140 min. | Japanese with English subtitles
With Ken Ogata, Masako Natsume, Koichi Sato

Imported 35mm Print. In Somai’s relentless and near-mythical tale of the high seas, a young man takes on the intergenerational calling of his girlfriend’s family—that of a tuna fisherman. Abandoning his father’s vocation, Shinichi (Koichi Sato) turns to his girlfriend’s father, Fusajiro, a leather-faced fisherman played by Ken Ogata, to teach him the ways of the sea but struggles to assimilate to the rugged and callous lifestyle. His doting girlfriend, Tokiko, finds herself caught in a current of emotional devastation as she tends to both men, witnessing the arduous occupation harden and shape Shinichi as he obsesses over mastering his new trade. Playing out as a family tragedy of repeated cycles of trauma and pain, Somai’s maritime odyssey is a modern-day Melvillian epic.

Saturday, May 13

Luminous Woman at 2:00 p.m.

P.P. Rider at 5:00 p.m.

Tokyo Heaven at 7:30 p.m.
Dir. Shinji Somai | 1990 | 109 min. | Japanese with live English subtitles
With Riho Makise, Kiichi Nakai, Tsurube Shofukutei

Imported 35mm Print. Up-and-coming model Yu (Riho Makise) finds her career aspirations abruptly cut off after being run over in a car accident, waking up shortly afterwards in the sweet hereafter. Tricking a heavenly emissary to send her back to earth, Yu returns to a world where she cannot come into contact with those who know of her demise, which includes her lecherous producer, who is attempting to cover up news of her death. Befriending lowly salaryman Fumio (Kiichi Nakai), Yu is given a new lease on life as she finds happiness living—not as a campaign idol but as an ordinary teenage girl. Capturing Tokyo at the tail-end of Japan's Bubble era, Somai’s charming pop fantasy is a lighthearted reflection on the transience of life and the simple pleasures of human connection and existence.

To purchase tickets, please visit Japan Society’s website.

For JapanCulture•NYC Members

Japan Society is offering a discount code exclusively for JapanCulture•NYC members who want to attend the Rites of Passage screenings! That’s right, JapanCulture•NYC has a new membership program, and receiving discounts such as this is one of the benefits. To receive the code for $2 off any General Audience ticket, become a member of JapanCulture•NYC today! (This code for Rites of Passage cannot be used for additional discounts on Student/Senior/Japan Society member tickets.) JapanCulture•NYC membership is only $5 a month! For details and to register, please click here.

Melissa Avalon 3/12/14 Melissa Avalon 3/12/14

Annual Memorial Raises More than $11 Thousand for 3.11 Relief

For the third consecutive year, Fellowship for Japan presented a memorial honoring the victims of the Great East Japan Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Disaster at First Church of Christ, Scientist in the Upper West Side on Sunday, March 9.

AK Akemi Kakihara, the Executive Director of TOGETHER FOR 3.11, was just as motivated this year as she was in 2012, when she and dozens of friends organized the event to commemorate the first anniversary of the disaster.

“The people in New York are too far away from the affected areas, so they’re not able to go there very easily,” says AK, a UNIVERSAL MUSIC Japan recording artist. “But the things that we can do from New York is that together, even only once a year, we can send our prayers to the victims and also send our thoughts to the people in the affected areas to let them know we haven’t forgotten them.”

Gary Moriwaki

One person who is able to travel to Tohoku frequently is guest speaker Gary Moriwaki, Honorary President of the Japanese American Association of New York (JAA) and member of the U.S.-Japan Council. Moriwaki was in Japan when the disaster struck three years ago, and he has made several trips to the Tohoku area since, as recently as two weeks ago.

Moriwaki spoke to JapanCulture•NYC before the memorial, saying that three years after 3.11, the Japanese American community in New York is “still engaged” in what’s going on in Tohoku, even as the impact of the disaster has drifted off the radar of those living elsewhere in Japan.

JAA has been instrumental in the relief effort, raising more than $1.4 million. The members are actively involved in the projects that receive donations.

“We’ve always been focused on sustainable activities, and the money that we’ve raised is peanuts compared to what’s needed over there. So we want that money to have a long-lasting effect,” says Moriwaki, pointing out that JAA is focusing on jobs and helping businesses in Tohoku recover. By collaborating with the Kizuna Foundation, a local NGO, Moriwaki says he is seeing tangible results from the money JAA has raised.

“We went to Ofunato. It’s one of the bright spots,” says Moriwaki. “It’s a small town in Iwate. We were there two years ago, and there was a pier that had sunk about a meter, so it couldn’t be used. We contributed some seed money to build the pier back up. We went back two weeks ago, and it’s operational.”

As the months and years go by, we hope to hear more stories such as the one from Ofunato. But it is clear that there is more work to be done, which is why the Fellowship of Japan, an umbrella group for several grassroots organizations that formed in the aftermath of 3.11, continues to put on the memorial.

The solemn ceremony featured live speeches from members of New York’s Japanese community. In addition to Moriwaki, Ambassador Sumio Kusaka, Consul General of Japan in New York; Sayoko Fujita, Chairman of the New York Fukushima Kenjinkai; and Motoatsu Sakurai, President of Japan Society; delivered speeches.

There were videotaped messages from people in the affected areas, including Hayato Takizawa, a Tohoku Electric Power employee who created a guidebook, Walking Through Post-Earthquake Tohoku, to help bring back tourism; Yohei Arakawa, a city council member of Natori City in Miyagi who lost his mother and younger brother to the disaster; and the children of Minato Preschool in Soma, Fukushima, who sang a song to thank New Yorkers for our continued support.

Accordionist Shoko Nagai played a stirring arrangement of “Peace and Love,” while Iwate-born koto player Yumi Kurosawa performed her own composition. The audience of 500 stood together to sing “Furusato,” one of Japan’s most beloved songs.

AK and her fellow organizers encouraged audience members to write their thoughts on post cards, which will be sent to the people of Tohoku.

“That’s something that we can definitely continue to do no matter how far away we are,” says AK. “It’s very important to keep sending them the messages. It’s something we can do to stay connected.”

Following the ceremony Sony Music international recording star and Fuji TV personality Alex York expressed his interest in creating connections. “I haven’t been to Tohoku yet, but this has inspired me to visit,” he says, adding that he would like to perform in the affected areas in the near future.

York was happy to see an update from the children at Minato Preschool. AK first visited the school in the months following the disaster, and it was the children’s drawings that moved AK to create the Fukushima “Smile” wrapping paper and iPhone cases that were on sale at the memorial, along with other charity items from Love Japan Project and locally made products from Miyagi and Fukushima Prefectures.

Money from these sales and in the donation boxes totaled more than $11 thousand, which will go toward relief efforts through the Consulate General of Japan in New York and Japan Society’s Japan Earthquake Relief Fund. As a community, we did this TOGETHER FOR 3.11.