General discussion (non-Usagi Yojimbo related) about all things Japan -- Feudal Japan, Samurai, Ninjas, Anime & Manga, Chambara films, Japanese Pop Culture, Otaku, martial arts, history, sushi, giant robots, Godzilla... anything Japan-related!
Anyone else here a fan of director Kinji Fukasaku? He's quickly becoming one of my favorite Japanese filmmakers. He made several movies that would probably appeal to Usagi fans. This weekend, I watched his 80s remake of Satomi Hakken-Den with Henry Sanada and Sonny Chiba, and while it's a bit on the cheesy side (the rubber centipede special effects could have used a little more work), I found it to be a lot of fun. I had the opening theme music stuck in my head for a couple of days afterward:
Patrick Macias posted some pics from a book of productions photos from Fukasaku's 1978 Star Wars "homage" (to be diplomatic about it) Message From Space, and they really made me wish that this movie was on DVD.
This is the best thing I've found on the Internet all day: it's a video of some Japanese dude performing a hilariously bad, slightly druggy-souding cover of the soft-rock love theme from Satomi Hakken-den:
Wow, I am thrilled to see someone else likes Fukasaku! He was one of Japan's greatest and most underrated filmmakers of all time. The Jingi Naki Tatakai (Battles Without Honor and Humanity) series is one of my all time favorites, but I think his real golden piece is Kamata koshin-kyoku (The Fall Guy).
I also love that his career ended on the highest note possible: an amazing film that offended nearly every country out there. If you're going to go out on the top, there's no better way to do it than with Battle Royale. And don't believe IMDB about him directing BR2, he was dead before the first camera's started rolling. His son directed the entirety of it.
"Aragorn... Don't tell the elf about this"
"We really shook the pillars of heaven, didn't we Wang?"
I watched part of a good Fukasaku movie the other night (only part because used copy I got from Amazon Marketplace froze up about halfway through and I wasn't able to watch any more, arrrgh!), it's called Makai Tensho (or Samurai Reincarnation) (I had seen the whole thing a year or two ago when I rented the DVD). It includes several of the big samurai movie stars, such as Sonny Chiba, Tetsuro Tanba, and Tomisaburo Wakayama, and the characters include several real people, such as Yagyu Jubei, legendary sword maker Muramasa, and even Mushasi Miyamoto (portrayed by Ken Ogata).
One of the main characters of the movie is Amakusa Shirō (a real person), a Christian samurai who is killed fighting in an uprising and gathers a group of people to overthrow the Shogun after returning from the dead and renouncing God. I think something like that could be made into a good UY series with supernatural/horror elements.
Overall, it's a good movie that's worth seeing if you're a fan of Fukasaku or 70s/80s samurai movies.
