समाचार

Jizo statues are a fascinating part of Japanese folklore. Often sighted near Buddhist temples, graveyards and sometimes on roadsides, they provide protection to travelers and the souls of children and unborn babies. They can be small and unassuming, with friendly faces like a classic Buddha, but sculpted more in the shape of a garden gnome. One such statue can be found in Sayama City on a small modern-day intersection; the statue and adjoining temple have been there for over 300 years, standing as a preserved relic of the Edo era, but the world around it has changed drastically. It sits awkwardly in the road, like a chunky doorstop that wedges open a portal between the past and present; Sayama resident and director Mitsuo Kurihara has built a strange, whimsical story around that very idea with his extravagantly-titled micro-budget feature film, “The Haunted Jizo of Shimo-Mizuno, Sayama City”.

“The Haunted Jizo of Shimo-Mizuno,...

In a way, making movies may be a kind of wish-fulfillment for some people, those involved in the process and the viewer. While art can be a way to figure out certain issues and learn about them, perhaps one of the most simple truths about certain films, and their success as well, can be that they show us a solution to a problem we wish we could come up with in real life, a truth which may hold well in the story told on screen but which does not belong to real life. This kind of issue is at the hearts of features such as “Tokyo Flower” by director Hikaru Horii, a tale which is at the same time dedicated to this concept while it also presents its most significant problem.

Tokyo Flower is screening at Japan Filmfest Hamburg

Tanako (Chisa Hasegawa) has moved to Tokyo a long time ago,...