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The initial material for the movie is a true story originally reported in 2003 by Tamotsu Nishihata, which won the Grand Prize in the “Love Letter at Age 60” contest organized by Sumitomo Trust Bank. In November 2020, the story was featured on the Japanese TV show “The World’s Astonishing News,” leading to a connection with host Shofukutei Tsurube. In 2021, Tsurube’s apprentice, Shofukutei Teppin, created the first “nonfiction rakugo” performance based on Tamotsu’s life, titled “Beyond Survival.” An article covering the performance caught the attention of journalist Takayasu Ogura, who began researching and writing based on interviews with Nishihata, Teppin, and others. The story was eventually adapted into a movie in 2025, starring Tsurube, and had its international premiere at the Toronto Japanese Film Festival.

The 35-Year Promise is screening at Toronto Japanese Film Festival

“The 35-Year Promise” follows Tamotsu Nishihata, a 64-year-old man who has just retired after decades of working at a sushi restaurant.

Obayashi 1980’s Kadokawa films

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 (coming-of-age 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 Kadokawa’s innovative tactics of popularizing dreamy pop idols like 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. 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...

Set in a charming location in Hokkaido, “Bread of Happiness” could easily pass as a promotional film for the region’s tourism board. In fact, it was originally intended as part of a series of films written and directed by Yukiko Mishima, showcasing the natural beauty of northern Japan. It was followed in 2014 by “A Drop of the Grapevine”, which is, so far, the last instalment of this Hokkaido project.

Bread of Happiness is streaming on Jff Theater until 2025/05/01 11:00:00 [Jst]

The story takes place across the four seasons. It begins with a lovely fairytale, “Tsuki to Mani” (The Moon and Mani), which Rie (actress and singer Tomoyo Harada) used to read as a child. She loved Mani for his kindness, care, and support for the melancholic Moon, and she dreamed of finding her own Mani one day. But life takes you in different directions, and as she grew up,...

With a filmography both so vast as to be barely comprehensible and often reduced to the cult favorite House, Nobuhiko Obayashi remains a perpetual object for further study. Even my own familiarity with his corpus doesn’t leave room for everything in the tightly curated series Japan Society will host from February 7 to 14: “Obayashi ’80s: The Onomichi Trilogy & Kadokawa Years,” comprising six films and imported 35mm and 16mm prints. Ahead of this early 2025 repertory highlight, we’re pleased to debut a trailer edited by programmer Alexander Fee.

Here’s Japan Society’s official description: “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 in the 1980s.

Fresh off of the cult hit “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” (1983), Nobuhiko Obayashi leapt into his fifth project with Kadokawa Productions, “The Island Closest to Heaven”. Based on the novel of the same name by Katsura Morimura, the film is a soul-searching affair that’s a far cry from the director’s earlier, more frantic pictures. However, despite moving away from his outlandish visuals, Obayashi manages to deliver a tender tale of love, childhood, and coming of age.

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on Terracotta

After the death of her father, Mari Katsuragi (Tomoyo Harada) decides to venture to New Caledonia, an island in the Southwest Pacific where her dad once said she’d find ‘the island closest to heaven’. While looking for this fabled spot to fulfil a childhood promise, Mari explores new, exciting, and occasionally dangerous places, aided by expats, islanders, and other Japanese tourists who have travelled to this tropical paradise.

In the career of Nobuhiko Obayashi, his works from the 1980s are certainly some of the most interesting features the director made. Although some of these movies have become somewhat obscure and hard to find for film fans wanting to discover more from Obayashi besides arguably his most popular work today, his 1977 feature “House”. One of the director’s favorite works was “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time”, an adaptation of the novel of the same title by Yasutaka Tsutsui, which also served as the foundation to the 2006 anime directed by Mamoru Hosoda. In his approach to the source material, Obayashi and screenwriter Wataru Kenmotsu highlight the idea of the story being about growth as well as the various irritations when becoming an adult.

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on Terracotta

Kazuko Yoshiyama (Tomoyo Harada) is a high-school student living in the city of Onomichi. One day, as she is tasked with cleaning the chemistry lab,...

Atsushi Omori’s interest in the various aspects of religion became evident from his “blasphemous” debut, “Whispering of the Gods”, back in 2005. Although his style has developed exponentially since then, the interest on the topic and of people living on the borders of society remained, and “Under the Stars” highlights the fact in the most eloquent fashion.

“Under the Stars” is screening at Nippon Connection

The story is based on Natsuko Imamura’s novel “Hoshi No Ko” and revolves around Chihiro, who, as the movie begins, is a baby suffering from eczema. Her parents try to find a cure, but nothing works. That is until a colleague of her father gives him some water from a strange religious group that eventually is proven to be a cult. Chihiro is actually cured, and her parents begin to follow this religion, becoming fervent followers. Years later, Chihiro is a student in the...