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By Shikhar Verma

Born April 6, 1981, Norihiro Niwatsukino started filming while attending the Kyushu Institute of Design in Fukuoka. After graduating, Niwatsukino moved to Tokyo and started working as a freelance director and as a screenwriter. He has directed various video works including live-action, music video, animation, etc. His short film “Strawberry Jam” (2010) was invited to various film festivals in Japan. Niwatsukino followed with his first animation series “Onizushi”. “Suffering of Ninko” is his first feature film.

On the occasion of “Suffering of Ninko” screening at Nyaff, we speak with him about almost every aspect of the film, his inspiration, the Japanese industry and many other topics.

A monk and a Samurai go on a sort of quest later in the film What evoked you to be interested in forming such a mismatch duo?

At first, the story I was planning to make was about a monk. However, I thought it...

By Shikhar Verma

Niwatsukino Norihiro’s ‘Suffering Of Ninko’ is about sexual awakenings. A surreal, ghostly folklore and an absolutely batshit crazy mix of live action set course with exquisite animation that represents various styles of Japanese Art in the most perverse ways.

Enmeiji temple is a shrine for Buddhist monks. The supreme master has been training all the young monks to gain ultimate virtue towards the world. Ninko (Masato Tsujioka), on the other hand, is unable to attain this ultimate nirvana when he is a constant centre of attraction for all the women (and even a few homosexual men) who are attracted to him like flies. Ninko tries his best to meditate and complete his training to be a monk, but he is being constantly allured by the thought of naked breasts and beautiful women all craving for his bodily pleasures. An encounter with a strange...

A Japanese monk will get little sympathy from most viewers in Norihiro Niwatsukino's period piece Suffering of Ninko — his affliction, it turns out, is that he's irresistible to women. That's quite an obstacle to a life of chaste contemplation though, and the writer-director's debut seems at first destined to beat its single poor-Ninko gag into the ground. Though it does latch onto some engaging complications midway through, the feature still feels like it would play better as a half-hour short; stateside theatrical prospects are slim.

Masato Tsujioka plays the title character, a resident of an Edo period monastery whose daily...