Japan Cuts, whose ninth edition begins at the Japan Society in New York on July 9, promises to showcase “the A to Z of new film made in and around Japan.” But the highlights of this year’s festival are two restorations that are undoubtedly not new, even if, looking at them side by side, they represent a range of Japanese cinema just as vast as the alphabet.The first is Nagisa Oshima’s “Cruel Story of Youth” (1961), which is screening on a new 4K DCP on July 12. Oshima, one of the central figures of the Japanese New Wave, began as an assistant director and started making films in a response to the desire of the legendary Shochiku Studios to cash in on the taiyozoku (sun tribe) films, low-budget features aimed at the youth market and its discontents. “Cruel Story of Youth” is his second feature, and the first in a loose trilogy he made for the studio (“The Sun’s Burial” and “Night and Fog in Japan” follow) that, according to Chuck Stephens in an article for Film Comment, “proved so ideologically corrosive and politically incendiary” that they would “change the shape of Japanese film forever.”“Cruel Story of Youth” is imbued with what the Japanese film historian Donald Richie has called Oshima’s “sentimental nihilism,” which is maybe just a kind way of saying “youthful nastiness.” The film begins with Makoto (Kuwano Miyuki) flirting with an older man so he will give her a lift in his car. But when he comes on too strong she tries to flee, and is rescued by Kiyoshi (Kawazu Yusuke), who arrives out of nowhere, pushing the creep to the ground and taking her away. But Kiyoshi isn’t a savior. He’s a confused adolescent whose life is dictated by the buzz and clang of the streets. After the two devise a scam that would mimic their first encounter — she gets picked up by an older man, he follows them, saves her, demands money from the victim — their lives begin to spin out of control.The amount of violence against women in “Cruel Story of Youth” is often hard to stomach, but Oshima isn’t a sadist. The film’s political roots are firmly established toward its opening, which includes newsreel footage of an April 19, 1960 student uprising in Korea, a bold connection between the real-life student unrest happening in the streets and the fictional narrative on screen. A side note should be made here for “The Wages of Resistance: Narita Stories” (2014), which is technically new but deals with an old, and still relevant topic: the resistance to the Narita International Airport, which was dropped into the middle of the biggest agricultural area outside Tokyo by the Japanese government in the 1960s. The film combines stunning newsreel footage from the period, featuring student radicals fighting on behalf of the farmers’ struggle against the government, with updated interviews with the farmers now. Older but still uneasy about what happened, some have refused to leave their land, doing farm work as planes hover overhead at all hours. Others who reluctantly fled continue to feel pain over their departure, and what they view as their failed battle. This nearly three-hour documentary bridges the gap between the unrest of Oshima’s period and what is happening today.Eiichi Yamamoto’s “Belladonna of Sadness” (1973) also arrives as a 4K restoration, screening on July 10. The final installment of the Animerama trilogy, the animated film is a surreal and brutal story of a woman who is raped by the local leader and makes a pact with the devil, appearing to her in different phallic-shaped guises, to exact revenge on the townspeople. So, you know, definitely not one for the children. The style of animation is reminiscent of the work of pop-surrealist Keichi Tanaami, with a little of Ralph Bakshi’s loopy eroticism in the mix. It’s safe to say that this adaptation of Jules Michelet’s 1862 book “Satanism and Witchcraft” will either be a nightmare or a wild dream, depending on your sexual proclivities.
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