Roman Porno on Love Hotel Hill
Jun. 4th, 2007 07:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusBecause this Japan trip is so short -- a sweet three weeks, rather than my usual leisurely three months -- I've had to pack a lot into each day. I see each Tokyo friend just once (and I have more friends here than in Berlin), and I try and do each of my favourite things once.
Sunday contained three fabulous things. The old friend to see was Ayako, who spent a year living with me in Berlin. She's now working in fashion, renting the ground floor of an old wooden house in Mejiro. Aya -- who looks taller and more model-like than ever -- took Hisae and me to an amazing cafe in a Taisho-era traditional house. Kasoyo felt more like something in Kamakura or Kyoto than a cafe in Tokyo. A craftsman was tweaking geta on a tatami verandah, people did calligraphy in a side room, the waitresses bobbed around in exquisite kimonos, and the macha and sweets were fabulous. The whole experience was gracious and relaxing.
Next, on a tip from the friends we dined with on Saturday night, Ansa and Colin, we headed to the Tamagawa matsuri. The matsuri season is mostly later on in the summer, but this one was a delicious sneak preview, with adorable girls in yukatas, delicious streetstall food, ball and goldfish bobbing -- and a tiny sacred mountain to climb, with a shrine at the top and gagaku music playing and people scurrying about bearing devotional items. A magical twilight, and everyone full of that light, cheerful, festive togetherness which is so typically Japanese.
Shibuya was also full of that feeling. Climbing Love Hotel Hill to the cinema next to Nest, we bought tickets for the new Matsumoto film Dai Nippon Jin (no free seats before Tuesday) and, on impulse, saw a Roman Porno classic from 1974, Street of Joy by Tatsumi Kumashiro.
It was actually my second time to see the film -- the ICA in London ran a Roman Porno series back in the early 90s. Kumashiro is great, and although this film is set in the late 50s (it's based on a novel by Shimizu Ikko about the last days of a brothel called Kofukuya) it crackles with 1970s atmosphere, and above all with a great love for the women characters at its centre.
Street of Joy feels a bit like a Fassbinder film, which is amazing when you think that, like the other Roman Porno stuff coming out of Nikkatsu at the time, this was produced by serious directors whose own work was generally a commercial failure, but who found a way to make the films they wanted by meeting the studio's soft porn quota: four nude or sex scenes per hour. Other than the soft porn, though, they don't slum or fudge at all: the films are full of inventive devices -- intertitles, cartoons commenting on the action, gloriously atmospheric shots of tatami rooms with kettles always boiling away near the lovers.
What could be better than following this evocative piece of Pink Eiga with hot izakaya food and cold beer at the foot of Love Hotel hill?
Reminder: I play the Apple Store Shibuya tonight at 8pm. Free entry -- if you can squeeze in!
Sunday contained three fabulous things. The old friend to see was Ayako, who spent a year living with me in Berlin. She's now working in fashion, renting the ground floor of an old wooden house in Mejiro. Aya -- who looks taller and more model-like than ever -- took Hisae and me to an amazing cafe in a Taisho-era traditional house. Kasoyo felt more like something in Kamakura or Kyoto than a cafe in Tokyo. A craftsman was tweaking geta on a tatami verandah, people did calligraphy in a side room, the waitresses bobbed around in exquisite kimonos, and the macha and sweets were fabulous. The whole experience was gracious and relaxing.
Next, on a tip from the friends we dined with on Saturday night, Ansa and Colin, we headed to the Tamagawa matsuri. The matsuri season is mostly later on in the summer, but this one was a delicious sneak preview, with adorable girls in yukatas, delicious streetstall food, ball and goldfish bobbing -- and a tiny sacred mountain to climb, with a shrine at the top and gagaku music playing and people scurrying about bearing devotional items. A magical twilight, and everyone full of that light, cheerful, festive togetherness which is so typically Japanese.
Shibuya was also full of that feeling. Climbing Love Hotel Hill to the cinema next to Nest, we bought tickets for the new Matsumoto film Dai Nippon Jin (no free seats before Tuesday) and, on impulse, saw a Roman Porno classic from 1974, Street of Joy by Tatsumi Kumashiro. It was actually my second time to see the film -- the ICA in London ran a Roman Porno series back in the early 90s. Kumashiro is great, and although this film is set in the late 50s (it's based on a novel by Shimizu Ikko about the last days of a brothel called Kofukuya) it crackles with 1970s atmosphere, and above all with a great love for the women characters at its centre.
Street of Joy feels a bit like a Fassbinder film, which is amazing when you think that, like the other Roman Porno stuff coming out of Nikkatsu at the time, this was produced by serious directors whose own work was generally a commercial failure, but who found a way to make the films they wanted by meeting the studio's soft porn quota: four nude or sex scenes per hour. Other than the soft porn, though, they don't slum or fudge at all: the films are full of inventive devices -- intertitles, cartoons commenting on the action, gloriously atmospheric shots of tatami rooms with kettles always boiling away near the lovers.
What could be better than following this evocative piece of Pink Eiga with hot izakaya food and cold beer at the foot of Love Hotel hill?
Reminder: I play the Apple Store Shibuya tonight at 8pm. Free entry -- if you can squeeze in!
Talk about Tokyo
Date: 2007-06-03 10:37 pm (UTC)