“With bar hostesses, there's a type who are likely to be murdered.”

“Empires, the past – they're beyond me! Will things change for the better? Will bums like these disappear? And the slums too? Come on. Tell us!”

– Hanako

A clock face for Tick Tock Day, USA.

After World War II, the Japanese martial arts of #kendo was banished by the occupying forces in an attempt to “remove and exclude militaristic and ultra-nationalistic persons from life”. With that in mind, it makes complete sense that nationalist author and former kendo practitioner Yukio Mishima wrote a short story – Sword, originally published in literary magazine Shincho in 1963 – about the art.

– So what is your goal in life then?

– Satisfaction of the present. The sword, and nothing else.

Both the story and Kenji Misumi's 1964 film adaptation follow arrogant kendo student Jiro, played by sublime kabuki actor Raizō Ichikawa who also appears in an earlier Mishima adaptation, 炎上 [Enjō / The Temple of the Golden Pavilion / Conflagration] (1958).

A boy (Bin Amatsu), helps out his father and stepmother's insurance money scam by pretending to be injured in traffic.

Travel mountains on International Mountain Day. A starving community has come to the agreement that the elders approaching the age of seventy are to be carried up Narayama mountain to die. The day prior to the mountain's festival, sixty-nine year old Orin prepares to leave, carried by her son Tatsuhei.

“This winter… I'm going to the mountain. My mother went to the mountain, as did the mother-in-law of our home. So I have to go too.”

– Orin

In Keisuke Kinoshita's highly stylised 楢山節考, the arguably cruel (and most likely fictional) practice – of 姥捨て [ubasute, abandoning an old woman] – is superbly abstracted. Narration, dramatic lighting, colour filters and very obviously a soundstage underline that what we're watching is not a film, but a kabuki play.

“We come to life, we die… It's a perpetual renewal. How boring.”

– Mibu