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.

Umeko (Rie Yokoyama) believes to have caught Torio redhanded (Tadanori Yokoo, whose character has been renamed “Birdey” in the English translation), shoplifting from her bookstore. Torio however is a performance actor – and real-world Art Theatre Guild performer – and the act of stealing is part of his research. The young people's encounter sets something in motion. Together them embark on committing crimes in #Tokyo's labyrinthine #Shinjuku neighbourhood and find their mirror images in a #kabuki play.

 

新宿泥棒日記 is a playful, dangerous exploration of youth and rebellion in a rapidly shifting Japan.