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地獄門 [Jigokumon / Gate of Hell] (Teinosuke Kinugasa, 1953)
Aug
4
orange
The shrine's torii as seen in the film. Vermilion contains mercury, which not only acts as a preservative but is also believed to ward off evil. DP: Kōhei Sugiyama.
Orange: a building or structure*
“Today is the first day of a life of sacrifice.”
– Moritoo Endō
Shot on Eastmancolor, relatively cheap and globally available, and influenced by Hollywood colour melodramas of the time, in particularly Rudolph Maté's Mississippi Gambler from 1953 (source). The film won two Academy Awards in 1955, Best Costume Design and Best Foreign Language Film, and in its turn greatly influenced the usage of colour in cinema to come.
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憂國 [Yūkoku / Patriotism or the Rite of Love and Death] (Yukio Mishima, 1966)
May
1
Loyalty Day
Japanese author Yukio Mishima was, besides an aesthete, a fierce proponent of Japanese nationalism. In 憂國, based on his short 1960 story, Mishima plays palace guard Lt. Shinji Takeyama. Despite being one of the instigators of an ultra-nationalist coup, Takeyama decides he cannot overthrow the government as it would mean having to kill his friends and be disloyal to the Emperor. Returning home, he and his bride Reiko (Yoshiko Tsuruoka) perform #切腹 (#seppuku / #HaraKiri), as in line with Takeyama's #samurai heritage.
Yūkoku is a #SilentFilm that plays out like #Noh #theatre, with an extreme emphasis on the beauty and love of death and loyalty respectively.
After Mishima's own seppuku in 1970, his widow ordered all copies of Yūkoku to be destroyed. In 2005, in Mishima's house, a pristine copy was uncovered in a tea box.
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羅生門 [Rashōmon] (Akira Kurosawa, 1950)
Apr
22
April Showers Day
Two men sheltering from torrential rain in the gate of a wooden temple. DP: Kazuo Miyagawa.
“It sounded interesting, at least while I kept out of the rain. But if it's a sermon, I'd sooner listen to the rain.”
– commoner