Japanese Videos - last updated 2-6-09

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TITLE ABSTRACT CALL_NO.
Aspects of the Kabuki Theater of Japan 198?, 20 minutes, English.
Shows costumes, make up, and examples of Kabuki productions. Accompanied by traditional Kabuki music.
JCU Library
PN2924.5.K3.A86
Career Escalator, The - with notes
Education and Job Competition.
LLC Library
JP 008 - C
Double Suicide Double Suicide
Director: Masahiro Shinoda.
1969, 105 minutes, B&W, Japanese with English subtitles.
Compelling drama based on a traditional Bunraku puppet play which is performed within the film itself about a married man who plans a suicide pact with his mistress.
LLC Library
JP 012
Funeral, The Director: Juzo Itami.
with Nobuko Miyamoto, Tsutomu Yamazaki.
1985, 114 minutes, Japanese with English subtitles.
Darkly funny tale of a contemporary Japanese family's skewed attempts to conduct a traditional Buddhist service for their late patriarch. Controversial, compelling comic effort on the part of director and actors.
LLC Library
JP 009
Japan Invades China PBS Video, 1989, 51 minutes.
1. Highlights Japan's expansion into French Indochina, the Dutch Indies, Burma, Malaya and the Philippines.
2. Focuses on the diplomatic and economic pressure placed on Japan prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
JCU Library
D443.J36
Japanese Version, The 1991, 56 minutes.
The film explores Japan's fascination with things American, pointing out that in borrowing from other cultures, there emerges a distinct Japanese slant on such things as American baseball, the 1950's, weddings, and love hotels.
JCU Library
DS821.5.U5.J36
Japanese, The Spoken Language Part 2.
LLC Library
JP 013-2
Japanese, The Spoken Language Part 2.
LLC Library
JP 014-2
Le Ga Takusan Aru Noni, Totmo Shizika Desu Video Lesson 23.
LLC Library
JP 015
Let's Learn Japanese Video Lesson 31.
LLC Library
JP 017
Music of Bunraku 1991, 29 minutes.
Shows the exotic drama of Bunraku, the puppet theater of Japan, and is intended to enable the viewer to understand its music as well. The musical styles, notations and performers of Bunraku, as well as its historic roots, as illustrated in antique paintings and prints are explained. Artists from the National Bunraku Theater play Bunraku music and perform "The Massacre of a Geisha House in Ise".
JCU Library
ML3750.M88
New Directions in Technology Solutions for Language Learning and Teaching
Heinle & Heinle Publishers
LLC Library
Look in MLGE
Odd Obsession Director: Kon Ishikawa.
with Machiko Kyo, Ganjiro Nakamura, Junko Kano, Tatsuya Nakadai.
1960, 107 minutes, Japanese with English subtitles.
An elderly Japanese man with a beautiful young wife finds it difficult to reconcile his feelings of desire with his decreasing potency in this new interpretation of the love-death theme in which some of the most sordid of human actions are captured by means of the sheerest physical beauty ... Erotic obsession is presented with such near-claustrophobic intensity that one longs for outdoor scenes ... everything is hidden secreted away.
LLC Library
JP 029
Ozawa 1985, approximately 60 minutes, color.
A documentary by leading American filmmakers Albert and David Mayles
with Seiji Ozawa, Boston Symphony Orchestra's musical director and conductor;
featuring Rudolf Serkin, Yo-Yo Ma, Jessye Norman and Edith Weins.
Musical excerpts include:
Mahler's Symphony No. 2,
Beethoven's Concerto No. 2 and Symphony No. 6,
and Dvorak's Concerto in B Minor.
LLC Library
JP 020
Picture Bride Director: Kayo Hatta
with Tamlyn Tomita, Akira Takayama, Youki Kudoh, and Toshiro Mifune.
1995, 95 minutes, Color, Japanese with yellow English subtitles.
Tomita stars in this gripping drama based on one woman's journey to a new life spawned by a photograph. Tomita's character travels to Hawaii in order to marry a man whom she has never met, with only a picture to help her find him. Once there, the tropical splendor of Hawaii inspires her toward a passionate romance.
LLC Library
MLAM 049
Quiet Duel Director: Akira Kurosawa
with Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura and Miki Sanjko.
1949, 95 minutes, Black & White, Japanese with English subtitles.
Based on a play by Kasuo Kikuta, this early Kurosawa film concerns an army surgeon who, during a life-saving operation, contaminates himself with syphilis, which, at the time, was virtually incurable. Now suffering with the dreaded disease he is forced to abandon his fiancée but finds the faith to redouble his work to restore people to health, including the man from whom he contracted the disease.
LLC Library
JP 028
Ran Director: Akira Kurosawa.
with Tatsuya Nakadai Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu, Mieko Harada, Yoshiko Miyazaki.
1985, 160 minutes, Japanese with English subtitles.
A Japanese version of King Lear and a brilliant blend of Japanese history and Shakespeare's themes. It is a triumphant film about ruthless ambition, evil plots and "chaos" - the meaning of the title in Japanese.
LLC Library

JP 021
Raw Fish and Pickle with notes
Traditional Rural and Seafaring Life
LLC Library
JP 008 - B
Rhapsody in August Director: Akira Kurosawa
with Sachiko Murase, Hidetaka Yoshioka, and Richard Gere.
1991, 98 minutes, Japanese with yellow English subtitles.
The film tells of 4 children whose visit to their grandmother rekindles her frightening memories of August 9th, 1945, when an atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The children learn about the horrors of war, and when an American cousin arrives, more dark secrets of the past are revealed.
LLC Library
JP 010
Sanjuro Director: Akira Kurosawa
with Toshiro Mifune and Tatsuja Nakadai.
1962, 96 minutes, Black & White, Japanese with English subtitles.
The hero of Kurosawa's Yojimbo returns to help a group of very earnest, very green, very young samurai get their clan rid of corruption. As in Yojimbo, much of the comic effect comes from imaginative composition and incongruous movement.
LLC Library

JP 025
Scola 7 minutes.
Creighton University.
LLC Library

Look in MLGE
Seven Samurai, The [re-mastered] Director: Akira Kurosawa.
with Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura.
1954, 208 minutes, Japanese with English subtitles.
Akira Kurosawa's masterwork is set in 16th-century Japan, where a small village hires a group of professional warriors to protect them from roving bandits. Fabulous battle scenes are mixed with characters filled with emotion and humanity.
LLC Library
JP 023
Sonatine Director: Takeshi Kitano.
with Takeshi Kitano, Aya Kokumai, Tetsu Watanabe, Mansanobu Katsumura, et al.
1993, ??, Japanese with English subtitles.
Murakawa, a ruthless gangster, is sent to intervene in a gang war on the tropical island of Okinawa. There, for a brief interlude, he and his men enjoy a respite from violence before the inevitable showdown.
LLC Library
JP 024
Stray Dog Director: Akira Kurosawa
with Toshiro Mifune, Takashi Shimura, Ko Kimura, Keiko Awaji.
1994, 122 minutes, Black & White, Japanese with English subtitles.
A first rate thriller in which Kurosawa has acknowledged his debt to Georges Simenon. Mifune plays rookie Detective Murakami, who loses his gun only to discover that it has fallen into the hands of a killer. Terrified of losing his job, his search takes him into the Tokyo underworld, full of postwar shortages, divinely hellish under Kurosawa's odd-angled lensing and staccato editing... Stray Dog is a Dostojevskian saga of guilt, and expiation, by association.
LLC Library
JP 027
Style of the Classic Japanese Noh Theater, The 198?, 17 minutes, English.
Analyzes and demonstrates the style of Japan's oldest form of theater. Commentary on and analysis of the movements and stance of the Noh performers.
JCU Library
PN2924.5N6.S78
Tampopo Director: Juzo Itami.
with Nobuko Miyamoto, Tsutomu Yamazaki.
1986, 114 minutes, Japanese with English subtitles.
Off-the-wall entry from Japan concerns the put upon owner of a noodle restaurant and the bizarre drifters who try to aid her in making her place a success. Tremendous, tangential comedy that may be the first cinematic celebration of the joy of eating.
LLC Library
JP 022
Taxing Woman, A Director: Juzo Itami.
1994, 127 minutes, Japanese with English subtitles.
Itame takes comedic aim at Japanese life with this winning look at a job-obsessed tax collector who sets her sights on bringing a wealthy "love-hotel" owner to justice. Before long, the pair of enemies is brought together, in a sly satire with universal appeal.
LLC Library
JP 011
Tetsudai o Sasemashita Video Lesson 28.
LLC Library
JP 016
Tomorrow and Yesterday - with notes
Modern Technology and Ancient Culture.
LLC Library

JP 008 - A
U.S./Japan Relations 1990, 85 minutes.
The honorable Ishihara Shintaro discusses the ideas presented in his book:
The Japan That Can Say No. His views are seen as advancing a Japan that will challenge the U.S. economically and politically.
JCU Library
HF1456.5.J3.U53
Video Skits LLC Library
JP 019
Working Couple, A with notes
Urban Family Life.
LLC Library
JP 008 - D
Yojimbo Director: Akira Kurosawa
with Toshiro Mifune.
1961, 151 minutes, Japanese with English subtitles.
A war-weary samurai is caught in the middle of a feud between rival factions in a village. A sly commentary on action films in general which also inspired
A Fistful of Dollars.
LLC Library
JP 004
Your Life in Japan LLC Library
JP 018