In Translation | Four Seasons: Utopiano (dir. Shoichiro Sasaki, 1980)
The hugely influential masterpiece from one of Japan's great unsung directors finally in English
There aren’t many giants left more unseen than Shoichiro Sasaki.
A seemingly happy employee of the NHK (Japan’s national public station—think PBS) for his entire career, all of his films save one—the last movie he ever made, in 2011, after retiring—were TV productions, made to be aired a couple times by the broadcast giant and then forgotten. It seems insane today. What TV studio now would ever allow something like this or Dream Island Girl to happen? You’d be arrested for even suggesting it.
Perhaps it’s thanks to their TV origins that his movies have spent so long so underseen, trapped by the whims of a company deciding if they want to re-air them or let them rot in a warehouse. But it also might be how Sasaki’s work was able to quietly seep deep into the identity of contemporary Japanese film. After all, what easier way is there is there to alter the brain chemistry of an entire generation than with a TV slot?
And boy did Four Seasons: Utopiano ever do just that. The list of people who have reverently talked about Sasaki and Utopiano in particular is a veritable who’s who of Japanese cinema in the 90s and 00s. Shunji Iwai used to spend his time in school trying to emulate Utopiano, Shinya Tsukamoto has been open about his awe on first seeing it and how deeply it influenced him; Hirokazu Kore-eda has held lectures on this film. Naomi Kawase has professed her love and Mamoru Hosoda recently dragged Sachiyo Nakao out of retirement to voice a character in Belle (her only film credits being Sasaki productions). And I’ve never found hard confirmation, but come on…watch Dream Island Girl and tell me Hideaki Anno didn’t see it at some point. Everywhere you look from the late 80s on, you can see Sasaki’s soul on display, Utopiano at the forefront.
Watch it and you’ll understand why. Four Seasons: Utopiano was released in 1980, but it feels like it was made twenty years later, a poetic and recursive collection of rhyming moments in a life, camera hurrying around like the eyes of a dream, every second wrapped up so deeply inside its protagonist that the whole entire world becomes her. Sasaki’s blend of heavy improvisation and semi-documentary stylings clash beautifully with his fierce dedication to poetry, to films less as tools of narrative and more one of emotional expression; two opposing forces coming together to find the staggering profundity of the every day. I mean, what do you want me to say? It’s a masterpiece.
And there are finally English subtitles for it.
So hey! Turn off the lights, wrap yourself up in a nice big blanket, and enjoy a quiet classic of Japanese cinema.
unembedded link: https://youtu.be/eGWNpmw-2rg
A quick note on the translation:
I'm NOT a professional translator and had to do this one by ear (a nightmare hell with the sound mixing here), so while I'm confident these subs are solid, expect some mistakes!! There's also about two sentences in there that I fully could not make out, so I just....left those two lines blank. Sorry! Anyway, if you notice a miss, let me know. I'll fix whatever problem line there is and give you a shout :^)
Music of the Week | Do Do Do A Silly Travel By Bicycle Bicycle by P-iPLE
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Violent and playful all-woman post-punk rocking tearing up the underground. Icy and angular, P-PiPLE wear their Fugazi influence on their sleeve without falling into any sort of worship, instead infusing it a riot-grrl energy playful abandon. Like letting it all out and cleaning your system in some sort of perpetually night metallic hell.
Book of the Week | Rai Rai Rai by Yoshiaki
My only slightly disingenuous pitch: Rai Rai Rai is Kaiju No. 8 if it had the sauce. A wildly entertaining action comedy (emphasis on comedy) romp about debt, aliens, and mushrooms, it follows a girl who gets the power to transform into a giant monster. And while it does operate very much in the confines of that battle shounen premise, you can tell the author is a gag guy at heart, imbuing the series with an oddball style that rubs against alt-manga and walking the razor tight wire of making fun of itself while also treating its events with a real earnestness. There’s also a certain fetishism going on that I’m not exactly sure how to explain but really highlights the age old adage: good art is made by pervert freaks. This might just be good art.
Movie of the Week | Lust in the Rain (dir. Shinzo Katayama, 2024)
Takes the life of and stories written by legendary alt-manga god Yoshiharu Tsuge and splatters them Pollack style into an expansive non-linear collage, multiple narratives in multiple timelines (all played by the same people) overlapping each other at every turn to form a hallucinatory, non-literal drama of a struggling relationship. But despite its almost broken jigsaw structuring, this isn’t a puzzle film. Rather, the abstraction entirely serves finding poetry and meaning through surprising, surreal connections. A spiral film, one with no entrance and no exit—just waves to drag you deeper down.
Have thoughts about anything covered this week? Got a recommendation you’re dying to share? Want to tell me how handsome and cool I am? Leave a comment below!
oh and here's the true original Record of Lodoss War translated into English