Onibaba

Widowed woodblock artist Hokusai meets Onao and falls madly in love with her, but she disappears suddenly. One day, his daughter brings home a young girl who looks exactly like Onao. Using the girl as his muse, he reconnects to his youth when he painted his masterpiece, the gigantic octopus and the beauty seduced.

With this, his fifth film, Shôhei Imamura finally answered his true calling as Japanese cinema’s most dedicated and brilliant chronicler of society’s underbelly with the astonishing Pigs and Battleships [Buta to gunkan]. A riotous portrait of sub-Yakuza gangsters battling for control of the local pork business in a U.S. Navy-occupied coastal town (Yokosuka), Imamura conjures a chaotic world of petty thugs, young love, tough-headed women, and underworld hypochondria, with one of the most unforgettable climaxes ever to grace the screen.

High schooler Kiroku Nanbu yearns for the prim, Catholic Michiko, but her only desire is to reform Kiroku’s sinful tendencies. Hormones raging, Kiroku channels his unsatisfied lust into the only outlet available: savage, crazed violence. Fighting Elegy (Kenka Erejii) is a unique masterpiece in the diverse career of Seijun Suzuki, combining the director’s signature bravura visual style with a brilliantly focused satire of machismo and fascism.

The music on this album was inspired by the original Ska recordings coming out of Jamaicain the early to mid 1960s. In particular the fiery horns instrumentals played by musicians like Don Drummond, Tommy McCook, Roland Alphonso, Lester Sterling, Baba Brooks, Dizzy Moore, Lloyd Brevett, Ernest Ranglin, Jackie Mittoo, Lloyd Knibb, Drumbago to name just a few. Many of them were originally Jazz musicians and they played in groups like Prince Buster’s All Stars, The Skatalites, Baba Brooks’ Band, King Edwards’ Group and many more. This is my humble paean to their great works in this now largely neglected era of music. I hope you enjoy it.

A woman and her daughter are raped and murdered by soldiers during a time of civil war. Afterwards, a series of samurai returning from the war through that area are found mysteriously dead with their throats torn out. The governor calls in a wild and fierce young hero, to quell what is evidently a ghost. He encounters the two beautiful women, in an eery, beautiful scene. After spiritual purification, he meets the demon in a thrilling fight.