Asian Beauty Appreciation

Takeshi Kitano is back with another in his Yakuza ouvre of films. This film is from 2010 but is about to open in a limited release across the USA beginning December 2nd. In this one called Outrage, in which Kitano is the writer, director, and star, he has decided to skip anything at all that might be considered fun, family, or as familiar as going out in Tokyo for a bowl of Ramen noodles. Sorry – there was a scene that began in a restaurant that served noodles but that scene ended with someone’s fingers floating in the noodle bowl.

Kitano has decided that the whole Yakuza experience is nothing more than the human equivalent of the most deadly King of the Hill game you’ve ever seen. From the lowest members of a Yakuza family, who are the button men or soldiers (the drivers don’t count), to the very top of the mountain where the Chairman holds forth – we see nothing but a supreme battle for power. Loyalties are constantly shifting. Your sworn brother today is your executioner tomorrow. And someone else will take care of him on the next day.

We start with a summit of one family. There’s a long line of limos and black-suited chauffeurs. We hear that Murase family has been doing a bit of drug business and that the Chairman isn’t pleased. So he instructs the Ikemoto family to set up an office on the Murase turf and begin to annoy and bother them.

An Ikemoto guy runs up a huge tab in a Murase night club in one night (600,000 Yen). He then claims he doesn’t have the money on him. The Murase’s demand payment but then are embarrassed when they send a couple of low level guys out to collect and find out that the guy was with the Ikemotos. An apology is necessary as well as the money being returned. But this meeting gets out of control fast, and the Murase lieutenant gets beaten up, and loses enough face that he’s required to cut off his pinky.

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Yui Aragaki has finally achieved her first lead female role in a J-TV Series. After playing a series of high school sweeties, and ingenues, “Gakki’ has finally been tabbed for a starring role. The series is called Zenkai Girl or Full-Throttle Girl. As we meet her in the opening scenes, she has just graduated from law school and has landed a job at an international law firm.

Yui is cast as Wakaba Ayukawa, and she’s good at everything she does – she graduated at the top of her class, she’s multi-lingual, and she has what is takes to become an ace lawyer. Only her first assignment is to baby-sit her boss’s five year old daughter, who is five going on 30, or so it seems.

Wakaba is driven because as child she grew up in rather desperate circumstances – her father was in debt from gambling to the Yakuza loan-sharks.

Little Wakaba got them out from under this by studying and then filing a motion and getting a decree for Voluntary Bankruptcy. That set her on her path of wanting to be lawyer and for seeing anything that she took on to its finish. In her own personal lexicon, there was no such thing as not finishing anything to the best of her ability.

But she hadn’t counted on taking a smart-ass five year old girl to pre-school every day. However everything was not all bad. At the law firm every once in a while she got to do a project, or a report, or a translation of a law-brief, and people took notice of her skills. At the pre-school she ran into a single parent Dad whose step-son also attended this school. This was Ryo Nishido as Sota Yamada , a would-be chef.

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You might think, after hearing about a TV Series entitled The Bull Doctor, that the series would be about a veterinarian whose medical practice included bulls, cattle, and the like. You might think that the setting would be out in the American west, and you’d probably consider that the show would include some cowboys. If you thought any or all of the above, you’d be dead wrong – emphasis on the ‘dead’.

The Bull Doctor is a Japanese TV Series about forensic pathology – or the study of why a person or people have died. We have Makiko Esumi (below) in the lead role as Dr Tamami Oodate (Oodate Sensei). She’s just been asked back to the Joto University Hospital to work as a forensic doctor – in short conduct autopsies. The last time I watched Makiko in a role, she played a brilliant surgeon who had the worst luck in finding a guy to be with. That show was called The Love Revolution (produced in 2001 but I saw it just a few years ago. This one is her first appearance in a TV series since 2007. Welcome back. (Okari)

Also on hand is Satomi Ishihara (below). I’ve seen her in a high school baseball TV series called H2 (2005), as a nurse in the TV Series Ns’ Aoi (2006), as an athletic airline stewardess – sorry – cabin attendant/basketball player in The Flying Rabbits film (2008), as a high school teacher in the TV series Puzzle (2008), and one more – as a forensic medical student in the series Voice (2009). This time she’s a homicide detective working with forensic doctors. Go figure.

So what is this one about, besides the overview of forensics? Read more…

I’ve introduced you to many of the Japanese TV Series featuring the beautiful Meisa Kuroki. In virtually all of these she’s played either the lead female role in a romantic or romantic comedy, or a supporting role. She’s usually cast  because of her looks.

What would you say if I told you that Kuroki is in a J-TV series that is currently airing in which she plays a tough as nails lady cop. The full title of the series is: Jiu: Keishichou Tokushuhan Sousakei, but most are simply calling it Jiu.

As the series opens, Kuroki’s character is a member of the SIT (Special Investigative Team). She’s a loner, she repels all and any invitations of friendship from either colleagues or outsiders, at least in the first couple of episodes. She’s barely able to hold conversations with her colleagues; not because she is inarticulate, but because she doesn’t see the point of it.

By the end of the opening episode she has saved a female detective who had been asked to go into a hostage situation by posing as a delivery from a restaurant. Kuroki’s character – called Isaki Motoko, guns down the perpetrator before he can slit his own throat in an attempted suicide.

Isaki’s actions are noticed by the higher ups in the Tokyo police. But they don’t know what to do with her. Is she a loose cannon about to go off like a Dirty Harry. Is she a danger to her colleagues?

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Hanamizuki [Flowering Dogwood - and tag-lined: May your love bloom for 100 years] will mostly likely not last 100 months in your memory. But that doesn’t mean you can’t watch and enjoy it for what it is – a sweet drama with appealing actors and actresses in situations that we all can identify with.

The star of the film is Yui Aragaki who is affectionately known as ‘Gakki‘ by her legion of fans. In this film she’s the central character. As the film opens it is in the early 1980′s and a small Japanese girl is reaching upward to the blossoms on the tree. Flash forward to 2005, and we find ourselves tracking a bus as it drives along the coast of Nova Scotia in Canada.

It is then, on this bus, that we meet Gakki as the now adult Sae Hirisawa. An English speaking young girl ask Sae some questions and we find out that she is headed for a lighthouse where she says, “… I am meant to be…”. The camera pans down and we see a framed photo in her hands.

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Imagine this: After a long, tiring day at the office, you’re ready to go out for a couple of tall, cold, Kirin Beers with a few of your mates at work. However – they decline. Just then your wife calls. Can you come home right away? We have a problem. It’s serious. When you ask her is everyone okay, she says, Just come home right away. It’s very serious….

When you finally get home, all the lights are out. Tadaima! (I ‘m home!), you say but there’s no answer. When you turn on a lamp – your wife jumps out and says turn it off. You’re dumbstruck – you have no idea. What’s wrong?

She directs you to get a flashlight, and to take a look out in the courtyard. And it is out there, in your own courtyard, which is your enclosed back yard – a young girl lies dead in your back yard. Hello…!

Not quite the Okari (Welcome home) response you expected. This is how the latest entry from the producers of Shinzanmono which I reviewed last year here, begins. This time, the series has returned to the broadcast medium in the form of a 2 hour Special Movie. The title is Red Finger.

Hiroshi Abe returns as Detective Kyouchiro Kaga

Detective Kyoichiro Kaga, portrayed once again by the wonderful Hiroshi Abe, returns to TV. This SP is a prequel to the series and takes place two years earlier. Kaga is still a great detective. And the beautiful Meisa Kuroki is once again on hand as a local reporter Aoyama.

Meisa Kuroki as Ami Aoyama

As the DVD cover tells us – when Maehara returned home to find a corpse on his property, this average salary-man and his family, were looking at just the beginning of a tragic chain of events.

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Akari (Aki) Dojima, played by Yukie Nakama, is an illustrator, and the third daughter of Chairman Dojima, the head of a construction company. During her childhood, she had an accident which left her crippled and forced her to spend her life in a motorized wheelchair.

The sudden suicide of Akari’s father sets off a chain of events. Members of Dojima family gather and their servants are killed one after another and an investigation begins. After that, the body of their driver (Kitaro), who had hung himself, is found in the garage.

So there’s your set-up for the March 2011 release Gaze (aka Mesen) taken directly from the DVD box cover. I decided to watch this one because I’ve been a fan of Yukie Nakama for a long time.  She’s the cover girl , and the lead actress, but this is far from a glamorous role for her.

In fact even though we get a brief peek at her in a hot-springs (onsen) this made for TV movie is definitely short on glamor. This is not to say that the female actresses are unattractive. No, with certainty I can state that all of the three daughters are quite nice looking, as is the girl friend of one of the sons. She’s played by Misa Uehara. While I’m at it – let’s not forget the family housekeeper either.

Misa Uehara as the girl friend who is marrying into this family

The head of housekeeping

The eldest sister

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My Darling is a Foreigner stars Mao Inoue as a manga artist and Jonathan Sherr as her transplanted to Japan, American boyfriend. The film is the tale of a cross-cultural relationship and the ensuing problems. This film is actually based on a very popular manga (more than 3 million copies have been sold), Darling wa Gaikokujin, written by Saori Oguri. That story was based on Oguri’s own life with her husband Tony.

The story has some humor to it, but not nearly enough. The tale has all the expected speed bumps:

Her father is against it and about his hoped for approval – ‘Not in a million years’, he says.

Tony’s use of spoken Nihongo (Japanese) is excellent but that doesn’t mean he will use the right word all the time.

Saori’s English is a work in progress.

Each of them, Saori and Tony, will be the one that is different at a key social setting – Tony is mistaken for the Minister who performed the service at Saori’s sister’s wedding by Saori’s Mom. When Saori finally says, “This is my boyfriend”, her mother is shocked and immediately pulls Saori off to the side (right in full view of Tony).

At a party of Tony’s friends – Saori is the only Japanese – and she feels so isolated that she drinks herself into a stupor.

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A shirtless man is dragged into someplace by a few masked men. He is definitely there not by his own choice. He’s roughly handled. He’s being dragged by his arms and his legs have been tied together during this transit – secured against movement There’s a hefty piece of tape over his mouth. But his eyes are able to see. He’s brought to a bed-frame and laid on his back and secured with his arms and legs taped down.

A sheet of glass is placed on his chest. We can see the terror on his face.

Another masked man approaches. He carries a baseball bat. Without a word, he swings the bat with all his might bringing it down on this bound man. Again and again. The camera pulls back and we see that this event is being watched by a group of about 15-20 people, mostly men with a few women. We only see them briefly. The bat repeats its deadly journey again and again.

This is the first couple of minutes and how the Japanese TV Special, Strawberry Night opens. We have just witnessed an execution, an execution clearly not sanctioned by the state.

This special aired last fall on November 13th, 2010 and a series will begin in January  2012. The star is the beautiful Yuko Takeuchi. I think she’s irresistible. In this show, and coming series, Yuko plays Inspector Reiko Himekawa who is the only female section chief in the Tenth Homicide Section of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department’s First Investigative Division.

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I did a piece about Japanese actress Kyoko Hasegawa back in August of 2009. That’s when I became aware of the film Rain Fall. This is a political conspiracy and a thriller combined, and the setting is in Tokyo. Kippei Shiina stars in the role of John Rain, an America with a Japanese father. He’s an ex-CIA covert operative, a trainer of US Navy Seals, and an assassin. In short, he’s one bad dude that you won’t want to mess with.

Gary Oldman stars as the head of the CIA’s Tokyo office. He chews up the scenery in an over-the-top performance. Oldman’s character, William Holtzer, is mostly office-bound where he commands his men from a state-of-the-electronic-arts war room. When he’s not barking orders like ‘Take the shot, TAKE THE  SHOT!, he’s cussing up a storm or bemoaning (Jesus Christ!) yet another missed opportunity.

The gorgeous Kyoko Hasegawa is on hand portraying the daughter of a Japanese whistle-blower. It will be Rain’s job to protect her.

Also on hand are a few Japanese police detectives, and the Yakuza. The detective is a wise and savvy veteran who gets a good handle on the case, but he can’t prove squat. The Yakuza are a shadowy presence. We will see the head guy a few times, but will meet some of his street soldiers on more than a few occasions.

The film was written and directed by Max Mannix. This was just his second time at directing a film. Names with two X’s are pretty rare; Xerxes, anyone?

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