A 51-minute fever dream where Japanese history collapses into poetry and propaganda.
Aoyama Shinji’s Film History—and simultaneously a chronicle of modern Japanese history—layers together images of present-day landscapes, newsreels, and photographs of Emperor Shōwa as well as of Kōtoku Shūsui and Sugako Kanno, who were executed in the High Treason Incident, with readings of texts by Nakano Shigeharu (Five-Shao of Sake, Shinagawa Station in the Rain) and Natsume Sōseki (Recollections).
Direction
Aoyama's radical formalism treats history as liquid, not linear.
Editing
Jarring juxtapositions that refuse easy meaning—pure cinematic dialectics.
Director
Shinji Aoyama
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
JP
