Sukiyaki Opens Tokyo: What Takahisa Zeze's Pink-Film Past Says About Japanese Film

Tokyo International Film Festival opened this year with Takahisa Zeze's Sukiyaki, a 155-minute biopic of the three men behind Kyu Sakamoto's Billboard-topping 1961 song "Ue o Muite Arukō." The choice matters beyond the red carpet. As The Film Stage noted in its festival report, how a national festival opens is a good indication of where that country's cinema sees itself — and by that measure, things are okay in Japan. The more interesting story is the director's résumé. Zeze began as a writer and assistant director in Japan's pornographic pink film industry and became known as one of the "Four Heavenly Kings of Pink." He then moved into mainstream filmmaking, turning out some of the darkest, finest Japanese thrillers of the 1990s. Today he produces roughly one film a year and functions as something of an elder statesman of the industry. A career path like that is, as the same report put it, largely impossible to imagine for an American filmmaker. That trajectory is the real news here.

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