Cure – 90s Japan’s Most Influential Horror Movie
-Hello and welcome to Japan Media Tour, I’m your host Stephen T.M., and today we’re headed to the movies to discuss Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 1997 film Cure -And yes, this is Kiyoshi Kurosawa, not Akira – he’s still a very talented director though, don’t worry -So when I was a kid I was obsessed with horror
Movies, and Japan of course had some of the best ones -The late 90s-early 2000s was a renaissance for Japanese horror, with movies like Ring and Ju-on, and their American remakes dominating our nightmares -But before all those came Cure, which led audiences away from the slashers that had
Dominated the 80s and 90s, and ushered in a new era of psychological horror -I’ve always thought there was a bit of a catch-22 with regard to this type of horror – on the one hand, they lay the symbolism and metaphors on thick, so they are the perfect
Place to start learning how to analyze film, but on the other, there is lots of brutal subject matter, making them less suitable for younger audiences -Anyway, I’m glad I did watch a lot of them as a kid – they were a good stepping stone
For learning about film -So as is always the case when we talk about movies on Japan Media Tour, I must give the usual spoiler alert as I will be giving away tons of plot points today -The film starts with a woman, whom we later
Learn is the main character’s wife Fumie, reading the classic French horror folktale, Bluebeard -If you’re not familiar with Bluebeard, it’s about a wealthy nobleman whose wives keep going missing under mysterious circumstances -In Cure, Fumie mentions that Bluebeard is handsome other than his beard, which is of
Course blue – a little Uncanny Valley there – the Uncanny Valley, by the way, refers to things that seem almost typical, but there is something just a bit off about them – a classic example being humanoid robots that move or speak in a peculiar way
-I think I first heard of that concept in a Vsauce video on YouTube – shoutout to Michael Stevens -So anyway, Bluebeard gets a new wife and tells her she can go anywhere in his palace other than one secret room -Of course she gets curious and enters the forbidden room, finding the rotting corpses
Of all his previous wives there within -Bluebeard finds out that she went in the room and tries to kill her, but the young bride, or in some versions her brother, ends up killing Bluebeard instead -You get the feeling the inclusion of the
Bluebeard story is a bit of foreshadowing, so just keep that in the back of your mind as we continue -Anyway, a doctor in a white labcoat walks over and sits across from Fumie -In the foreground you see some children’s
Toys, and you get the feeling maybe this is a psych ward or something like that -Fumie is shaking after she finishes reading the story -She announces that in the end the girl kills Bluebeard – a triumph, a happy ending -The psychiatrist’s notepad is in German, which is interesting, with words like schizophrenia
Written on it -This opening scene kind of feels a bit like the movie Audition actually, if you’ve seen that – just the way it’s shot really – wide angles that allow you to slowly investigate the room – both movies also use silence really well, forcing you to focus intently on what’s going on
-Audition actually came out a couple years after Cure, in 1999, and was directed by Takashi Miike, the same guy who made Ichi the Killer, which is considered to be something of a cult classic -Both those movies are pretty gruesome and disturbing – definitely not for the squeamish amongst us
-So the next scene has a very different composition altogether – we see a naked woman in bed, and a man, also naked suddenly hits her over the head with a pipe and kills her -And all the while upbeat music is playing -This is actually one of the few scenes with
Music in it -Most of the film is silent, which makes it feel like everyday life – specifically like everyday life in Japan -It’s not grand and theatrical – it’s quiet and tangible -For example, there’s one scene later on where the sound of the dryer is making Takabe
Go crazy – it’s the little noises of everyday life that make this film feel so real -Also, take in that Kurosawa hits us with a sudden murder just two minutes in – this sets the tone that anyone can be killed at any time throughout the movie
-And he doesn’t need to make it a bloodbath from there on out – we can feel the tension in every scene, not knowing what might happen next -So the cops are investigating the crime scene and mention that the woman is a prostitute
-There is an X carved into the neck of the murder victim -They find a terrified naked man curled up in the fetal position, shaking and sweating, hiding in a little storage compartment in the halfway of the apartment building
-We then find out that there have been multiple other cases just like this, with an X being cut into the victim, in the last 3 months -The terrified man in the cupboard ends up admitting to the crime – even though he’s a seemingly normal guy who never would have
Been suspected of committing such a heinous act -It turns out he wasn’t the one who killed the other victims though -They were also killed by seemingly regular people -So there must be something in the water -Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa then lets us breathe
A little bit and takes us out into the fresh air and onto the beach -A young man in a trenchcoat approaches another guy on the beach and asks where he is -Shirasato Beach he replies, in Chiba -The trenchcoat guy seems disoriented, and still doesn’t know where he is, nor where he’s going
-He keeps asking questions, including the same questions that have already been answered over and over again -The trenchcoat guy says he doesn’t even know who he is, and that he needs help -He then collapses to the ground
-The other guy, being a kind person, brings him to his house, where he and his wife will take care of the confused and disoriented fellow -The nice guy turns out to be an elementary school teacher named Hanaoka -After forgetting every single thing about his life, the first thing the crazy guy remembers
Is seeing the teacher’s wife in her pink negligee -He sees her and then remembers it a few minutes later and mentions it to the nice guy who’s taken him in -The creepy guy then says he wants to know
More about her – if you didn’t already have a bad feeling about this guy, well now you certainly do -By the way, that weirdo isn’t the only one in a beige trench, the main character, who is a police detective, also wears one
-In the next scene you see the detective from behind in a dry cleaners, and at first I thought it was the weird guy with no memory – by the way, this isn’t revealed yet, but I’ll just tell you the weird guy’s name – it’s Mamiya, just so I can stop referring to him
As the crazy guy or the guy with no memory -So then you see a man in a beige trench coat from behind again – this time inside a house, and you have the same thought once more – is it Mamiya, or is it our detective, Takabe?
-He disappears off screen, takes off the trench, and returns to the screen facing the camera and wearing a suit – it’s clear now that it’s our protagonist Takabe -I know I’m getting into the weeds a bit here, describing little details in every shot,
But Kurosawa likes to leave clues all throughout the film to make us question everything and everyone -The detective then tells his wife, Fumie, whom we met in scene one, that he wants to go on a trip after this case is over – and
I really appreciate this police movie cliche – it just warms the heart, doesn’t it? Like a hot cup of sencha on a winter’s day -He says they should go to either Hokkaido or Okinawa – the southernmost and northernmost places in Japan -Fumie says [quote] “from one extreme to another” [end quote]
-Which is just like the extreme of going from a murder investigation to a relaxing vacation, I suppose -Cut to the next scene where we see the elementary school teacher Hanaoka fly out of a second story window in a rural area and land on the
Ground – the action in this movie always seems to come out of nowhere – it isn’t full of jump scares, but one scene is calm, and in the next something violent is happening -Hanaoka’s wife is found murdered, and it turns out the teacher himself did not die
From his fall from the second floor -So naturally Hanaoka becomes a suspect in his wife’s murder -It now starts to seem like the others who admitted to previous murders were not the ones who actually did it, and that it was probably the mysterious Mamiya -The other suspects had apparently said that
The devil made them do it -And so we wonder if Mamiya is somehow connected to the devil, or if he is the devil himself -The cops are interviewing Hanaoka in a hospital bed, though it’s in a very open room, like the one Fumie was in at the beginning of the
Film – it’s not one of the cramped little hospital rooms you see in other movies – it looks more like a military hospital to me in terms of the layout -Anyway, the police are asking him why he stabbed his wife to death
-And just like the other killers, he says he doesn’t know why he did it -Hanaoka actually says that he remembers everything, and that killing his wife, Tomoko just seemed like the natural thing to do at the time -This before he collapses to the floor crying hysterically -By the way, Kurosawa creates an incredible
Sense of depth in his shots -Lots of stationary camera with people moving in and out of view, and well-placed objects giving each shot beautiful composition -Every frame really is a painting -The detectives are then on a rooftop overlooking the city talking about the possible motives of the criminals
-Is it media violence – something they saw in a book or a movie? Do they share similar childhood traumas? They really have no idea at this point -I love this type of scene – I feel like you
See it a lot in Japanese movies and tv shows, especially anime – Just two characters hashing it out on a rooftop -It seems to happen in high school shows a lot – I always wonder why the high school students are up on the roof so much. Is this a real thing?
-Anyway, a pretty big line is dropped here – Sakuma, the psychiatrist who works with Takabe and the police says “no one understands what motivates a criminal, sometimes not even the criminal” -It brings up a lot of questions about fate
And free will – I’m not actually sure if any of us are in control of anything we do – I mean what is there in life other than our biology and the external forces that act
Upon us – unless there is some sort of God, which is not out of the question, it’s hard to see how there could be free will -Anyway, that’s something to think about -Sakuma then tells Takabe that he’s getting in too deep – another wonderful police movie
Cliche -It’s like something out of McBain from The Simpsons -The two cops keep talking and get to the topic of Takabe’s wife. She’s sick, as we saw in the beginning -Takabe says, [quote] ”She’s a lot better. At least, it seems that way.
I don’t know if she really is” [end quote] -This type of line just keeps the tension steady throughout the film. It’s not overly scary, but it causes us to feel uneasy -By the way, the acting is quite good in this film, with the actor who plays Takabe being
One of the standouts -His name is Koji Yakusho and his resume speaks for itself – including films like Memoirs of a Geisha, Shall we Dance, and Perfect Days, which I haven’t seen yet, but it’s been getting great reviews -In preparation for his role as Detective Takabe, Kurosawa told Yakusho to watch Abbas
Kiarostami’s And Life Goes On as he wanted him to take notes on the acting style of the main character in that film – so if you like Cure, you might consider checking that one out too -He’s often staring off into the distance
In all situations, like he’s thinking deeply on something, but we’re never quite sure what -He’s somewhat detached from reality, as are most of the characters in Cure at one point or another -In fact, even we as the viewer start to question what’s real and what isn’t
-All right back to the film – we then see Mamiya, the creepy trenchcoat guy, jump off a pretty high building – maybe 2 or 3 storeys -He survives, and seems pretty much fine somehow -A cop witnesses this and brings him back to the station
-Actually, he brings him back to the koban, or police box, which are like mini police stations that are scattered throughout the major cities of Japan -These are good places to go if you lose an item in Japan, as people often bring things here when they find them in the street or something
-So Mamiya is in the koban – again acting all confused -He then lights up his lighter, and tells the cop, Oida-san that he’d like to know more about his life -He also lit the lighter when talking to the school teacher earlier in the movie -Takabe suggests that the murders could be
The result of some kind of hypnosis – so this lighter is likely one of Mamiya’s implements of ill intent, if you will -Kurosawa continues to give us big wide, voyeuristic shots, this time of Detective Takabe’s wife Fumie walking down the street, looking slightly panicked -We don’t really know what’s going on,
But we can assume it’s some sort of schizophrenic episode -Back to the koban now in broad daylight -One of the police officers suddenly shoots the other in the back of the head very casually, as though it’s no big deal – like the school teacher said earlier, “it seemed the natural thing to do”
-Fumie then walks into a doctor’s office, the same doctor from the first scene of the movie -She explains to the doc that she got lost on her way – she says she suddenly didn’t know where she was -He gives her the Bluebeard book and asks if she remembers it
-She says she’s never seen it before -Is she starting to lose her memory in the same way Mamiya has? -In the next scene Mamiya actually shows up at a different doctor’s office -He has a sprained ankle from that parkour he was doing earlier, but more importantly
He needs a full psych evaluation -It’s revealed that he had been to see this doctor before and said he remembers talking to her -By the way, the doctor is played by the oyster fishing girl from Tampopo, one of my favourite movies ever -So Mamiya gets up to pour himself a glass
Of water, leaving behind an empty stool in the middle of one of Kurosawa’s characteristically wide shots -Looking at this stool we can imagine that even after he got up the devil is still sitting there, though invisible -Actually so many of the previous shots have also included empty chairs or stools, as though
The devil has always been there, listening in on the conversations between characters -From Fumie in the beginning, to the cops of the roof, to Takabe in his house -Maybe the devil was always listening, or maybe he was actually doing more than that
– Maybe the devil has been influencing the characters throughout the movie moment by moment -Mamiya says something kind of chilling to the doctor, [quote] “all the things that used to be inside me. They’re now outside, so I can see all the things inside of you, but the inside of me
Is empty” [end quote] -But what does this mean? He’s got no feelings of his own anymore? He’s just an empty vessel for the devil to use as it pleases? – I’ll leave it up to you to decide what you think this line is all about, but it’s
Definitely thought-provoking -Mamiya then spills the water, and the doctor gets mesmerized watching it flow along the ground toward her -The doctor looks at him and he instantly says “don’t look at me” -He then delivers his famous line “so, tell me about yourself”
-And just like that he now has full control over the doctor -He suggests to her that people had always looked down on her because she was a woman who wanted to be a doctor -And he asks if she had dissected a corpse in medical school -He suggests that this corpse was the first
Time she’d seen a naked man and she had to cut into him, and that maybe she liked it -He splashes some water in her face to wake her up, then leaves -After he’s gone you see that there is a
Large X drawn on the wall -You can see that Mamiya kind of talks to people the way a cult leader would, using his words to guide their thoughts in the direction he wants to take them -This movie was actually supposed to be titled
Evangelist, but it was changed because it was set to be released not long after the sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo Subway committed by the Aum Shin Rikyo Cult -So Takabe and Sakuma are then interrogating the cop, Oida-san, who killed his partner,
And they point a little light in his eyes and ask if someone else had been there the day he killed his partner -He starts freaking out and denies that anyone else was there -Then finally admits it, but refuses to mention the mysterious man’s name -Oida-san then traces an X on the chest of
One of the officers in the interrogation room, just like the X that had been found on each of the murder victims -In the next scene a woman is seen standing over a dead body in a men’s room -She is peeling the flesh off his neck and
Face as water overflows from the sink -There’s that water again – there always seems to be some water or some fire present at each crime scene -The parts with water really are reminiscent of other Japanese horrors like Ring or Dark
Water, but just remember, Cure came first -So then there’s a report of a suspicious person at the hospital -They run around looking for him and Detective Takabe finds him in a dark room -You just see his spectre and a cigarette lighting up -It’s Mamiya
-He says, as he has so many times before, “I want to know about you”, “who are you?” -Whenever this devil asks who Takabe is he just says “a detective” -In the interrogation room Takabe shows Mamiya photos of the deceased and Mamiya asks if
He likes those photos -Takabe replies that he does not, and that he only has them because it’s his job -Kurosawa says that the Interrogation scenes were heavily influenced by Clarice’s conversations with Hannibal Lector in The Silence of the
Lambs, where the bad guy has a certain power over the exchanges, leading of course to frustration on the side of investigators -The conversations between Mamiya and Takabe are indeed very frustrating, and you can see the toll it takes on Takabe
-The detectives step out of the interrogation room, and Mamiya attempts to look at them through the two-way mirror -Takabe splashes water on the glass in frustration -Funny that this actually creates a ton of tension because we’ve been conditioned by previous scenes of water spilling to think something terrible will happen in this situation
-Ivan Pavlov would be proud -We are also conditioned by the empty chair thing – the next scene shows Takabe entering his home, and you see the empty chairs in the dark kitchen, looking way more alive than you want a chair to be
-This shot is also off putting as we see most, but not all of the table, and only three chairs, where we assume there is one off screen – this makes it even easier to imagine the devil sitting there -The detective looks around the house and
Then suddenly runs out in a panic -More of those voyeuristic shots of him running through the streets -He sees his wife and you realize he was panicked because she wasn’t at home -She says she went to the conbini and got lost -Back to the interrogation room now where
They take off Mamiya’s shirt and see that he has a large burn on about a third of his back and shoulder -They go to some insane junkyard with a bunch of birds and a monkey in a cage -At this point I’m feeling pretty sick to
Be honest – it’s a creepy place -This ends up being where Mamiya’s apartment is, which makes sense -The landlord says he paid a year’s rent in advance and hasn’t been there in a long time -In the apartment there are tons of books about severe psychological disorders and things
Like that -Also tons of cigarettes in the ashtray -Kunihiko Mamiya – Musashino Medical University is written on the cover sheet of some sort of essay -The paper is all about Mesmerism -We learn that Mamiya studied the work of the 18th century Austrian doctor Franz Mesmer
In university -Mesmer was the first to study Hypnosis, which wasn’t seen as science at that time, but more like sorcery – In fact, I’m still not sure if we consider it science -Anyway, Mesmer’s name is the root of the word ‘mesmerize’ -Oh and he spoke German – I guess that shouldn’t
Be shocking, but it makes you realize that bit of German writing at the beginning might have gotten us secretly primed to talk about Mesmer -All right maybe that’s a stretch -Anyway, in the bathroom there is a towel
Hanging over a rack, but it’s spread out so it looks like you can see the silhouette of someone underneath -Of course, there’s an empty stool and chair in the background -Takabe lifts up the towel and there is a mummified monkey underneath, with its arms and legs crossed like it was part of some
Sick satanic ritual -This part is obviously pretty disturbing -There’s a cool shot just after this creepy scene, by the way – Takabe is in his car and the screen suddenly flashes to the live monkey in the cage, to his wife in the kitchen, to
The dead monkey, and to his wife again -He goes home and sadly Fumie is hanging from the ceiling from a cord -She’s dead -He falls to his knees, grabs his head and cries -The room is all dark and gloomy, but suddenly the screen flashes again and it’s very bright,
And we see Fumie alive asking Takabe what’s wrong -Our detective is still on the floor – I think we need to consider who really has psychological problems here -But really this is the most impactful scene yet – so many emotions in one – we’re so glad she’s alive, but also what the hell
Is going on with our man Takabe -So Mamiya is in jail now, and Takabe is speaking with him from around the corner – maybe not wanting to make eye contact -Of course, there’s an empty chair, as there is in so many scenes in this film, and since
Mamiya is speaking from around the corner, it seems like some invisible being is speaking from the empty chair -Mamiya suggests that there are two different minds within Takabe: those of the detective and the husband – Takabe has been hiding the
Latter from Mamiya as well as he can -Remember when Mamiya had asked him who he was, he’d only replied “a detective” -This is the scene where his shell begins to crack though, and the conversation starts to get into the fact that his wife is a burden
On him -He just wants to enjoy a peaceful life, but he can’t because he needs to worry about her all the time -He says society doesn’t allow him to live peacefully, and that lunatics have it easy while regular people go through hell – who’s he talking about? Mamiya? Fumie?
-Takabe gets home after this and there is just a raw steak on a plate on the table -He doesn’t even bother to speak to his wife -Her bags are all packed and there are travel magazines on her bedside table
-However, her bags are packed for her to go to the hospital, not to the beautiful islands of Okinawa or Hokkaido -She’ll be off to a desolate island within her own mind instead -This movie is depressing – probably more sad than it is frightening -So in the next scene Sakuma shows Takabe
A tape of some of the oldest known footage of hypnosis in Japan, from the late 19th century -It’s the hypnotism of a woman who killed her son in 1898 -She carved the shape of an X into his neck -This found footage trope is so good, and
It was absolutely on fire in the late 90s and early 2000s, due to movies like this, The Ring, and The Blair Witch Project -Sakuma then draws a huge X on his wall, and starts to go crazy – he dies, and it’s thought to be suicide
-At the same time, Mamiya escapes from jail -Takabe then finds him in an abandoned building and shoots him -He then asks him, [quote] “do you remember now? Everything?” [end quote] -Mamiya smiles and nods his head -Mamiya points his finger up like he’s going to do something, and Takabe shoots him 4 more
Times -You then see Fumie being wheeled out of the hospital dead, with an X on her neck -There’s a lot of discussion about this online, with some suggesting that she didn’t really die, as the nurse doesn’t seem to react to the gruesome scene -For now though, I’ll assume she really
Was killed -So if this movie draws any parallels with Bluebeard, the lines would diverge at the end as the woman does not end up killing the Bluebeard equivalent in this version, which leaves you kind of hopeless -The original Bluebeard at least had a happy enough ending, even if it was a twisted old
Tale -Anyway, you then see Takabe at a cafe, casually enjoying a meal, a coffee, and a cigarette -His waitress takes his order calmly, then walks away and grabs a knife -The credits then roll -The waitress looks like she’d been possessed, or rather mesmerized, and was going to commit
A murder, but I guess we can’t be sure -Maybe she was just performing her regular tasks as a restaurant worker, going through the motions of life -Maybe when people kill they too are just going through the motions of life, following
A path that they did not choose and committing a terrible act without any agency whatsoever -What do you think about that? The whole fate versus free will debate -I mean there’s really know way to know, but it’s interesting to think about -Anyway, it seems as though Takabe has taken
Mamiya’s place as the devil’s vessel, but again, who can be sure -This is the type of movie you finish and then instantly want to go back and see what you missed -It definitely has a lot of rewatch value, with all sorts of little hints sprinkled throughout its hour and 51 minute runtime
-For instance, there are lots of flickering lights throughout the movie, which suggest a supernatural presence -From the streetlights to the train crossing -Kurosawa forces you to look at things like this, as though he’s hypnotizing you -There are also some pendulums throughout the movie which again are used to hypnotize
The viewer -The movie is a little difficult to understand, but not in a frustrating way -I think it was Kurosawa himself who said it was difficult to understand, but easy to feel -He wanted to keep us guessing, and to keep us thinking the entire time
-Kurosawa said one of the main ideas of the film was that normal people can be dangerous, and maybe anyone is capable of murder -Normal, everyday life can be scary, and maybe it is -Do we ever really know anyone? Even if we do, we don’t know what they might do next
-Are we wearing masks to hide what we’re truly capable of? -And do we even really know ourselves? You don’t need to be a homicidal maniac to kill – maybe it can just happen one day -Maybe we don’t have control of our own actions – external forces can act on us and
Cause us to do things we wouldn’t normally do -Like hypnotism. Is it that the devil can hypnotize us? Society can hypnotize us? The world can hypnotize us? -As I mentioned, it’s the classic fate or free will debate and it’s as fascinating
As it is terrifying -So I’m sorry if I scared you with all that, but we are talking horror, after all -That’s it for our episode on Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure though, I hope you enjoyed it -Before we go I’m going to bring things
Back to the real world a bit and talk about Hikikomori in Japan, and then stay tuned for the weekly recommendation -So I wanted to talk a bit about Hikikomori in Japan -Hikikomori is the term for people with a severe form of social withdrawal
-I didn’t pick this episode to talk about them because they’re scary or something – just as people like Fumie in Cure who suffer from schizophrenia aren’t scary -For the most part these are people who need help -There are different levels of hikikomori, just as the severity of any condition can
Vary -Some of them don’t leave the house at all, some of them don’t even leave their bedrooms, and others will venture out at night to go to the convenience store for some food or something like that -It’s quite sad, but also really fascinating -There are lots of good documentaries available
On YouTube that can tell you a lot more about these hidden members of Japanese society -And there are organizations doing their best to provide assistance to them -There are a lot of different reasons hikikomori cite when asked why they become reclusive,
But chief among them seems to be the social pressures of doing well in school and getting a good job after graduation -Japan can be a highly competitive society and this is one way that people deal with that harsh reality
-Although this term originated in Japan, there are hikikomori all over the world, and it’s becoming increasingly easy to stay at home, and never go outside -You can get everything delivered from Amazon, and have Uber Eats leave food at your door every day -Apparently it’s becoming even more common
Ever since the COVID 19 lockdowns, which comes as no surprise – even after the restrictions were lifted many people chose to stay inside -I guess we all got a taste of what it is like to be a recluse and perhaps we can be more empathetic to them because of that
-So I just wanted to acknowledge that quickly for today, we might touch on it again in the future, and of course, I encourage everyone to do their own research on this, and on anything else we talk about on Japan Media Tour -And as always, I’ve got the weekly recommendation coming up next
-So for this week’s recommendation I wanted to think of somewhere a cop might go after work -I considered Mister Donut, but it seemed too easy, so I’ve got an izakaya for you instead -Our recommendation for today is Andy’s Shin Hinomoto in Yurakucho Tokyo
-This place is always packed with salarymen -So that’s first on our izakaya checklist – if the salarymen are flocking to it, it must be pretty good -It’s a pretty cool area too, right underneath the train line, which just adds to the atmosphere
-So get yourself some gyoza, some karaage, a bit of seafood, and maybe some tempura -I love spots like this, the menu just has everything you need, and it’s all perfect with a frosty mug of Sapporo -Now that I think of it, this place might
Be too fun and lively for a guy like Takabe, he might want a bit more space to clear his head -That’s a good thing though – we don’t really want to go where he might be, as he could be possessed by the devil at this point
-Andy’s has a great vibe though – lots of dark wood, and a cool arching roof – it actually kind of feels like you’re in a boat or something -There’s also a good mix of foreigners and Japanese, which is nice -Anyway, go check it out if you’re in Yurakucho
– there are tons of other spots in that area too, so you can hop around a bit -So that’s it for this week, I hope you enjoyed listening to me ramble on about Kiyoshi Kuosawa’s Cure -Next week we’ll take our first foray into
The world of Japanese fashion and talk about Comme des Garcons -I’m sure a lot of you already know that brand name, but maybe you don’t know much about the history of the brand -And if you don’t recognize the name, you’ll surely recognize the logo -So until then, this is Stephen T.M., signing
Off, and I’ll see you next time for, Comme des Garcons
In episode 9 we analyze one of the most creative and influential horror movies of the last 30 years. Kuniyoshi Kurosawa’s 1997 film Cure forces us to question the nature of our reality and to debate between fate and free will. We also discuss hikikomori, izakaya, and hypnosis.
Chapters:
0:00 Cure
33:46 Hikikomori
36:40 Andy’s Shin Hinomoto
Andy’s Shin Hinomoto:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/B2SDNyJFj1MNaNWb9
My Twitter:
Tweets by JapanMediaTour
Spotify: