At age 89, Shiguéhiko Hasumi, the critic and theorist long regarded as Japan’s greatest living film scholar, is finally making what amounts to his U.S. debut.
Later this month, New York’s Japan Society will present Shiguéhiko Hasumi: Another History of the Movie in America and Japan (Oct. 9–18), a hand-curated screening series timed to the publication of the long-awaited English translation of Hasumi’s landmark book, Directed by Yasujiro Ozu, from the University of California Press.
For decades, Hasumi’s writings have held a grail-like status among Western filmmakers and cinephiles but remained inaccessible in translation. Their sudden arrival, paired with a personal curatorial showcase in New York, marks a belated but significant introduction of Hasumi’s voice to U.S. film discourse. They also offer the potential of an overdue rebalancing. The perceived canon of Japanese cinema — particularly the great postwar era — has long been dominated by the voices of Western critics, with little attention paid to how Japanese thinkers have perceived and processed their greatest screen artists. As critic Chris Fujiwara once noted, “It must be understood that the view of Ozu in the West has been shaped by three writers: Paul Schrader, Donald Richie and David Bordwell.”
Hasumi is credited with revolutionizing cinema scholarship in his country with a legendary series of rigorous lectures he delivered at Tokyo’s Rikkyo University in the 1970s. Several of his early students went on to become some of Japan’s most acclaimed indie auteurs, such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Shinji Aoyama, but his influence has continued through the generations, with even the country’s most recent Oscar winner, Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car), identifying as a Hasumi acolyte.
During the course of his long career — which also included influential literary scholarship and a tenure as president of the University of Tokyo, Japan’s top academic institution — he forged connections with some of the 20th century’s most influential international auteurs, including Jean-Luc Godard, Pedro Costa and Wim Wenders.
“It would not be an exaggeration to say that Hasumi, in one sense, made contemporary Japanese cinema, particularly since the collapse of the studio system,” Hamaguchi once observed.
For his New York program, Japan Society offered Hasumi carte blanche — a rare honor previously extended to figures such as Susan Sontag and art photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto. The result is a lineup that collapses perceived boundaries between American and Japanese cinema, placing Michael Mann’s Collateral alongside Seijun Suzuki’s delirious yakuza fantasia Tokyo Drifter, or Richard Fleischer’s The Boston Strangler in dialogue with Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum. Rarely seen shorts from Kurosawa and Aoyama sit next to John Ford’s silent Kentucky Pride, while recent Locarno Golden Leopard-winner Sho Miyake (Small, Slow but Steady), one of Hasumi’s latest disciples, will appear during the closing weekend to present his breakthrough boxing drama and take part in a free discussion about Hasumi’s lifelong fascination with Ford. The finale will include a screening of John Ford and Throwing — Complete Edition, a montage film Hasumi co-directed with Miyake in 2022.
For New York cinephiles, the series should offer not just an overdue encounter with a legendary critic, but a living demonstration of his method.
Screening Lineup (for more info visit Japan Society):
Thursday, Oct. 9 – Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004, 120 min., 35mm, color), 7:00 PM; Tokyo Drifter (Seijun Suzuki, 1966, 82 min., DCP, color), 9:15 PM
Friday, Oct. 10 – The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1939, 144 min., 35mm, b&w), 6:30 PM; Beautiful New Bay Area Project (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2013, 29 min., DCP, color) & Le Petit Chaperon rouge (Shinji Aoyama, 2008, 35 min., 35mm, color), 9:30 PM
Saturday, Oct. 11 – Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2021, 121 min., DCP, color), 3:00 PM; That Night’s Wife (Yasujiro Ozu, 1930, 66 min., 35mm, b&w silent with live piano), 6:00 PM; Living on the River Agano (Makoto Sato, 1992, 115 min., 16mm, color), 8:15 PM
Thursday, Oct. 16 – They Live by Night (Nicholas Ray, 1948, 96 min., 35mm, b&w), 7:00 PM; The Boston Strangler (Richard Fleischer, 1968, 116 min., DCP, color), 9:00 PM
Friday, Oct. 17 – Small, Slow but Steady (Sho Miyake, 2022, 99 min., DCP, color), 6:30 PM with Q&A; Tsuruhachi and Tsurujiro (Mikio Naruse, 1938, 88 min., 35mm, b&w), 9:30 PM with intro by Miyake
Saturday, Oct. 18 – Kentucky Pride (John Ford, 1925, 86 min., DCP, b&w silent), 3:30 PM; …All the Marbles (Robert Aldrich, 1981, 113 min., 35mm, color), 5:30 PM; On Hasumi and Ford: Talk & Screening featuring John Ford and Throwing — Complete Edition (Shiguéhiko Hasumi & Sho Miyake, 2022, 60 min., DCP, color), 8:00 PM
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