Typhoon Club 
台風クラブ 「Taifuu Kurabu」
Release Date: August 31st, 1985
Duration: 115 mins.
Director: Shinji Somai
Writer: Yuji Kato (Screenplay),
Starring: Yuki Kudo, Tomokazu Miura, Tomoko Ishii, Yuka Ohnishi, Yuriko Fuchizaki, Kaori Kobayashi, Saburo Date, Yuichi Mikami, Shigeru Benibayashi, Toshiyuki Matsunaga, Ryuko Tendoh, Tomoko Aizawa,
Shinji Somai’s coming-of-age drama Typhoon Club is considered to be one of the best Japanese films of the 80s. Starring a principal cast of relative newcomers backed by non-professionals and the odd veteran, its power lies in how it perfectly captures the roiling anxieties and frustrations of adolescence and has them come exploding out during the titular typhoon.
The film is set during a balmy summer in the bucolic provincial city of Ota, just outside Tokyo. We follow a group of junior high school students who find themselves confronted by their fears, hopes, and desires while waylaid in their school by the storm. Their number includes lovelorn and emotionally neglected baseball players, upright and uptight prefect types, school clowns, and rebellious lesbian lovers. Then there are also the adults, from terrible teacher Umemiya (Tomokazu Miura) who undergoes his own rite of passage to become a (slightly) more responsible person, to frequently absent parents. Indeed, the collective absence of adults, whether through work, alcohol, or death, opens the gates for the increasingly errant youngsters to question their places in society and stifled feelings explode as normal school routines are suspended by the storm.
While this is an ensemble film and every plot thread is important, the characters whose experiences undergird the drama are the straight-laced and mature Kyoichi Mikami (Yuichi Mikami) and the more flighty Rie Takami (Yuki Kudou). They are an assumed couple for everyone except Mikami, who wrestles with ideas of mortality and individuality while studying for exams that may take him to high school in Tokyo, and Rie as she begins to reckon with and fight against the idea of being left behind as a woman in the countryside. Their growing physical distance and emotional growth carries greater weight and comes to define the narrative.
The story, which was written over the course of a week by Yuji Kato, is packed with near enough every sight, sound, and theme one can expect from a youth drama. Rock and roll (or in this case, reggae), sex and drugs, and running away from home mark various acts of rebellion from kids who work themselves up into a frenzy of fighting, dancing, and singing their fears and frustrations away. Despite the deluge of familiar detail, the film feels lithe and flows with grace as each of the characters explores and explodes their personality for all to see.
What makes it work is that the screenplay is structured to efficiently segment the character development: it takes place over a number of days, it features the before (set-up), during (development), and after (climax/contemplation) the storm, the school is an often returned to location, and the perspective bounces between different people. Thus, the weighty emotions and multiple storylines lash out with the oncoming storm and settle down in the aftermath in a way that is satisfying.
The litheness also comes back in the form of Somai’s preference for long takes and sinewy camera movements and it is this aspect that is an utter, utter pleasure to engage with and makes familiar material come alive and brings out sights and references that deepen our appreciation of the story.
Dramatic and schematic as it is, the visuals do have a sense of humour and all of that cultural specificity of 80s semi-rural Japan that will have viewers wrapped up in the atmosphere while being kept a little off kilter.
The tone is also at an approachable halfway-point between the scabrous Kids (1995), as it never shrinks from showing the darker aspects of life, and the amusing trifles that are found in the misadventures and embarrassments of John Hughes’ teen movie output. It also has the bravery to insert a little magic as the typhoon seems to personify a response to the teens acting out with what sounds like a howling voice – complete with chimes and booming synth amidst the wind and rain – and and there are surreal sights in the storm.
There is such a pleasing level of detail to each visual composition that the film constantly thrums with life in each scene. Movement and colour is made the most of on different visual planes. Many motifs signalling change for the teens are apparent, like talk of Tokyo, city lights in the distance, someone’s grandmother moving on to the next life, the sight of clouds rolling in on the horizon and the oncoming lashings of rain that soaks the kids provides an ominous presence and appropriate symbolism. There are also frequent callbacks to earlier scenes to reward attention. References are made to Ozu’s famed Tatami Shots and the sight of legs sticking out of a body of water are a nod to Kon Ichikawa’s Kosuke Kindaichi detective drama The Inugami Family (1976). Instead of a simple two-shot for a conversation, Somai views it through window frames and glass panes, looking up at balconies and down from walkways. The constant movement from handheld and dolly shots takes us through spaces with various characters popping in and out of frame. Each scene feels lived-in, full of surprises, exciting to explore, and also, quite frankly, it puts many modern movies with their static and functional framing to shame.
At the heart of this is the patient observance of the mostly non-professional and teen cast as they feel out their character’s various actions. Their naturalistic performances are marked by complex jittery blocking that demonstrates emotional turmoil and irrepressible energy and so an assault at the school has that terrifying ring of reality as the aggressor acts in an unpredictable way had me balling up my fists in fear and anger. Moments when kids break out into dancing felt less eye-rollingly theatrical and more organic, the testing of boundaries and bodies. I came to view these characters as humans rather than archetypes because the kids are spontaneous and rough in ways that make the performances feel genuine while also having quieter passages that show more subtle emotional layers. The fact that these are teen actors also lends the weight of authenticity to proceedings and so scenes of social rebellion have that gritty edge as they smoke, swear, and sex their way through their fateful summer, the sights of which (with such young performers) are something that might be unthinkable in this day.
It may last nearly two hours but it is always an engaging watch because the perfectly structured screenplay is brought to life through pitch-perfect performances and direction that mainline the big emotions to a viewer’s heart with such adeptness and a degree of honesty that it feels fresh, immediate, important, while also being thorny and even surreal enough to grip our attention. It finds a perfect pairing of powerful passages of emotional abandon mirrored, revealed, even powered by the stormy typhoon that engulfs each of the characters as the film creates such a lived-in, compelling, and comprehensive coming-of-age experience that captures every facet of the genre.
This is a REGION FREE release and the package looks like this:
• A brand new 4K restoration from the original negatives
• Feature audio commentary by Tom Mes
• Selected audio commentary by Josh Slater-Williams
• Assistant Director Koji Enokido Talk Event
• Introduction by Ryusuke Hamaguchi at the Berlin Film Festival
• Trailers
• Slipcase with artwork from Gokaiju
• ‘Directors Company’ edition featuring insert by Jasper Sharp – limited to 2000 copies
This film, regarded as one of the best of 80s Japanese cinema, was subject to 4K restoration work done by the Japan Film Archive as they resurrected works from the Director’s Company production outfit. This has allowed Third Window Films to release a Blu-Ray version (on November 27th). It looks utterly fantastic.
This restoration was overseen by Koji Enokido, a frequent Somai collaborator who worked as assistant director for him over seven years, including on this film. His interview for the restoration screening at the Tokyo International Film Festival 2022 is a step up from the one Kiyoshi Kurosawa was subjected to for The Guard From Underground as the interviewer spends the whole time talking about the film and less about her experiences with it.
Some of the fascinating information brought up is how actors were found through month’s-long auditions, given extensive rehearsals, and allowed to adlib on set. Scripts were selected from a pool, allowing any director to have a crack at the story, and the revelation that Kiyoshi Kurosawa was interested in filming Typhoon Club – something which the interviewer picks up on.
The audio commentaries from Josh-Slater Williams and Tom Mes are great additions as the former elucidates various stylistic traits Somai deploys across his filmography and Mes (once again) provides a super-informative background on the production of the film referencing, amongst other things, the three-week shoot in Nagano and the staging of the typhoon to give us an appreciation of the work on set. Just as interesting is the changing industry landscape – with references to Art Theatre Guild and Seijun Suzuki’s Taisho Trilogy – and the fortunes of cast/crew, with some having short-lived careers while others, like Yuki Kudo, have had long lasting ones (including a memorable appearance in Takashi Miike’s Imprint episode of the Masters of Horror series).
I cannot stress enough how this wealth of information is most appreciated, especially when Mes goes in depth on the production, thus expanding a viewer’s experience and helping bring alive an important slice of 80s Japanese cinema.
Third Window Films and the contributors have once again provided great extras that demand viewers pick up physical media!
This release follows on from The Guard From Underground and DOOR and DOOR II as Third Window Films continues with its series known as Director’s Company Collection. This is a line-up of films based on the output of Japanese film production outfit Directors Company (1982-1992). Through these works, viewers will be able to get into lesser-known (in the West) but influential Japanese films of the 1980s and 90s that were made outside of the studio system. We eagerly await their next release!