Welcome to the first trailer post of the week.
You can find three more being published over the next few days.
It’s a busy week with 20 Japanese films getting theatrical releases across major cinemas and the mini theatre network. There are a few big studio releases but a lot of little documentaries, omnibus movies, and horror titles and a few anime. Each post features a mix of works, the first usually with the more mainstream works so I hope there’s something of interest for people.
What are the first set of films?
Yuki no hana 
雪の花 ともに在りて 「Yuki no hana: tomo ni arite」
Release Date: January 24th, 2024
Duration: 117 mins.
Director: Takashi Koizumi
Writer: Takashi Koizumi, Yujin Saito (Screenplay), Akira Yoshimura (Original Non-fiction Novel)
Starring: Tori Matsuzaka, Koji Yakusho, Kyoko Yoshine, Takahiro Miura, Miu Arai, Shohei Uno,
Website Twitter: @yukinohana2025 IMDB
his wife Chiho Kasahara’s (Kyoko Yoshine) support, despite various difficulties.
Director Takashi Koizumi adapts a novel for this film. He is best known internationally for his film After the Rain (1999), which was a period drama film based on an Akira Kurosawa screenplay. He has resurfaced every few years with period dramas, some of them starring Koji Yakusho – Samurai Chronicle (2014) and The Pass: Last Days of the Samurai (2020) but his 2006 film The Professor’s Beloved Equation – an adaptation of a same-named book – is also well regarded.
This is a story based on a real figure. Tori Matsuzaka (Call Boy) is in the lead role and he has support from Kyoko Yoshine, Koji Yakusho (Perfect Days), Takahiro Miura (Rolling), and Shohei Uno (Murder Workshop).
Synopsis: It is the late Edo period (1603-1867) and a time when outbreaks of smallpox still ravages the land. Kasahara Ryosaku, a doctor in a small town in the Fukui domain, learns of a technique to prevent smallpox which has been introduced to Japan from foreign doctors. Ryosaku sets out to Kyoto to seek the advice of Teisai Hino and spends his own fortune to bring smallpox seedlings to Fukui to fight against the disease. By his side are his wife, Chiho, and friends.
Under Ninja 
アンダーニンジャ 「Anda- Ninja」
Release Date: January 24th, 2024
Duration: 123 mins.
Director: Yuichi Fukuda
Writer: Yuichi Fukuda (Screenplay), Kengo Hanazawa (Original Manga) I Am a Hero
Starring: Kento Yamazaki, Minami Hamabe, Kenjiro Tsuda, Mai Shiraishi, Amane Okayama, Chihiro Yamamoto, Jiro Sato, Haruka Kinami, Tsuyoshi Muro,
Website Twitter: @underninja_mv IMDB
Kengo Hanazawa is a famous manga-ka following the success of I Am a Hero which was turned into a live-action film. He has his follow-up manga adapted into a film by Yuichi Fukuda, a guy whose writing and directing credits are full of other adaptations like HK Kamen, Wotakoi, Saint Young Men, and Gintama.
Synopsis: After the Pacific War, the first order of the GHQ (Supreme Allied Command) in Japan was for the dismantling of “ninja” organisations. Following that, it seemed that ninja disappeared from society. Howeverr they have lurked in many organisations around the world. One such organisation is NIN and one of their members is Kuro Kumogakure, a lowly-ranked ninja. One day, he is given a serious mission to investigate the movements of an organization called “Under Ninja,” which has been hiding underground for more than 70 years. High school girl Ayaka Noguchi gets caught up in his mission.
Warau mushi 
嗤う蟲 「Warau mushi」
Release Date: January 24th, 2024
Duration: 99 mins.
Director: Hideo Jojo
Writer: Eisuke Naito (Screenplay),
Starring: Mai Fukagawa, Ryuya Wakaba, starred together in JUST ONLY LOVE Tomorowo Taguchi, Kaoru Sugita, Reiko Kataoka, Yuya Matsuura,
Website Twitter: @waraumushimovie
This is a horror/thriller film from Hideo Jojo. He has a background in pink film but he has transitioned to making more mainstream films that cover comedy, drama, and horror. I interviewed him for On the Edge of Their Seats and found him to be a delightful cinemaniac so I’m not surprised with this leap. He works with Eisuke Naito, a writer/director whose metier is horror (Puzzle, Liverleaf).
For this work, they have paired up Mai Fukagawa and Ryuya Wakaba, both of whom starred together in Just Only Love and put them in a weird village where the what seems to be chief threat is played by Tomorowo Taguchi (Tetsuo) who acts in the role of the head of the Village Association…
Synopsis: Anna, an illustrator, is pregnant and wants to live in the countryside with her husband Terumichi, who has just dropped out of the workforce. The village of Asamiya seems like the perfect place until they find out that there are rules for every aspect of life that they must adhere to. Enforcing them is the excessively meddling village head, Takubo. The more Anna learns of him, the more she distrusts him. As Terumichi helps Takubo with his work, he discovers the existence of a hidden village “code.”
Missing Child Videotape 
ミッシング・チャイルド・ビデオテープ 「Misshingu Chairudo Bideote-pu」
Release Date: January 24th, 2024
Duration: 123 mins.
Director: Ryota Kondo
Writer: Ryota Kondo, Suzuyuki Kaneko (Screenplay),
Starring: Takashi Fujii, Kokoro Morita, Amon Hirai, Rairu Sugita,
Website Twitter: @mcv_movie IMDB
For his feature-length film debut, director Ryota Kondo is expanding on a same-named short that won the grand prize at 2nd Japan Horror Film Awards by Kadokawa. It looks like a work achieved with no special effects or make-up and no jump scares, according to a tweet. In that same tweet, he declared this a J-horror work, so this is something of interest for a horror hound like me.
Oh, and he was an assistant director on the Netflix Ju-On which I wasn’t a fan of. The film was produced by Takashi Shimizu, writer/director of the original Ju-On films (the ones that are scary and fun).
Anyway, he has a cast where Amon Hirai (On the Edge of Their Seats) and exciting talent Kokoro Morita (Ice Cream and the Sound of Raindrops, Lonely Glory, and J-horror hit Sayuri) are involved.
Kondo is involved in the next film coming up, too.
Synopsis: Keita and his younger brother used to play hide-and-seek together but, one day, his brother disappeared. This event haunted Keita and he went on to work as a volunteer searching for missing persons from time to time. When his mother sends him an old videotape, he is surprised to find that it shows the moment when his brother disappears amidst some ruins on a mountain. Keita’s psychic roommate, Tsukasa Amano, senses something ominous in the videotape and warns Keita he is desperate to uncover the truth about what happened to his brother on the mountain…
Apology to the Iinuma Family
飯沼一家に謝罪します 「Iinuma Kazuya no shazai shimasu」
Release Date: January 24th, 2024
Duration: N/A
Director: N/A
Writer: N/A
Starring: N/A
Website Twitter: @TXQFICTION
TXQ FICTION is a fake documentary program on TV Tokyo and its second instalment, Apology to the Iinuma Family, which aired for four consecutive nights, starting at midnight on December 23, 2024, will be screened in theatres.
TV Tokyo producer Tokio Omori. whose work includes “Yukue Fumei-ten” Missing Persons Exhibition (these are fake missing persons cases shown in an exhibition that will next be in Nagoya in February), has teamed up with the team behind the YouTube horror program Fake Documentary Q (these videos have English subs), and Ryota Kondo of the film Missing Child Videotape, to produce this film.
Synopsis: This is a record of an investigation that followed the truth of a late-night program broadcast 20 years ago in 2004, with the bizarre content of one man’s apology to the Iinuma family.