Summer Holiday Everyday is the next film to get screened at the Japanese embassy in London and it’s a gentle comedy that looks at middle-class mores and social order when a seemingly respectable family fall apart. It is adapted from a comic book written by Yumiko Oshima, one of Japan’s best comic artists for girls and the story involves subjects like school bullying and corporate conformism. The director, Shusuke Kaneko, has worked across genres and I am most familiar with him from his work on Necronomicon: Book of Dead (segment “part #2: The Cold”) and the Death Note films. It looks like a gentler version of Tokyo Sonata or Wild Berries.
Here are more details on the film:
Summer Holiday Everyday 
毎日が夏休み 「Mainichi ga natsuyasumi」
Release Date: June 11th, 1994 (Japan)
Running Time: 94 mins.
Director: Shusuke Kaneko
Writer: Shusuke Kaneko, Yumiko Oshima (Screenplay),
Starring: Jun Fubuki, Hinako Saeki, Keiko Toda, Toru Masuoka, Hitomi Takahashi, Koichi Ueda, Akira Onodera,
Synopsis: Set in Tokyo in the early 1990s. The Rinkaijis are, by all appearances, a well-to-do Japanese family. The stepfather Nariyuki works for an elite corporation, which gives his wife Yoshiko status in their suburban neighbourhood. One day the daughter Sugina, who herself has secretly stopped going to school as she is being bullied, discovers that Nariyuki has quit his job. He decides to start his own company with Sugina as vice-president: a nandemo-ya (a do-anything service). This only causes embarrassment for Yoshiko in front of her gossiping neighbours and her former husband, and she finds her world falling apart. Their first job does not go off very well, but he and Sugina soon find a closeness they have never had before. Much to Yoshiko’s consternation, the next job comes from Beniko, Nariyuki’s ex-wife, seemingly in a plot to get him back.
The film will be screened on Tuesday, June 21st at 18:30 (d00rs open at 18:00). Admission to the films is free but you need to register for a ticket. For more information, head to the embassy’s site.
