Mayumi nishimura biography channel

This beautiful box set from Radiance gathers meticulously restored 4K scans of the three most popular tales of the supernatural ever to be told, retold, and reinterpreted countless times in Japan. Think of them along the same lines as classics like Dracula and Frankenstein—how many times have variations of those famous works of gothic literature been presented as faithful adaptations or reworked and reinvented into something barely recognisable, with their villains sometimes recast as romantic heroes?

A triumvirate of the bigger studios dominated Japan’s post-war cinema scene. Toho had started as one of the two major kabuki theatre companies operating in Tokyo during the 1930s before venturing into film production, predominantly in the samurai-centric jidaigeki genre. They had launched Akira Kurosawa’s career during World War II’s turmoil and tragedy. Still, it was their post-war kaiju franchise, beginning with Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla (1959) that consolidated their continued commercial success.

From 1938 their first serious rivals had been Toei Studios and, a few years later in 1942, Daiei was created by merging several smaller studios as part of an initiative by the wartime government hop

•

•