![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZGZmZWQ2YTMtNzAxOS00OWNjLWE2ZTQtZTk2OGM2OTdjYjMwXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTE0MzQwMjgz._V1_QL75_UY281_CR120,0,500,281_.jpg)
Junji Sakamoto’s “Okiku and the World” is not just a period drama, but also feels like period filmmaking. Shot in black and white and a 4:3 aspect ratio, this in some ways feels like a homage to the films of yesteryear. But, with modern technology to hand, this looks divine, despite its subject for the most part being that of human faeces.
Yasuke (Sosuke Ikematsu) works among the rowhouses of the Edo era as a collector of human faeces for sale as fertiliser. A dirty job, he is seen as the lowest of the low. He takes on Chuji (Kanichiro Sato) as a helper as they just about make ends meet. Okiku (Haru Kuroki) is the daughter of a samurai who volunteers at a local temple as a calligraphy teacher. Gradually, she takes a shine to Chuji, despite his lowly status, though tragedy soon comes to her life.
Starting...
Yasuke (Sosuke Ikematsu) works among the rowhouses of the Edo era as a collector of human faeces for sale as fertiliser. A dirty job, he is seen as the lowest of the low. He takes on Chuji (Kanichiro Sato) as a helper as they just about make ends meet. Okiku (Haru Kuroki) is the daughter of a samurai who volunteers at a local temple as a calligraphy teacher. Gradually, she takes a shine to Chuji, despite his lowly status, though tragedy soon comes to her life.
Starting...
- 2/24/2023
- by Andrew Thayne
- AsianMoviePulse
![Image](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BZGY0M2ViMDktYjQ5NC00MzMyLTk4YjUtNGM5NDE1YzM5NzNjXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTE0MzQwMjgz._V1_QL75_UX500_CR0,0,500,281_.jpg)
When it comes to jidaigeki, most people’s minds conjure images of honour-bound samurai and quaint Edo-era villages. Evidently, director Junji Sakamoto envisions shit-covered peasants and social injustice. With his latest film, “Okiku and the World”, the filmmaker presents a different vision of Japan’s Edo-era than the one we’re used to seeing.
Okiku and the World screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam
Beginning in the late summer of 1858, we follow Yasuke (Sosuke Ikematsu) and Chuji (Kanichiro), two vagrants who deal in an oddly valuable commodity that Edo’s citizens provide in abundance – human excrement. The pair trek around the city, collecting shit and selling it to farmers as fertiliser. The two manage to find humour in this lowly existence, but that doesn’t free them from poverty. In one of the tenements where Chuji collects manure, a woman named Okiku (Haru Kuroki) is struck by a tragedy that changes her life permanently.
Okiku and the World screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam
Beginning in the late summer of 1858, we follow Yasuke (Sosuke Ikematsu) and Chuji (Kanichiro), two vagrants who deal in an oddly valuable commodity that Edo’s citizens provide in abundance – human excrement. The pair trek around the city, collecting shit and selling it to farmers as fertiliser. The two manage to find humour in this lowly existence, but that doesn’t free them from poverty. In one of the tenements where Chuji collects manure, a woman named Okiku (Haru Kuroki) is struck by a tragedy that changes her life permanently.
- 2/11/2023
- by Tom Wilmot
- AsianMoviePulse
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