Yoshi Oida Movies

An exotic flower fuels two men's personal obsessions and private disappointments in this subtle comedy-drama. 60-year-old Mokuhei Mano (Ken Ogata) is a former fireman in a small Japanese village (small enough that he'd been on the job for ten years before he was called on to fight his first fire) whose wife has just been institutionalized for nervous problems and whose son is stuck in an unhappy marriage after gambling away most of his money on mah jong. But most of this doesn't mean that much to Mano; his obsession in life is breeding the perfect chrysanthemum, a task to which he devotes most of his time. Mano happens to meet a 19-year-old girl named Miharu (Hijiri Kojima) who makes money by letting old men fool around with her in a photo booth. Mano learns by chance that Miharu is aquatinted with Kurose (Yoshi Oida), a man recognized all across Japan as a chrysanthemum grower of legendary status. Mano begs Miharu for an introduction and the two men get to know each other, only to discover that both have plenty of emotional baggage on hand from their younger days. As does Miharu, who abandoned a once promising career as a cellist. Atsumono was greeted with an enthusiastic reception at its first North American screenings, at Montreal's 1999 World Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Set in the 17th century, this earnest religious drama follows the struggle of the Catholic church to establish itself in Japan. Through missionaries and young Japanese converts, the Church seems about to solidify its position in the Nagasaki area when a Shogun, wanting to protect Japanese culture and traditions, rebels, and orders the slaying of four Japanese priests. The story then jumps to modern times and centers on Jane Powell, a lovely European cultural commissary who has come to Nagasaki to see a new opera about the killings by Edward Ishita. The story of one of the priests who is tortured while the Shogun attempts to force him to give up his faith unfolds in even greater detail as she visits the city's historical sites and muses upon the city's changes since her last visit. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Puccini's classic opera of a trusting woman and how her love was tragically betrayed comes to the screen in this faithful film adaptation. In the 19th century, an American sailor named Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton (Richard Troxell) arrives in Japan and meets a 15-year-old girl named Cio-Cio-San (Ying Huang), whom he calls Butterfly. Butterfly falls in love with Pinkerton, but he regards their romance as a temporary fling and blithely asks for her hand even though he has no intention of bringing her with him when he returns to the States. Blinded by love, Butterfly marries Pinkerton, even though it means turning her back on her family and her faith, and to the surprise of few aside from herself, he soon leaves her behind. Three years later, Butterfly has a child whom Pinkerton fathered shortly before his departure, and the heart-broken woman lives for the day that he returns, though her friends give her little hope that this will ever happen. One day, Pinkerton does indeed return -- with his American wife Kate (Constance Hauman) in tow, and with the intention of taking possession of his child and bringing him back to the United States, leaving Butterfly entirely alone. Madame Butterfly was directed by Frederic Mitterrand, the son of former French president Francois Mitterrand; the score was performed the Orchestre de Paris, under the direction of James Conlon. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi