The Cinematheque

“Director Hayashi Kaizo takes us on an enthralling, tragicomic time-trip, a visually spectacular (colour! CinemaScope!) meditation about time and family that is a pure delight.”

Tod Booth, San Francisco IFF 1995

The second installment of Hayashi Kaizo’s Maiku Hama trilogy spills out in vibrant, full-blown colour as Maiku’s past resurfaces, setting in motion the events of this brooding and exquisitely shot sequel. Taking on puppy rescues during a slump in more weighty investigative work, Maiku hears word of the return of his long-lost mother who abandoned him and kid sister Akane years before. A legendary stripper named Lily-san, she sets up shop along the riverbanks of Yokohama where the presence of an enigmatic ​“Man in White” (Hiroshima Mon Amour​’s Okada Eiji) begins to trouble both police and yakuza. Hayashi’s sequel lives and breathes the occupied history of the port city, its near-mythic riverfront still abiding by a postwar code of silence. A remarkably emotive middle chapter, The Stairway to the Distant Past plunges Maiku into the darkest depths as he reconciles his past in its eerie final act, a nightmarish tableau vivant of painted faces and silent murmurs. —Japan Society

In Japanese with English subtitles