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Yōichi Higashi

Yōichi Higashi

Directing

Biography

Yōichi Higashi (東陽一 Higashi Yōichi) was a Japanese film director. He began his career working on documentaries at Iwanami Productions but, after going independent, turned to fiction film. He won the Directors Guild of Japan New Directors Award for Yasashii Nipponjin in 1971, and then the award for Best Director at the 17th Hochi Film Awards for The River with No Bridge. In 1996, he won the Silver Bear for an outstanding single achievement at the 46th Berlin International Film Festival for the film Village of Dreams.

Known For

The Rape
4.3

Yahagi Michiko is accosted and raped walking home one evening. From there she maneuvers the logistics of the police, hospital, and criminal justice system while balancing her home life including romantic relationships.

The Rape

1982
Village of Dreams
6.0

Tells of the childhood of two nine-year-old twins in a rural village in Japan after World War 2. Includes the boys relationships with their schoolteacher mother, civil servant father, elderly landlord, a rough new boy at the school, and three mysterious spirits in the form of old women.

Village of Dreams

1996
Metamorphosis
5.1

A sensuous movie based on a literary work. Hitomi Kuroki stars as the film’s heroine.

Metamorphosis

1986
Love Letter
4.3

Yuko is in love with an old poet who happens to be also a married man. She waits patiently for him and only him, yet she is constantly being lust by others.

Love Letter

1981
Wandering Home
6.2

War photojournalist Yasuyuki Tsukahara married popular manga artist Yuki Sonoda and had children. Because of Yasayuki's drinking problems the couple divorced. Yasuyuki is now coughing up blood, hospitalized, and violent. Even with all of these problems Yasuyuki can't give up drinking alcohol. His family gets tired. Yasuyuki is then hospitalized in an alcoholic ward. There he finds comfort living with other patients and having conversations with doctors. With the help of his family, Yasuyuki recovers mentally and physically, but his body has already paid a heavy toll.

Wandering Home

2010
The River with No Bridge
7.0

A widow and her two sons, Seitaro and Koji, live in the small town of Komori, where Buraku people are forced to reside. The two boys are continuously harassed by their teachers and classmates through their childhood as a result of their Buraku heritage. In the midst of the 1918 Great Rice Riots in Osaka, Seitaro meets with Asako, the daughter of a rice shop owner, and falls in love with her. She too is of Buraku descent. At the same period, Hideaki, an old friend of the brothers returns to Komori, and he along with Koji and the townspeople create "Zenkoku Suiheisha", the National Levelers Association, an organization pledged to build a bridge over the river of discrimination, making all people equal in every way.

The River with No Bridge

1992
Manon
9.0

A story about a woman who is a research student of a theater company and the three men who are at the mercy of her.

Manon

1981
The Second Love
6.3

Kazumi - whose sensitivity does not undermine her strength when she handles her second husband's emotional conflicts with the wisdom of an adult. Kazumi's younger and more inexperienced husband Hideo is continually suspicious of her fidelity.

The Second Love

1983
Jealousy Game
5.5

Set in the wilderness of Hokkaido, the story of a couple in their 30s and a couple in their 20s is drawn, and the subtle emotions of the two men and women are depicted with intense Eros and delicate images under the theme of marriage exchange.

Jealousy Game

1982
Four Seasons: Natsuko
5.9

A young woman breaks off her long-term relationship with her boyfriend to move to Tokyo in search of new experiences.

Four Seasons: Natsuko

1980
No More Easy Life
7.3

Mariko is living the life of a typical Japanese college student in the 70's, spending far more of her time balancing boyfriends and part-time jobs than on her schoolwork. She finds herself torn between a former boyfriend who's the tough, insensitive-but-sexy, type, and a new acquaintance who's more sensitive to her feelings, but who still acts childishly selfish at times. Will she choose one of them, or decide to go her own way?

No More Easy Life

1979
A Tale of Happiness
5.3

A department manager at his company, buys a one-room apartment to have some space to himself. He signs an agreement with a young woman and has an affair with her once a week at the apartment.

A Tale of Happiness

1988
Third Base
6.4

Third is an aimless young man who hangs around with a couple of girls who are amateur hookers. One day, while acting as their pimp, he gets into a conflict with a young gangster and winds up killing him.

Third Base

1978
The Gentle Japanese
10.0

A survivor of the tragic mass suicides on Tokashiki Island in 1945 falls in love with a near-mute motorcycle engineer.

The Gentle Japanese

1971
A Japanese Demon
7.7

A psychotherapist suffers from the onslaughts of Satori, the demon whose name is paradoxically homonymic to the word used for enlightenment experiences in the Zen tradition. Many people mistakenly believe that such a state is the goal of Zen practice; however, the demon strikes at people who are in a state devoid of thought or feeling. Satori's influence spreads from the psychotherapist to a couple who grow increasingly uninhibited.

A Japanese Demon

1973
Somebody's Xylophone
6.3

A married woman obsesses over a hairstylist she becomes involved with.

Somebody's Xylophone

2016
Nurse Natsuko's Hot Summer
8.0

No description available.

Nurse Natsuko's Hot Summer

2010
The Crossing
8.0

14-year-old Takuya lives in a rural town near mountains and rivers. His 29-year-old uncle Koji works as a graphic designer in urban Tokyo. Koji's father dies and Takuya is arrested for attempted robbery-the two young men must now face a crucial crossing in their lives. The concluding chapter to director Higashi Yoichi's "boy and river" trilogy, the film highlights contemporary themes like family, adolescence, and the healing properties of nature. The wild but beautiful Kuma River stars as a threatening symbol for the boy's rite of passage. Supernatural beings reign in the mountains above the village.

The Crossing

2000
Mad Sultry Sisters
N/A

One day, Yoko visits her long-distance lover on a whim, but finds her older sister Mikiko sleeping in his bed. Brokenhearted, Yoko begins a relationship with a man she meets by chance…

Mad Sultry Sisters

2011
No image
10.0

A college graduate falls in love with a woman during a business trip in Hokkaido

Hokkaido, My Love

1962