A guide to Shinji Somai, the forgotten master of 80s Japanese cinema [Video]

When it comes to filmmaking auteurs, Shinji Somai is not a name that has always been afforded much attention in Western criticism. But off the back of passionate new appraisals by contemporary filmmakers, a first US-based retrospective of his films in New York in 2023, and a string of UK home media releases in 2024, the Japanese director is now rightly getting his dues overseas – some two decades after his death from lung cancer at the age of just 53.

Somai’s influence has long been acknowledged in his native country. Indeed, some 33 years before Oscar winner Ryusuke Hamaguchi declared that “no Japanese filmmaker makes a film without being conscious of Shinji Somai’s existence”, a 1990 critics poll by the prestigious Kinema Junpo magazine had already declared him the best native director of the 80s. It’s easy to understand why: during a widely underwhelming decade for Japanese cinema – in which the major studios flirted with financial combustion as audiences largely stayed at home in front of …