#Keiko Takahashi

[ladamarossa]

Door (1988)

[eyeronmaus]

Door (Banmei Takahashi, 1988)

[lightofthedeep]

Happy Protector’s Will Day !!

Here’s a Keiko illust for my new business card :’)

[moviesandmania]

DOOR Japanese '80s stalker horror thriller - free on Tubi

Door is a 1988 horror thriller about a housewife who is terrorised by a visiting salesman. Directed by Banmei Takahashi from a screenplay co-written with Ataru Oikawa. Produced by Kôsuke Kuri. Executive produced by Fumio Takahashi. The Agent 21-Directors Company co-production stars Keiko Takahashi, Daijirô Tsutsumi, Shirô Shimomoto, Takuto Yonezu, Masao Ishida, Hiroshi Noguchi and Yoshihiro…

[ogradyfilm]

Recently Viewed: Door

[The following review contains SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!]

When I first discovered the existence of Banmei Takahashi’s Door earlier this year (via various clips shared by fan accounts on Twitter), it was love at first sight. Luckily, while the movie currently lacks official distribution in the United States, I didn’t need to wait very long at all to see it (compared to Angel’s Egg, A Page of Madness, and Samurai Wolf, anyway) thanks to the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, which screened it just before midnight on Friday, October 13th—basically the ideal context in which to experience its unique brand of madness.

The premise is as brilliant as it is straightforward: an ordinary housewife—already fed up with cold callers and their seemingly unlimited access to her family’s personal information—aggressively turns away an especially persistent salesman, slamming the door on his fingers after he ignores her repeated protests and attempts to force his way into her apartment. Unfortunately, this moment of instinctive panic has severe repercussions, resulting in an excruciatingly tense game of cat-and-mouse as the slighted pamphlet pusher’s vengeful wrath gradually evolves into perverse sexual obsession.

It’s a captivatingly mundane flavor of terror, twisting a familiar, relatable scenario into an inescapable nightmare. There’s nothing particularly memorable or remarkable about the central villain. He has no elaborate costume or mask, no supernatural abilities or distinguishing features; unlike Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Leatherface, he doesn’t even wield a signature weapon (though he is quite handy with the absurdly convenient electric chainsaw that he scavenges from the protagonist’s collection of otherwise run-of-the-mill home appliances). This anonymity is absolutely chilling; he effortlessly blends in with the crowd—average, unassuming, invisible. Indeed, his façade of superficial “normalcy” is far more insidious than any explicit display of insanity; he taunts his prey with idle banter, seamlessly transitioning between casual flirtation and thinly veiled threats.

The director’s visual style perfectly complements the suspenseful tone of the narrative. Early scenes almost resemble a slice-of-life domestic drama, characterized by flat compositions and lighting. As the conflict escalates, however, the warm, inviting interiors slowly warp and distort, becoming cramped, claustrophobic, hostile. Foreground elements (potted plants, sculptures, windows, doorways) isolate our heroine within the frame, emphasizing her vulnerability. Voyeuristic point-of-view shots serve a similar purpose, subliminally insinuating that true “safety” is an illusion: the sinister stalker could be lurking around any shadowy corner. The increasingly maximalist cinematography culminates in the film’s most iconic sequence: a prolonged overhead angle that follows the now totally unhinged maniac as he relentlessly pursues his quarry from room to room, utterly demolishing every obstacle in his path—splintering wood, shattering glass, and reducing drywall to dust.

Yet some of the movie’s most haunting images are significantly less spectacular than this climactic set piece. Takahashi understands the inherent value of patience, frequently locking down the camera and lingering on long, uninterrupted closeups of his lead actress simply reacting to suspicious offscreen noises—the echo of footsteps in the corridor, for example, or the telltale rattle of the deadbolt being tested. Keiko Takahashi’s face is breathtakingly expressive; her turbulent emotions are palpable, a violent maelstrom of anxiety, desperation, and paralyzing fear clearly evident in every twitch of her eye, every crease in her brow, every tear staining her cheek.

How thematically appropriate that Door—a story that explores such everyday horrors as rampant commercialism, predatory marketing, and the erosion of privacy—should be at its scariest when it embraces naturalism, minimalism, and subtlety.

[anhed-nia]

BLOGTOBER 10/15/2023: DOOR (1988)

I saw a new restoration of this movie at a midnight show that was part of the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. It seems to have been enjoyed as a classic of its type in Japan but was rarely seen elsewhere, and it deserves a MUCH more thorough and thoughtful write-up than I'm about to give it--but please take this remark as a sign that you should see it if you can! Filmmaker Banmei Takahashi and his actress wife Keiko both broke out of the pink film demimonde and into the mainstream in the early 1980s, and in DOOR one sees shades of their past--it's a lean, efficient thriller starring an imperiled female and a perverted maniac--and also their superior talents. Frankly, I just enjoyed everything about this movie, from its eye-catching location to its infectious music to the excellent set that was tailor-made for Keiko Takahashi and her co-star Daijiro Tsutsumi to chase each other around without the action ever becoming repetitive or implausible. And on top of all that, the script is so sharp that it feels fresh and relevant even 35 years later.

Takahasi plays a housewife whose husband is nearly invisible due to his high-pressure tech career. They live in an apartment complex where her only company, besides her young son (Takuto Yonezu, who is just as good as anybody else in this movie), is an army of intrusive telemarketers. She struggles to maintain the sanctity of her home, shutting down cold callers with increasing vigor until she pushes one of them over the edge. For the frustrated, futureless Daijiro Tsutsumi, being rejected by Takahashi shreds the final thread of his sanity, and he wages a campaign of terror that begins on the phone and transforms into a home invasion. The plot makes sense in the context of the hyper-capitalized Japan of the 1980s, but its themes of eroded privacy, escalating greed, and the dehumanizing effects of wage slavery make DOOR feel like a film that could have come out yesterday. Takahashi makes a wonderful heroine, as attractive and stylish as she is intelligent and independent; at every turn she does exactly what anyone would do to protect herself and her family, never "asking for" what happens to her, and yet it all happens anyway--just like it's happening to us all as our information is bought and sold, rightfully-earned possessions are converted into subscription services, and data-based products like movies and music are practically on loan to us by the corporations we pay to own them. DOOR definitely foresees our modern world, in which advertisements pop up even on pause screens, and telemarketers from other countries can call us all day long with impunity. See it if you can! The real horror is in how relatable it is.

[randomrichards]

THE BOY AND THE HERON:

Boy stewing in grief

Enters a world of life and death

Learning how to live

[lingyunxiang]

Brazilian artist Franci Shimomaebara is also the wife of music master Kitaro

[dare-g]

Door (1988)

[onenakedfarmer]

Watching

DOOR Banmei Takahashi Japan, 1988

[ladamarossa]

Door (1988)

[eyeronmaus]

Door (Banmei Takahashi, 1988)

[lightofthedeep]

quick colored keiko sketch bc i know i'm never going to canonically draw her chapter 1 outfit again

[genkinahito]

DOOR ドア (1988) Remaster Director: Banmei Takahashi

Happy Halloween! This is the time of year when people celebrate the supernatural and ghoulish aspects of popular culture and national myths. I do my part by highlighting horror movies on Halloween night. So far I have reviewed Nightmare Detective, Strange Circus, Shokuzai, POV: A Cursed Film Charisma, Don’t Look Up, Snow Woman (2017) Snow Woman (1968)  Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel, Gemini, John…

[bishiedoll]

Western literature and shoujo manga.

If you're, like me, someone whose passion is old shoujo manga, you may have noticed that at least one or more of your favorite mangaka has written manga adaptations of famous American and European novels. But why ?

According to this essay by Kawabata Ariko and Murakami Riko, in the early 20th century, because there was no Internet, people had no choice but to rely on big bookstores to learn more about and to purchase foreign novels. It was therefore not common to read them. The Iena bookstore, located in Ginza, was a rare indie bookstore that sold art-related foreign books and, while unfortunately, the store has closed today, many shoujo mangaka remember going there often to look for reference material amongst foreign works.

Alice in Wonderland, Daddy Long Legs and Heidi translated in Japanese with covers by Setsuko Tamura in the 80s.

This other essay by Oogushi Hisayo states that foreign novels were only broadly introduced in Japan for young girls in the 30s. Famous girls' magazines (which are to be differentiated with shoujo magazines) such as Shoujokai (created in 1902), Shoujo no Sekai (created in 1906) and Shoujo no Tomo (created in 1908) started introducing Western literature in their issues from the 1930s to the 1940s. Works such as "The Little Princess", "Heidi", "Little Women", "Daddy Long Legs" and more were published in these girls' magazines, making them more known to the Japanese audience and resulting in shoujo manga adaptations in the following years.

Little Women illustrated by Nakahara Junichi in the Girls' magazine Shoujo no Sekai.

Three works in particular seem to have gained a lot of popularity in the 40s: "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott, "Heidi" by Johanna Spyri and "Anne of Green Gables" by Lucy Maud Montgomery. All three are coming of age stories of young girls, and all three have one theme that seems to stand out: family. In the aftermath of WW2, many Japanese lost their families and many young children became orphans. In such times, novels that showcased happy families comforted Japanese readers. The popularity of these three works did not end in the 40s though, since in the 70s and 80s, all three got their 50 episodes anime adaptation in the Calpis Gekijou series (also known as World Masterpiece Theater), which, by the way, I highly recommend watching.

It is to be noted that these three works also became popular because they showcased independent and developed female leads, which has since then become a staple of shoujo manga itself, regardless of genre.

Heidi by Macoto Takahashi, Anne of Green Gables by Sakamoto Midori (1977) and Heidi by Watanabe Masako (1966).

In the 70s, a few mangaka published works that reminded critics of the "Bildungsroman". The Bildungsroman is a literary genre born in the 1800s in Germany, and it is a sub-category of the coming-of-age story. The Bildungsroman stands out from regular coming-of-age stories by focusing on the psychological and moral growth of its protagonist. Examples of that would be Moto Hagio with The Heart of Thomas in 1974 and Takemiya Keiko with Kaze to Ki no Uta in 1976 (though she never intended to write a Bildungsroman). The West was still shown in a more traditional version in these works, as both stories take place in old catholic boarding schools.

Similarly to how Audrey Hepburn, a Hollywood actress, was seen as a fashion leader in Japan (more about that on my other post about her influence on shoujo), Japanese people at the time had an idealized view of the West and anything from the Western world seemed fashionable and trendy. A great example of that is Sanrio. If you look at early Sanrio characters, a lot of them are from the West: Hello Kitty is British, the Little Twin Stars were inspired by Christmas, My Melody by the little red riding hood, Jimmy & Patty are American etc.

This view of the West began to shift in the 80s and the western literature that inspired shoujo mangaka started to change as well. Instead of comforting, idyllic stories about family life in a traditional American or European country side or stories taking place in traditional European catholic schools, manga inspired by more realistic and contemporary works started publishing. For example, Banana Fish by Akimi Yoshida (1985) draws inspiration from "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger and two of Hemingway's works: "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "Islands in the Streams". All three of these focus on either modern issues like overconsumption or darker themes like death and loneliness. The change can also be seen in the gender and age of the protagonists. Instead of being about young teen girls that shoujo readers could identify with, Banana Fish is about adult men. The inspiration is also a lot more loose, and instead of an adaptation, there are only references to J.D. Salinger and Hemingway's works throughout the manga.

The Heart of Thomas by Moto Hagio (1974), Banana Fish by Akimi Yoshida (1985) and Alice in Wonderland by Mutsu A-ko (1983).

To conclude my post, I really wanted to include this line from the essay by Oogushi Hisayo: If America (can apply to the West as a whole) was once the backdrop of stories for those who yearned to read about "somewhere that is not here", it has, from the 80s onward, become the backdrop of stories for those who yearned to read about "the now and here".

[chibiranmaruchan]

Cute exhibition 3/13.