Asakusa Kid

Shinozaki’s Kitano connection is longstanding. In his days as a critic, he was one of the first in Japan to take ‘Beat’ Takeshi seriously as a director; he wrote sleevenotes for the first boxed set of Kitano laserdiscs. In 1999 he followed the filming of Kikujiro and made his `official bootleg’ Jam Session. And now he’s filmed Kitano’s memoir of his early days starting out in the strip clubs and vaudeville theatres of Tokyo’s Asakusa district in the 1960s. It’s a modest production, made on a shoestring for Japanese cable TV, but it has gemlike qualities. It was scripted by Dankan (writer and star of Ikinai and a veteran member of the `Takeshigumi’ group of comedians), who also puts in a guest appearance. As you’d expect from its moviebrat director, the film is full of reminiscences of genre movies of the 60s, from shitamachi comedies to Kumashiro sex films.A night sleeping on the streets persuades the young Takeshi (decently impersonated by Hakase Suidobashi) to swap his leather jacket for a skyblue happi coat and start working as a janitor in a strip club. Many months later months of practicing tapdance, learning from his mentor Fukami, going out with a girl from the strip club and picking up tips from anyone who has any he steps out on the vaudeville stage in a spangly white suit as one half of The Two Beats. All this, and a cameo appearance by Terajima Susumu! Tony Rayns