Yasuko, Songs of Days Past

With Yasuko, Songs of Days Past, veteran filmmaker Negishi Kichitarō crafts a simmering portrait of a love triangle, ambition and the complexities of creativity, taking as its subject one of Japan’s most beloved early 20th-century poets, Nakahara Chūya.

Nakahara Chūya’s life was cut tragically short when, in 1937 aged just 30, he died from tuberculosis. He was an early pioneer of modernist poetry, whose work would grow in stature in the decades that followed his death. (It’s one of the reasons, alongside the intensity of his writing, why he has been referred to as the Japanese Rimbaud.) In Yasuko, Songs of Days Past, filmmaker Negishi Kichitarô conjures up a moment from the poet’s youth when, in his late teens, he fell in love with aspiring actor Hasegawa Yasuko. Their relationship fired Nakahara’s creativity but was also challenged by the presence of the older, and more worldly, critic Kobayashi Hideo.

The turbulence of the story Negishi presents is offset against the elegance of his style. Beautifully shot by Gima Shingo and capturing the era through Harada Mitsuo and Sagae Yōko’s understated production design, the film simmers in its portrait of a love triangle that becomes increasingly terse. An exemplary director of actors, Negishi prioritises angst through emotional repression. As such, the film has parallels with Merchant Ivory’s studies of British society. But Yasuko, Songs of Days Past remains, first and foremost, a study of an artist on the cusp of greatness, and the stifling constraints of the society he lived in.

– Vanja Kaludjercic

Trailer

Interview

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