Name: Hana-tsumi nikki
Genre: Drama
Released: 1939-10-31
Duration: 1 h 13 min
Rating: 6.5
Cast: Hideko Takamine, Kuniko Ashihara, Misako Shimizu

Hideko Takamine is a student at a Christian school in Osaka. A new student, Misako Shimizu appears, and the two become friends, despite their very different backgrounds.

Miss Takamine had been a child actress on screen since 1929, but she was moving into young adult roles by this point. Still, it must have been an easy decision to give her one last "early adolescent" role; the Tokyo studios were as hesitant to monkey with Miss Takamine's star persona as American studios were with Deana Durbin's, Shirley Temple's, or Judy Garland's. This movie, based on a novel by Nobuko Yoshiya, is pretty sentimental and not especially deep. There are some lovely images of street scenes in Osaka, particularly the sequences of paper umbrellas in the rain. Cinematographer Kazuo Yamazaki's images were a bit fuzzy in the copy I loooked at, but sharpening them in my mind's eye produced visions of beauty.

Japanese cinema is celebrated for its refined minimalist dramas and avant-garde experimentation; it also introduced popular genres like jidaigeki (samurai epics), kaiju, and anime. Across both high art and mass entertainment, it often explores morality, impermanence, and the pressures of modern life.

Hidetoshi Nishijima and Tôko Miura in Drive My Car (2021)

The drama genre is a broad category that features stories portraying human experiences, emotions, conflicts, and relationships in a realistic and emotionally impactful way. Dramas delve into the complexities of human life, often exploring themes of love, loss, morality, societal issues, personal growth, with the aim to evoke an emotional response from the audience by presenting relatable and thought-provoking stories.

Mahershala Ali and Alex R. Hibbert in Moonlight (2016)

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Hana-tsumi nikki

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