Trailblazing artists, activists, and everyday people from across the spectrum of gender and sexuality defy social norms and dare to live unconventional lives in this kaleidoscopic view of LGBTQ+ culture in contemporary Japan. From shiny pride parades to playfully perverse underground parties, this documentary pictures people living brazenly unconventional lives in the sunlight, the shadows, and everywhere in between.

"Among other characters, viewers meet an apprentice geisha, a tuna fisherman, a tattoo artist, school girls, and a robot-designing family ... These unique individuals demonstrate how the Japanese are masters of the future and guardians of the past."--Container.

As all of Edo flocks to see the work of the revered painter Hokusai, his daughter O-Ei toils diligently, creating the paintings sold under her father's name. Shy in public, in the studio O-Ei is brash and uninhibited. Seeking to come into her own as an artist, O-Ei sets out into the bustling city of Edo (present-day Tokyo), where she encounters spirits, dragons, con-men and traders.

Using film footage and composition notes left by the late Ogawa Shinsuke, Chinese director Peng Xiaolian shot additional film and completed the work, which colorfully yet elegantly depicts the manufacturing process of the Kaminoyama red persimmon. The inhabitants of the tiny Japanese village of Kaminoyama explain that it is the perfect combination of earth, wind and rain that makes their village's persimmons superior to those grown anywhere else,...

"It's death, Japanese style, in the rollicking and wistful first feature from maverick writer-director Juzo Itami. In the wake of her lascivious father's sudden passing, a successful actor (Itami's wife and frequent collaborator, Nobuko Miyamoto) and her husband (Tsutomu Yamazaki) leave Tokyo and return to their family house to oversee a traditional funeral. Over the course of three days of mourning that bring illicit escapades in the woods, a surprisingly...

In 1929, an impoverished fishing village father sells his nine-year-old daughter, Chiyo, to a geisha house in Kyoto's Gion district and she becomes subjected to cruel treatment from the owners and the head geisha Hatsumomo. As she grows older, her stunning beauty attracts the vindictive jealousy of Hatsumomo. She is rescued by and taken under the wing of Hatsumomo's bitter rival, Mameha. Under Mameha's mentorship, Chiyo becomes the geisha named Sayuri,...

A giant talking frog and an elusive cat help a listless bank employee, his traumatized wife, and a lonely accountant seek meaning in their lives and possibly save Tokyo from catastrophe in this animated feature based on stories by acclaimed Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The feature debut of composer Pierre Foldes, the film won the Jury Special Mention at the renowned Annecy Animation Film Festival and the Grand Prize at the Anima Festival in Brussels....

After more than a decade of sober political dramas and social-minded periodpieces, the great Japanese director Masaki Kobayashi shifted gears dramatically for this rapturously stylized quartet of ghost stories. Featuring colorfully surreal sets and luminous cinematography, these haunting tales of demonic comeuppance and spiritual trials, adapted from writer Lafcadio Hearn's collections of Japanese folklore, are existentially frightening and meticulously...