New Restoration “Director Hayashi Kaizo takes us on an enthralling, tragicomic time-trip, a visually spectacular (colour! CinemaScope!) meditation about time and family that is a pure delight.” Tod Booth, San Francisco IFF 1995 The second installment of Hayashi Kaizo’s Maiku Hama trilogy spills out in vibrant, full-blown colour as Maiku’s past resurfaces, setting in motion the events of this brooding and exquisitely shot sequel. Taking on puppy rescues during a slump in more weighty investigative work, Maiku hears word of the return of his long-lost mother who abandoned him and kid sister Akane years before. A legendary stripper named Lily-san, she sets up shop along the riverbanks of Yokohama where the presence of an enigmatic “Man in White” (Hiroshima Mon Amour’s Okada Eiji) begins to trouble both police and yakuza. Hayashi’s sequel lives and breathes the occupied history of the port city, its near-mythic riverfront still abiding by a postwar code of silence. A remarkably emotive middle chapter, The Stairway to the Distant Past plunges Maiku into the darkest depths as he reconciles his past in its eerie final act, a nightmarish tableau vivant of painted faces and silent murmurs. —Japan Society In Japanese with English subtitles
