Okiku and the World

1h 30min
Directed by Junji Sakamoto
B&W with English Subtitles

Screening will be followed with opportunity for Q&A with Director Sakamoto Junji.

Join us for a lunch discussion with Director Sakamoto before the screening in HQ 276 at 12pm. 
Registration is required here. Lunch will be provided. 

Okiku and the World is a love story, featuring Okiku, who lives in a row house in nineteenth century Japan, and the two men who come to purchase the tenants’ human waste, in other words, their shit and pee. During the Edo era (1603 ~ 1868), the shoguns ruled Japan and shut out the outside world. With no imports or exports, people valued their limited resources by recycling and repurposing everything from paper to kimonos. Even human waste, purchased by Manure Men and sold to local farmers as valuable, organic fertilizer for growing food. These practices led to a recycle-based society, which was possible because everything was still made from natural materials. Okiku and the World is a love story that unfolds among ordinary people who lived in 19th century Edo, the metropolis we call Tokyo today.

Print provided by Japan Foundation
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Sakamoto Junji is one of the most successful Japanese film directors of the last four decades, making films ranging from indie arthouse films to big budget action thrillers. But his tendency to focus on genre cinema has meant his work has not been shown much on the festival circuit, even though he did get a lifetime achievement award from the New York Asian Film Festival in 2023. Despite the fact his films have been consistently appeared in yearly best ten lists of Japanese film critics, with Okiku and the World voted the best film of 2023 in the prestigious Kinema Junpo Best Ten, he remains one of Japan’s greatest filmmakers little known abroad. Yet his cinema are always rewarding, ranging from pure entertainment social problem films, including a series of works interrogating Japan’s relationships with the world, including the USA, Korea, and Cuba.