Though it was made in 1937 and is set during the 18th century, Humanity and Paper Balloons is dismally universal, presenting a world in which honesty is a weakness of the naïve and vice is a crucial tool, but one which can often only get its practitioners so far. In this time and place (in any capitalistic time and place), it is only money that allows one the influence necessary to control one's life, and only a precious few can acquire the wealth necessary to wield that kind of authority.

In this world, the poor, no matter their original class, are victims of structures, and women are the victims of men, trapped by the demands of male egos and used…

Humanity and Paper Balloons peels away all the romanticism frequently depicted within the Edo period of Japan together with the widely held image of the samurai. 

Sadly, it also turned out to be the final film from director Sadao Yamanaka, a promising young director of the nineteen-thirties. His career was tragically cut short when he became conscripted into the army and posted to the Manchurian front, where he died in a field hospital in September 1938, just 28 years of age. The film discovers Yamanka sketching a vivid portrait of a claustrophobic community and delivering a highly detailed approach that's nearer to naturalism than what was routinely the tendency of the time. 

It observes the ambitions for a better future…

Poetry is a dying art form mainly because good poetry generally made people think and interpret unlike the vulgar and crass, in-your-face forms of expression that people are being fed upon today. Humanity and Paper Balloons is not just a movie but rather its poetry in cinematic form.
The movie leaves a lot of food for thought for the viewer; so much so that I was glaring at the blank screen for several minutes after this movie ended. The part about demystifying the Samurai is only a small part of what this film explores. This movie touches upon unemployment, poverty, greed, lechery, violence and so many other ills that have plagued humanity over the years and will continue to do…

1st Sadao Yamanaka

People are right to see Yamanaka as one of the tragically under-appreciated talents to come out of Japan before World War 2; don't let that low star rating fool you into thinking I think it's a bad film. Rather, it reflects the fact that I find social realism to be uninteresting, but this is a first-class example of the genre. Set in feudal Japan, it tells of a slum ran by an unscrupulous landlord and the lives of those within it. In particular, a young Samurai finds that his father has hanged himself in the slum and attempts to retrieve some money from said landlord in something of a Kafkaesque chain of events. In another plot strand,…

Sadao Yamanaka gives us a loose, humanist look at a down at heel neighbourhood of 18th century Japan with people clinging to tradition and heirarchy and old certainties only to constantly find them hollow and unsustaining.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie with this easy a feel where the idea of suicide as an inevitability is so ever present, the only possible way to equate the dignity of expectations with the reality of life as it is lived.

The characters are perfectly realised, you care for most of them even as the directorial distance and cutaways to dolls tells you again and again that their concerns are almost meaningless in their futility.

It's a movie that feels like…

This is a masterclass in world building and story structure.

An unseen tenant in an 18th century Japanese slum commits suicide, touching off an unexpected story about the other residents there. While Humanity and Paper Balloons seems to start as an ensemble piece, the movie narrows its focus to two characters. Unno is an unemployed ronin whose wife makes paper balloons to keep the couple afloat. He holds out hope that local rich guy Mouri will hire him because Unno’s father used to work for him. Chôjûrô Kawarasaki’s demeanor as Unno is one of many equally important parts to the movie. His portrayal of persistence, of hope against hope, of constantly being beaten back but still carrying on, is both…