Masahiro Shinoda's Clouds at Sunset｜A Film Changes with the Season and Place in Which We See It

The film that has moved me most lately is Clouds at Sunset (1967), Masahiro Shinoda’s adaptation of a novel by Tsutomu Mizukami. Watching it, I was immersed in a strange sensation in which deep feeling crossed paths with a nostalgia for something I had never lived.

In the 1960s, Shinoda won popularity alongside Nagisa Oshima and Yoshishige Yoshida as one of the standard-bearers of the Shochiku Nouvelle Vague. Yet he is also a director who draws relatively little attention, standing in the shadow of Oshima, who enjoyed overwhelming fame and was active as a television personality as well. I myself had not seen much of his work until now, but for the past several days I have been drawn deeply into Shinoda’s world.

I cannot say exactly why, but one reason seems to be the wind. This is the season of autumn rains, when overcast and rainy days go on and the sun is hardly ever seen. This week, though, as the autumn equinox passes, the calendar tells us that the nights are now longer than the days, and the morning air has turned distinctly cool.

When I opened the window this morning, a cool breeze came in and wrapped gently around my skin, which had soaked up so much sun this month that it was tanned like a fisherman’s. It seems to me that this sensation is what made me seek out Masahiro Shinoda. I have even begun to think that many films may be better seen at the right time of life and in the right season. That is how much the surroundings matter when we watch a film.

Last month, research that resonates with this strange sensation was published from an entirely different field. As I read the Monash University study published in the journal Nature, it shows that the brain in a psychedelic state does not fall into disorder but instead synchronizes and attunes itself to the context of the place it is in.

This suggests something that goes beyond psychedelics. Substances, works, and feelings that resonate with the human brain and heart can have very different effects depending on the context generated by a place. Seen this way, even the work of a filmmaker that does not suit you now might take on a different effect if you simply rethink the design of the setting, meaning when you watch it, in what surroundings, with whom, and in what way.

In my own experience of film, too, my impression of a filmmaker or a work often differs greatly depending on when I see it. There are works I reached only after a long time, and many that still do not suit me. When that happens, there is no need to force yourself to watch the whole thing. By waiting for the right moment, deepening your understanding, and watching the changes in your own heart, you can, when the time is right, savor the feeling engraved in the film.

The akanegumo of the title, clouds glowing madder red at sunset, is not a seasonal word in the haiku almanacs. But akane, madder red, is a seasonal word for autumn, and a madder-red sky or madder-red clouds carry the feeling of autumn. How, then, does one express such clouds on film, through the crossing of people’s feelings? That is where the talent of a filmmaker lies, and Masahiro Shinoda excelled at expressing such delicate movements of feeling.

As an actor who could play his own delicate feelings, he cast Shima Iwashita again and again. He married her in 1967, and they remained together until Shinoda died in March of last year.

Watching the films of that era, I find myself wishing strongly that if Japan should ever have to begin building the nation over again from the start, it would aim to create towns that are worth filming for their own sake. This film is set on the Noto Peninsula and was shot on location there, and its landscapes are a “Japan” we never get to see and scenes from an era we never lived through.

The charm of a place is not merely old scenery. It is a single work that embraces even the feelings of the people that the place gives rise to.