Kisses

Kinichi and Akiko meet while visiting their fathers in a Tokyo prison. They borrow a motorcycle, get out of the city and spend a day together. Yasuzo Masumura's first film, made in 1957, was adapted from a novel by Matsutaro Kawaguchi and produced at Daiei. It does not carry the tone of resignation and helplessness that was standard in Japanese cinema at the time; the movement, the speed and the stubbornness of two young people sit at the centre of it. Nagisa Oshima wrote after seeing it that an irresistible force had arrived in Japanese cinema. It is now counted as a forerunner of the new wave, and it runs seventy four minutes.