A look at Sachi Hamano's same-sex romance "Yuriko, Dasvidaniya"
Thursday, December 22, 2011
by Chris MaGee Here's a story that slipped under our radar. It was in October of 2010 that we reported on how veteran pink film director Sachi Hamano was going to be bringing the life of Yuriko Miyamoto, one of Japan's most influential feminist thinkers, and her companion, Russian literary scholar Yoshiko Yuasa to the screen. Since then the film has been completed, but with so little fanfare that, well, we missed it!
Titled "Yuriko, Dasvidaniya", the film chronicles the struggles that the two women faced during 1920's Taisho Era Japan in order to love one another. The film stars Hitomi Toi as Yuriko Miyamoto, Nahana as Yoshiko Yuasa and Ren Osugi as Miyamoto's husband Shigeru Araki.
Hamano, who has been making films in Japan's pink eiga scene since the early 1970's, has touched on lesbian romance before in her best known film, 2001's "The Lily Festival". That film told the story of two elderly women who discover their feelings for each other after an aging playboy moves into their seniors' home.
The film enjoyed a limited theatrical release in Japan, beginning with a run at Tokyo's Eurospace in October. Here's hoping that we'll see "Yuriko, Dasvidaniya" hit the Western festival circuit during 2012. You can check out the film's trailer below.