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按摩と女 (The Masseurs And A Woman)

Director: Hiroshi Shimizu
Year: 1938
Run-time: 1 hr 6 min

- This is the kind of simple, elegant, beautiful, short film that I'm happy that the list sheds some light on. It's a short story told in just over an hour, but fitting in a surprising range of characters, all meeting in a resort town and never quite getting to know each other, but making a lasting impression nonetheless.  We get little glimpses into their lives outside the town, only the details we need.  No one is quite to help anyone else, and feels worse for it.  I found it less overtly melodramatic than the last Shimizu film I watched, Japanese Girls At The Harbor, a sign that Shimizu's style was developing.  Shimizu was an enormously prolific director , with so many of his films lost to the war.

- This film fits into an interesting canon of Japanese films set at resorts, a canon that includes all-time greats like Tokyo Story and Spirited Away.  There's something about the setting that inspires longing in its characters - I wonder what role these resorts play in the Japanese imagination.
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