The Kiss (1957)

This screening will be introduced by Assistant Professor Zhao Xinyi from the Department of Japanese Studies at the National University of Singapore.

Director: Yasuzo Masumura

Runtime: 73 mins

Country: Japan

Language: Japanese with English subtitles

Rating: TBA

SINGAPORE PREMIERE

Synopsis

Masumura’s influential directorial debut captures post-war Japanese youth through the chance encounter of two young people dealing with family struggles. Kinichi, a delivery boy, and Akiko, an artist’s model, meet while visiting their fathers in prison. After successfully gambling on a bicycle race, they spend a pleasant day together at the beach, allowing a tender romance to bloom amid a reconstructing Japan whose future remained uncertain, much like the protagonists’ fates.

Adapted from a novel where Masumura sought to strip away its sentimentality, The Kiss is a fresh portrait of romance that effectively transcends the melodramatic conventions of its time. The camera stays close and mobile, eschewing static shots for dynamic blocking and pacing; the protagonist channels frustration into action rather than passive introspection, marking a departure from the era’s affluent, ennui-filled delinquents. Shaped by Masumura’s apprenticeship under Antonioni, Fellini, and Visconti in Italy, the film carries a neorealist directness, with Nagisa Oshima describing its arrival as “a powerful, irresistible force” in Japanese cinema. The film focuses on the sensorial aspects of the present moment in depicting young love, while acknowledging the shared socioeconomic precarity that grounds Kinichi and Akiko’s connection—the two instinctively understand each other, even as neither knows what lies ahead.

About the Speaker

Zhao Xinyi (Ch. 赵心怡) is an Assistant Professor jointly appointed in Japanese Studies and Chinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. She received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University in 2025. Her teaching and research focus on the film and media histories of Japan and China. Her current book project, Cinema in Search of a Nation: Media Culture and the Making of Manchuria , examines how cinema participated in the formation of colonial Manchuria and its postwar afterlives. She has also published on Teshigahara Hiroshi’s film Woman in the Dunes (1964) and women pioneers in Japanese cinema.

This screening is part of the programme Twin Tales: Kon Ichikawa and Yasuzo Masumura. For more screenings, please click here .

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