
Directing
Shinji Sōmai
Born — Died
1948-01-13 — 2001-09-09
Place of birth
Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, Japan
Known for
Directing
Credits
15 titles
Shinji Sōmai (相米 慎二, Sōmai Shinji, 13 January 1948 – 9 September 2001) was a Japanese film director. He was born in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, and was brought up in Hokkaido. Somai began his career in 1975 as an assistant director with Nikkatsu Co., one of Japan's leading film production companies, after he dropped out of Chuo University. Somai made made his debut as a director in 1980 with The Terrible Couple - an adaptation of a popular boys' manga of the time. The film deals with the trials and tribulations of adolescence, presaging a long thread of Somai works in which young people are called upon to test their capabilities while discovering the unreliable nature of adult society. In So…
Known for
6.5Offering a caustic immersion into the lives of disaffected junior high students on the cusp of adulthood, the film takes place over the 5-day period before, during, and after a ferocious, seemingly liberating typhoon, which six of the students endure while marooned in their school.
Typhoon Club
1985
7.5Physically separated from her father and at odds with her distraught mother, a girl must negotiate her own passage to maturity.
Moving
1993
6.7A call-girl named Yumi and Tetsuro, a married man with a debt to the yakuza, have a violent rendezvous in a cheap love hotel. Years later, haunted by the memory of that night, they reconnect and begin a strange love affair. Determined to finish what they started, they return to the scene of their first macabre passion.
Love Hotel
1985
7.0A delightful and moving coming-of-age story. One summer, three young boys take an increasing interest in an eccentric old man who lives alone in a house surrounded by an overgrown garden. The boys form a bond with the recluse and set about weeding and replanting the garden.
The Friends
1994
7.0A high-school girl inherits a declining yakuza organization, which seeks to repair its fortunes under her leadership.
Sailor Suit and Machine Gun
1981
6.0Three high-school students tangle with indulgent yakuza and lackadaisical police as they set out in search of the class bully, who has been kidnapped.
P. P. Rider
1983
Behind the camera
6.5Offering a caustic immersion into the lives of disaffected junior high students on the cusp of adulthood, the film takes place over the 5-day period before, during, and after a ferocious, seemingly liberating typhoon, which six of the students endure while marooned in their school.
Typhoon Club
1985
7.5Physically separated from her father and at odds with her distraught mother, a girl must negotiate her own passage to maturity.
Moving
1993
6.7A call-girl named Yumi and Tetsuro, a married man with a debt to the yakuza, have a violent rendezvous in a cheap love hotel. Years later, haunted by the memory of that night, they reconnect and begin a strange love affair. Determined to finish what they started, they return to the scene of their first macabre passion.
Love Hotel
1985
7.0A delightful and moving coming-of-age story. One summer, three young boys take an increasing interest in an eccentric old man who lives alone in a house surrounded by an overgrown garden. The boys form a bond with the recluse and set about weeding and replanting the garden.
The Friends
1994
7.0A high-school girl inherits a declining yakuza organization, which seeks to repair its fortunes under her leadership.
Sailor Suit and Machine Gun
1981
6.0Three high-school students tangle with indulgent yakuza and lackadaisical police as they set out in search of the class bully, who has been kidnapped.
P. P. Rider
1983
6.7A young man tries to overcome the hostility of his girlfriend's father, a tuna fisherman, by getting the father to teach him the trade's secrets.
The Catch
1983
7.0A hulking man from the country pursues his beloved to the underworld of Tokyo nightclubs, where he finds work as a sideshow wrestler and becomes involved with a faded opera singer.
Luminous Woman
1987
7.3A salaryman faces a major life change as his firm undergoes financial difficulties. To add to his troubles, a man claiming to be his long-estranged father shows up at his house requesting shelter. One of the best of Somai's seriocomic studies of the messiness of family life.
Wait and See
1998
6.6A pampered young model is killed in a traffic accident. Given the chance to return to earth, she becomes involved with the advertising executive who is trying to cover up her death. A blend of fantasy and trenchant realism in which Somai uses the ethereal glow of advertising images to comment on the transience of life.
Tokyo Heaven
1990
6.9Iori, taken from an orphanage by a family for domestic work, runs away and is adopted and raised by two young men. Ten years later, she crosses paths with her former step-sister, who is soon poisoned to death, Iori being the prime suspect.
Lost Chapter of Snow: Passion
1985
5.6A government employee meets a hostess of a "pink club," and together they set out on a journey.
Kaza-hana
2001
6.2Aspiring to be admitted to a good university and to become a lawyer, Tasiro Yuusuke, a tenth-grader from Kyushu, enrolls in a prestigious high school in Tokyo. Plans are made for him to live in his uncle's house, part of which is rented out while his uncle is abroad on business. A realtor's mistakes leaves Tasiro sharing the house with Kei Yamaba, the most beautiful girl in the school, who is also his classmate. There is the risk that their unexpected 'co-habitation' will be discovered by the school authorities.
Dreamy Fifteen
1980
5.0Based on the novel by Tetsuro Miura, this 60-minute PV (Promotional Video) stars Aya Katsuragi.
Beloved Woman
1985
9.0Investigative reporter Hayakawa Junko visits a town that was once the scene of a scandal involving mass prostitution to cover the activities of high school girls at motels. What Junko sees there is a flood of sexual promiscuity among high school girls that is even more shocking than what has been reported in the media. During her investigation, Junko hears a rumor that it is a "high school version of Romeo and Juliet," in which two high school students, Ryuichi and Yuki, fell in love but their families opposed their relationship, so they cut off each other's little fingers.
100 High School Girls: Secret Motel Report
1975
