Based on famed Japan commentator Donald Richie’s book of the same name, and is narrated by him; the great NY Times reviewer Vincent Canby said “nearly everything the camera finds prompts contemplation” and Hiro Narita’s cinematography is the key to the striking and often surprising view of a very different Japan than is usually seen in media here. Canby adds, “the minutely observed details of a particular time and place are only the initial excuse for what becomes, at last, a meditation on the meaning of history and the peculiarities of civilization.

A collaborative, newsreel-style portrait of Tokyo in 1957–58, blending photography, animation, and historical imagery to capture the city’s labor, rituals, and nightlife at the moment it became the world’s largest metropolis.