The End of Love

· 1961

A leading postwar Japanese film critic and theorist who co-founded the seminal film magazine Eiga Hihyo (Film Criticism) in 1957, Eizo Yamagiwa made his directorial debut with this independent feature—long thought lost until a negative was recently discovered—about a group of idle bourgeois students known as the “Roppongi Tribe” (Roppongi zoku). Depicting the resignation and nihilism of the postwar generation in the years following the Anpo Treaty conflicts through a coming-of-age narrative, Yamagiwa offers sharp criticism of the prevalent characterizations of Japan's new youth offered by Nikkatsu's taiyozoku (“Sun Tribe”) films and the New Wave at large.

Starring

Kōji Matsubara, Hikaru Hayashi, Mitsuko Sawamura, Masami Akimoto, Akira Sagawa, Terumi Hoshi, Eizō Yamagiwa, Takashi Fujiki, Kiminao Okada, Yūko Kashiwagi

Director

Eizō Yamagiwa