NYAFF XXIV Review: Toshiaki Toyoda’s Go Seppuku Yourselves & Other Tales

For all intents and purposes, Toshiaki Toyoda is an accomplished filmmaker whose work remains celebrated far and wide among cinephiles. His latest known work is a trio of shorts he completed as a response to the Japanese government following an arrest and subsequent release in Spring 2019.

Thus, we get 2019’s Wolf’s Calling, followed by Day Of Destruction a year later, and the 2021 finale, Go Seppuku Yourselves, each telling a convicting tale that holds society to account through a vision that teeters between real and phantasmagoric at times.

I actually saw Wolf’s Calling back in 2020 but in partnering with Cesar Alejandro Jr. for this assembly of short reviews, the good stewards at NYAFF made its necessary rewatch possible. Cesar reviewed the first two shorts in the article below, with mine being the last. All three films enjoyed their Special Screenings at the 24th edition of the New York Asian Film Festival which runs through July 27.

WOLF’S CALLING (2019)

Director: Toshiaki Toyoda

Starring: Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Tadanobu Asano, Ryuhei Matsuda, Kengo Kora, Tatsuya Nakamura

While cleaning out drawers in the attic of an old home, a girl (Shibusawa) finds an antique pistol. As she studies the surprise find, she begins to imagine swordsmen converging and the role the firearm may have played…

This short film from Toyoda, created after his own arrest for owning a family keepsake, an antique pistol, (he was released without charge ending in quite a bit of embarrassment for Japanese police) is a simple and immersive example of sight and sound. With a short running time, a mere 17 minutes, the build of the swordsmen meeting is basically all there is to the narrative. The superstar cast all chew scenery in their own ways and create silent characters that will have you imagining your own backstories. While the film itself doesn’t lead to ‘action’ per se, it does create a truthful representation of idle, but vivid daydreaming. The Edo punk band Seppuku Pistols provide the tension-filled and thumping score; they also appear themselves as background actors. The music thunders into your bones an immense amount of tension that really reminded me of the snowy assassination attempt in Kihachi Okamoto’s Sword of Doom; specifically Nakadai’s character.

Will this short leave some viewers wanting more? Absolutely. But even better is that the film should leave viewers thinking. Here’s to the possibility to a full feature!

DAY OF DESTRUCTION (2020)

Director: Toshiaki Toyoda

Starring: Kiyohiko Shibukawa, Mahi To The People, Itsuki Nagasawa, Issei Ogata

In a sleepy mountainside town, an unexplained monster is discovered deep in a maintenance tunnel. Seven years later, the town suffers from a bizarre pandemic as a young spiritualist undergoes a ritual for the strength to fight the malady with potentially catastrophic results, prompting his seniors in mysticism to search him out.

Star studded and cool as hell, Director Toshiaki Toyoda’s latest effort is a mish-mash of social critique, commentary, and Lovecraftian mythos. At a fairly short running time, under an hour, the film does at a sedate pace but constantly provides compelling visuals and just the right amount of dialogue to keep viewers questioning and engaged. From the very beginning, with a quiet cameo from Ryuhei Matsuda, you get shunted deliberately through the tunnel in a sequence where not a lot goes on but increasingly establishes the unease that permeates throughout the rest of the film.

With strong performances by Shibukawa, through whose eyes we see the oddness of the town come to creepy form and a brilliantly physical performance by Mahi To the People that seems like madness personified, we have a strangely powerful visual spectacle that will more than likely divide viewers but more than aptly kept myself riveted. Had it gone on longer than where it currently stands, the premise certainly would not have carried as well, but for something shot so quickly and with such presence of vision form Toyoda, I can’t help but think of it days and over a week since my viewing. A must see.

GO SEPPUKU YOURSELVES (2021)

Director: Toshiaki Toyoda

Starring: Yosuke Kubozuka, Kiyohiko Shibukawa

A demon is seen slicing their finger off as it sinks to the bottom of a village’s well. It ensues an epidemic wherein a ronin finds himself wrongfully blamed for poisoning the well and is sentenced to commit seppuku, but not before getting a final word in edgewise.

Toyoda’s 26-minute dark period fantasy is a brooding psychodrama that’s as thematically consistent as its predecessor. Kubozuka is mesmerizing as the samurai judged for a crime he didn’t commit, and with a monologue that casts a damning spotlight on societal penchants for blind resolve, a message rightly bookended by the final shot of blood splattering on another man’s face once the sentence is carried out.

Engaging cinematography and and an immersive score top off Toyoda’s foreboding vision in a shortfilm series that still, and rightly, gets its ceremony when it can.