Film at Lincoln Center Presents Yoshimuro
Brilliant and Underappreciated Filmmaker
By: Susan Hall - Nov 28, 2025
Film at Lincoln Center will present “Kozaburo Yoshimura: Tides of Emotion,” a retrospective of 13 films by one of the accomplished yet underappreciated figures of the golden age of Japanese cinema. Running from December 5 through December 11, 2025, the festival is presented in partnership with the Japan Foundation.
What a pleasure it is to watch a film unfold. Often cited as Kzabur Yoshimura’s crowning achievement, a newly restored digital version of Undercurrent (also known as Night River) opens the festival. Subversive in tone, the film anticipates storytelling styles Americans would later recognize in the work of Woody Allen and Richard Linklater.
Japanese filmmakers often allow their stories to reveal themselves through character and conversation. This affords them the freedom to compose beautiful images and cut dramatically without the blunt force that dominates so much contemporary “crash” filmmaking—an undeniable relief.
Shot in gorgeous color by Kazuo Miyagawa, the film follows Kiwa (Fujiko Yamamoto), an independent-minded kimono designer in Kyoto who rejects various suitors in order to pursue her craft. When she falls in love with a married scientist (Ken Uehara), she faces a painful and morally complex choice. Throughout Yoshimura’s oeuvre, he offers insightful portraits of shifting gender and social roles in a rapidly modernizing Japan.
Women throughout history have found opportunities to live by their sexual allure, yet Yoshimura’s films suggest dimensions of feminine agency that many Western viewers may not have imagined. They are well worth watching on these grounds alone. Although women in Japan have long held forms of erotic power, it was not until the U.S.-led postwar reforms that they began to gain public and political power. The recent ascent of Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s new prime minister, underscores this shift; even her choice of a leather tote became a subtle political signal.
Film Schedule.
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