Tokyo International Film Festival opened this year with Takahisa Zeze's Sukiyaki, a 155-minute biopic of the three men behind Kyu Sakamoto's Billboard-topping 1961 song "Ue o Muite Arukō." The choice matters beyond the red carpet. As The Film Stage noted in its festival report, how a national festival opens is a good indication of where that country's cinema sees itself — and by that measure, things are okay in Japan.
The more interesting story is the director's résumé. Zeze began as a writer and assistant director in Japan's pornographic pink film industry and became known as one of the "Four Heavenly Kings of Pink." He then moved into mainstream filmmaking, turning out some of the darkest, finest Japanese thrillers of the 1990s. Today he produces roughly one film a year and functions as something of an elder statesman of the industry. A career path like that is, as the same report put it, largely impossible to imagine for an American filmmaker.
That trajectory is the real news here. A festival's opening slot is its most visible piece of programming, and Tokyo spent it on a director whose formation came from the industry's low-budget, adult-film margins. For readers tracking how film culture is funded and elevated, that is a signal worth reading closely — and it fits a pattern we've covered before in how major film festivals are funded and how international festivals support debut directors. For related coverage, see How International Festivals Support Debut Directors Before the Premiere. For related coverage, see How International Festivals Support Debut Directors Before the Premiere.
What does the opening slot actually signal?
Festival openers carry a double burden. They must feel like an event, and they are read as a bellwether for the national cinema around them. Sukiyaki, per The Film Stage's review context, splits that difference: it was not the best film the critic saw at this year's festival, but nowhere close to the worst — a stronger showing than many years when the opener left doubt about the state of the field. The film also bears the expectations of a studio biopic without erasing Zeze's own sensibilities, making what the report calls charming, sometimes truly moving drama from musical legacies.
Demand backs the programming up. A New York premiere at Japan Society, scheduled for November 11, had already sold out before the Tokyo festival ran its course. That is a notable result for a Japanese drama about a decades-old pop song, and it suggests the film travels on more than national pride.
Why does Zeze's pink-film background matter?
Because it says something about how Japanese film careers work. In the American system, a director who emerged from the pornographic film industry would likely carry that label permanently. In Japan, Zeze's generation treated pink film as a training ground — a place to write, assist, and learn craft at volume — and the mainstream absorbed him. His 1990s thrillers were dark and, by the report's account, among the finest of the decade. The lesson is that the industry's periphery can feed its center, and the center apparently has no appetite for rewriting that history.
Volume is the other half of the story. Zeze averages one film a year. As his masterclass at this year's festival closed, attendees were handed a flyer for his next feature, All That Exists, starring Hidetoshi Nishijima and Suzu Hirose, opening domestically on February 5. Asked how he sustains that pace, his answer was plain: "For me, moviemaking is the same as living." He said every film teaches him something about the world, and that moviemaking makes him feel he knows "something secret about the world."
What is Sukiyaki actually about?
On the surface, it is the story of the three men who shaped Kyu Sakamoto's Billboard-topping 1961 hit "Ue o Muite Arukō." Zeze, in his masterclass, said he made the film because of the main character's later years: the composer suffered from depression and diabetes, and still kept writing music. He connected that persistence to a book by Hachidai Nakamura titled Born on This Planet, and to what he saw as the composer's interest in the far future — a purity he wanted to link to questions of life and death.
That framing surprised the interviewer, who noted the film's sincerity after years of Zeze's dark, disturbing work. Zeze agreed the shift was deliberate: the film needed to show how people overcome the fear of death through music. The tenderness is the point, not a departure from it.
Why the political layer matters
The film also reaches beyond Japan. It includes a man who died in the Holocaust serving as a spiritual guide, and it addresses the cultural segregation of Black musicians in Harlem. Zeze was direct about why: in the 1960s, Black people were suppressed and their music faced immense difficulty, and Japanese musicians thinking about creating music in Japan have always connected their work to that era's suffering. A film about a widely accepted pop song, in other words, refuses to treat that popularity as politically neutral.
What it means for the season ahead
Put the pieces together and a picture emerges of a healthy domestic film economy. A veteran director opens the national festival with a commercial biopic, a New York venue sells out its premiere, and the same director already has another feature in theaters by February. For anyone following why film festivals matter so much for independent distribution, Tokyo's opener is a case study in an ecosystem that sustains directors across decades rather than betting everything on newcomers. Whether Sukiyaki itself travels further than Japan Society is the open question — the evidence so far covers the sold-out premiere, not what comes after it. We covered a connected angle in Why Film Festivals Matter So Much for Independent Distribution. We covered a connected angle in Why Film Festivals Matter So Much for Independent Distribution.
