Kidnapping Blues

Kidnapping Blues is the kind of Japanese oddity that could only have come from the loose, adventurous edge of early-1980s cinema. Shinpei Asai was not a conventional filmmaker at all — he was best known as a photographer, and for his first feature he took on almost everything himself: directing, writing, cinematography and even lighting. The result feels less like a plotted drama than a series of stolen moments caught on the road.

The film was produced under the banner of ATG, the legendary Art Theatre Guild, which makes perfect sense. Instead of pushing the story into thriller territory, Kidnapping Blues drifts like a handmade road movie — part crime premise, part urban fairytale, part melancholy sketchbook of Japan seen from a bicycle.

Tamori, one of Japan’s most recognizable entertainers, gives the film its strange centre. He does not play the man as a villain or a hero, but as a tired, half-lost drifter who suddenly finds himself responsible for a child who wants nothing more dramatic than to see the sea.

The cast list is almost a small cultural map of Japan at the time. Alongside actors like Kaori Momoi, Nobuko Miyamoto and Juzo Itami, the film features appearances by critic Nagaharu Yodogawa, director Kihachi Okamoto and jazz pianist Yosuke Yamashita. It gives the journey the feeling of a road trip through Asai’s own artistic circle.

Music is one of the film’s secret engines. Yosuke Yamashita not only composed the score but also appears as a pianist, and one of the film’s remembered images is his wild piano performance, where even the instrument seems ready to break apart. That jazz spirit suits the movie perfectly: loose, impulsive, a little dangerous, and never quite willing to explain itself.